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#Post#: 556--------------------------------------------------
Recruitment
By: Half-Blood Date: January 22, 2013, 11:10 pm
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Focusing on the different ways each member is recruited
#Post#: 562--------------------------------------------------
Re: Recruitment
By: Half-Blood Date: January 23, 2013, 1:36 am
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The General sent out some Agents to recruit William but they
only had the "need to know" they didn't know what he is or what
he can do General Eiling thought it would be much better that
way, hopefully make them talk to him rather than shoot him on
sight.
The Agents watched the Industrial Complex for hours, the sun
went down, the workers left and finally the manager handed the
keys to a man dressed in black, he locked up behind the manager
and went inside "that's our boy" Agent Cassidy said looking
through night vision binoculars.
The 5 Agents gout out of the SUV and walked towards the gate "I
can hardly see a thing" Agent Station said almost tripping over
the curb "That's the idea, if we can hardly see anything then he
won't be able to see us" Cassidy replied.
They reached the gate and Agent Cassidy got out his lock picks
and slowly and silently began picking the lock, after about 20
second everyone heard the 'click' and Cassidy opened the huge
steel gate "easy as that, now remember we need to invite him, so
no shooting unless we need to" Cassidy reminded his team, they
all nodded and continued inside.
At the entrance to the building was a steel door the Agents
stood in front of it and started talking about what they were
going to say to William when the door swung open and this tall
well built guy was stood in front of them "This is private
property, you boys leave now and I won't call the cops" William
said looking at them, "Actually we've come to see you, William"
Agent Station said and took a step forwards, William jumped back
and slammed the door hard breaking Agent Stations nose with it.
Agent Station recoiled holding his nose "mother fucker broke my
damn nose" he screamed holding his nose "He's running" Cassidy
shouted and kicked the door open, the Agents went in 2 by 2
leaving Station outside to nurse his nose.
Agent Phillips and Henderson were up on the top floor, William
dropped down from the pipes above them and landed between them,
Henderson and Phillips spun around weapons drawn, William caught
Henderson's hand, and kicked Phillips' legs out, elbowed
Henderson in the ribs, spun around and threw Henderson on top of
Philips.
Cassidy and Morrison were on the first floor, Morrison took the
right, Cassidy took the left. Morrison opened the last door and
was face to face with William, William grabbed Agent Morrison's
throat and picked him up, Morrison drew his weapon and shot
William 4 times in the chest.
William laughed manically, Agent Morrison watched with shock and
horror as he saw William wounds head and push the bullets back
out, William threw him backwards down a flight of steel steps
and into Agent Station who was running up in response to to
gunfire.
William looked down at Agents Morrison and Station in a heap at
the bottom of the steel steps "William!" William spun around and
saw Agent Cassidy standing there with no gun, "You're not using
Silver.. Who are you?" William asked "Agent Philip Cassidy
E.T.C.F we need your help I came to recruit you, I don't know
why or what skills you have but the top brass ordered us to come
and so here we are, just one question... Did you kill any of my
men?" Cassidy asked
"Not that I know of, they were lucky" William replied with a
smile.
Agent Cassidy and William talked for quite a while while they
waited for the others to wake up, once everyone was awake they
all got into the SUV and took the long drive back to E.T.C.F HQ
No one said a word to William, William was just sat in the back
smirking to himself.
#Post#: 592--------------------------------------------------
Re: Recruitment
By: Aggressivenutmeg Date: January 24, 2013, 1:00 am
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Marius Aquillius Aemilius Immortalibus sat looking out over the
ocean. This was one of the few places in Mogadishu that
westerners were able to hang-out freely. Much of the city was
still undeveloped, and the locals in the suburbs were openly
hostile to foreigners. He sat with his Gladius sheathed across
his lap, his handgun loaded and on the table, and his vz.58
assault rifle resting against the wall. While the violence in
Somalia was dying down, it was still an ever present threat. He,
and hundreds like him, had come here from across the globe,
called by the allure of money. The current president, Michael
Ali-Fawzi, a very wealthy Somali-America, had spent his own
money recruiting hundreds of foreign mercenaries to train and
lead the fledgling Somali Army, in a last ditch effort to
contain an insurgency, the world had begun to forget.
A large armed group entered that bar, and only two of them were
westerners. The agents were the least inconspicuous spies Marius
had ever seen. They had the whole “black suit and sunglasses”
look. Everyone in the bar became slightly on edge upon seeing
their new company. Marius reach for his Browning HP as the
agents sat down at his table. ‘I hope you don’t plan on using
that’ the older one said, before he turned to the waitress
‘water for the three of us.’
‘I won’t if you don’t give me a reason too.’ Marius replied,
turning back to the busy ocean, packed with freighters. He
sniffed and then turned back to the agents as their water
arrived. ‘What do you want?’
‘We need your help. There’s a storm coming Aemilius. A storm not
even you will survive.’
‘It would be a welcome relief.’ Marius scowled. ‘I'm the one
person who can’t fucking pay his debitum naturae.’ Marius
shifted in his seat still looking out at the sea. He spent a few
moments contemplating their request, before holstering his
handgun, slinging his gladius over his shoulder and picking up
his rifle. ‘Let’s got.’
#Post#: 625--------------------------------------------------
Re: Recruitment
By: Knight Errant Date: January 25, 2013, 8:53 pm
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Part 1: Richard
The man awoke. Bright sunlight streamed into his eyes, and he
blinked with pain. He rolled onto one side and felt something
brush against his cheek. What was it, stems of some kind? Grass,
it was grass. He cracked open his eyes again. He appeared to be
in the centre of some spiralling ridge, with grassy slopes all
around him. His eyes focussed on an object in front of him.
It...it looked like a book of some kind. How odd. He reached out
to touch it.
“Aah!” he groaned. A bolt of pain shot up his fingers; the
book had burned him! He drew his hands before his eyes to check
the damage. To his horror, they were pink with a mass of burn
and scar tissue. Had he touched the book before?
With a start, he realised that he had no memory before this
point in time. As far has his brain was concerned, right here,
right now was the beginning of his life. He rolled over onto his
other side and froze.
A figure was walking towards him, a figure dressed head to
toe in grey. A name echoed through his mind. The Grey Man. He
tried to scrabble away, but the approaching figure was
relentless. Its arm reached out towards him...
“Are you all right, mister?” a concerned voice asked from behind
him. He spun around, gasping, to see a portly figure leaning
over him. He instinctively reached for his belt and found a
pistol in his hand. Before he knew it he had levelled it at the
figure’s face.
“Whoawhoawhoa! Don’t shoot me!” the figure cried, panicked.
“Just...just think about what you’re doing here...”
The man stole a glance over his shoulder. The Grey Man was
nowhere to be seen. He fixed his gaze back on the portly figure.
“Who are you?” he demanded.
“I...uh...I’m...Travis Hayes. I’m from Michigan, please don’t
shoot me!”
Something seemed to come over the man, a shudder of some kind.
His expression became quizzical and he stared at the pistol in
his hand. “What...?” He lowered it to his side and returned it
to its holster. “I’m so sorry,” he apologised to Travis. “...I
don’t know what came over me. Tell me, where am I?”
Travis gaped at him. The man nodded in prompt, and showed his
palms to prove that he meant no harm. “Uh...” Travis began
uncertainly. “This is Serpent Mound, Ohio. You’re in America,
buddy.”
“America...” the man mused.
“Hey, are you all right?” Travis asked, noticing the man’s
scarred hands. “You look like you could use a visit to the
doctor’s. I can take you to a hospital if you want.”
“No, no; I’ll be fine,” the man grunted. He felt a sudden urge
to take the book, and he leant over to pick it up without
thinking. “Aah!” he gasped again as he felt his fingers burn
again. He turned to Travis. “Hey, do you have a...a...a cloth or
something I can use to wrap this with? It won’t let me touch
it.”
An odd choice of words, he reflected as Travis reached into his
backpack and pulled out a picnic blanket. The man took it
gratefully and swaddled the book with it. “Thank you for your
help, Travis,” he said, and then he began to walk away over the
ridge that marked the serpent’s tail. He did not know where he
was going, but he felt that this was the right way. To any who
looked at him he cut a military figure; clothed in black
fatigues like a SWAT trooper and with black boots to match, he
seemed to be some sort of federal agent or special-force
soldier, an impression only bolstered by his close-cut black
hair. He noticed none of this, however; he was solely focussed
on getting somewhere...else.
Thus it was that he did not notice the squad of black-coated
SpecOps troopers until it was too late.
* * * * *
The next time he regained consciousness, he found himself in a
brightly-lit interrogation room. He snapped to his senses and
reached for his pistol. The holster was empty. He looked around
frantically for an escape route, but he was bound to his chair
by chained cuffs. He tested their limits, but they only allowed
him a foot of movement for each limb at most. He was a prisoner,
well and truly.
The metal door opened, and in strode an officer in a uniform he
could not recognise. The letters E.T.C.F were emblazoned on the
officer’s chest above a symbol of the earth surrounded by an orb
of light. He was carrying a folder of some sort, and he sat down
opposite the man and studied him with a practiced eye.
“Good evening,” the officer said. “I am Colonel Moss of the
United Nations Extra-Terrestrial Combat Force. I have a few
questions for you to answer. Let’s start with the simple ones.
Tell me, what is your name?”
The man sat blankly for a minute. He realised with a start that
he hadn’t the first clue to his identity at all. He looked up at
Moss. “I...I don’t know.”
“Come on, I’m sure you can do better than that,” the officer
said. “Think on it. Anything?”
“I...I’m not sure...” the man replied. And then a voice
whispered inside his head. “Richard.”
“Richard?” Moss asked, pen hovering over a marked piece of
paper.
“Yes. No. I don’t know...” the man said, confused.
“We’ll go with Richard for now,” Moss replied. “No last names?”
“None,” Richard said. “None I can remember.”
“Very well,” Moss sighed. “Can you remember your age? Your
birthplace? Anything like that?”
“No, nothing,” Richard replied. “I...the...it’s all a blank to
me. Where am I?”
“That doesn’t matter. What about the book?”
Richard’s heart jumped, though he could not understand why. “The
book?” he asked innocently.
“Yes, the book. The book you were carrying with you when you
were...brought in. What’s so special about it?”
“I don’t know,” Richard replied. “It’s just a book...isn’t it?”
Moss sighed again. “You don’t remember anything, do you? I’ll
set the record straight for you. Earlier this morning we
detected an energy surge over Serpent Mound, Ohio. When we
arrived we found you making away with the book in a rug of some
kind. That book is no ordinary book. Look at your hands. It
gives off no heat, no radiation and yet it burns to the touch.
When our...researchers opened it, they found that it was full of
gibberish symbols.” He reached into his folder and produced a
photograph of one of the book’s pages, which he slid across the
desk to Richard. “Do you know what it says?”
Richard studied it, but it might as well have been written in
hieroglyphs. “I can’t make head nor tail of it,” he admitted.
“Where did you find it?”
“It was right next to me when I woke up.”
“You don’t know where you got it from?”
“No-!” Richard’s mind flashed with a sudden light, a memory of a
gloved hand reaching into a stone alcove. “I don’t know,” he
whispered, composing himself. Moss appeared not to have noticed
anything.
“Tell me, Mr Richard, what do you know about extraterrestrials?”
“What?” Richard bleated, caught off guard. “You mean aliens?”
“Yes, aliens if you will,” Moss replied. “Visitors from another
planet.”
“I don’t believe in the supernatural,” Richard said levelly.
“Yet here you are, deposited without memory on an ancient sacred
site,” Moss shrugged. He leaned closer. “Even if you don’t
believe in the supernatural, surely your mind is open to the
unexplained.” He reached down to his chair and produced a
sizeable metal object, which he banged down heavily onto the
table. It was Richard’s pistol.
“That’s my pistol,” Richard said, looking at it as if he’d never
seen it before.
“This is no ordinary pistol,” Moss replied.
“What on earth do you mean?”
Moss sighed and leaned in again. “I would have thought that you
might at least remember this. Observe.” He picked up the pistol
and pointed it at one of the metal walls. He began to intone in
a voice similar to that of a drill sergeant running through
equipment specifications. “Seemingly a standard handgun;
slightly heavier than a normal weapon and a bit chunkier too,
but following the general hilt-trigger-barrel-slider pattern of
a pistol firearm. If you look at it for more than a moment,
you’ll see that it does not appear quite ‘right’, so to speak; I
can’t say what is so strange about it, but it doesn’t seem to
gel with its surroundings. Taking the safety off...” -click-
“...we can pull the trigger like a regular firearm and fire a
shot. Like so.”
-BANG!-
“You will observe that the shot not only penetrated the metal
walls of this room but also the good metre or so of reinforced
concrete behind it. In short...”
-BANG!-
“...it...”
-BANG!-
“...has...”
-BANG!-
“...stopping power roughly equivalent to that of a military
sniper rifle..."
-BANG!-
“...or an armour-piercing cannon shell. You will also notice...”
-BANG!-BANG!-BANG!-BANG!-BANG!-BANG!-BANG!-
“...that no matter how much I fire it...”
-BANG!-BANG!-
“...it never seems to run out of ammunition. In short, what you
have brought us is the single deadliest infantry combat weapon
since the invention of the modern rifle.”
“Can I have it back once we’re done?” Richard asked feebly.
Moss regarded him with scorn. “No. You will not be leaving here.
You may think that you can deceive me with your stories of
memory loss and feigned ignorance, but you will be held in our
custody until you have told us the truth, and the whole truth.”
“What?” Richard said, incredulous. “I don’t understand...”
Colonel Moss stalked up to the table and banged his palms down
on it. “You are an enemy agent of forces unknown. You were
delivered to this planet by our greatest enemy, the Quinary,
under orders to infiltrate our defences and compromise them
before the attack is launched-”
“That’s ridiculous!” Richard exclaimed.
“You were given two items by your masters,” Moss continued. “A
book of ciphered orders which only you can read, and a highly
advanced pistol of alien manufacture, maybe even the prototype
itself, to ensure your defence against the best of Earth’s
defenders. You are a traitor to your race and an enemy of this
earth, and I will have the truth from you!”
“I don’t know what you’re talking about!” Richard yelled. He
opened his hands in a gesture of angered confusion, and as he
did so the strange pistol flew across the room and into his
hand.
The next few seconds went blank. Richard found himself running
along a dank underground corridor, the shattered remnants of his
bonds dangling and flailing behind him. What had he done? A
chill ran down his spine. Had he killed Moss. A sudden wave of
anguish swept over him, and he stopped in his tracks and leaned
against one of the corridor’s walls. So he had escaped, maybe at
the cost of a life. But he was alone in a place filled with
people who potentially wanted to kill him, or maybe lock him
away forever. What next?
A voice whispered inside his head, and he knew at once what he
needed to do. He had to find the book.
#Post#: 638--------------------------------------------------
Re: Recruitment
By: Knight Errant Date: January 26, 2013, 6:45 pm
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Part 2: Natasha
Colonel Moss marched along the corridors, polished shoes
squeaking as he strode toward his objective. He rounded a corner
into a brighter-lit area of the bunker, and was greeted by a
door in front of which stood two armed ETCF personnel. He nodded
at them, and they stood aside. He put his hand on the biometric
scanner and felt its warm plate slide over his hand. He leaned
into the retina scanner and tried not to wince as the blue beam
caressed his eye. When the scanner had finished he stood upright
and waited to enter.
The door hissed open on an automated rail. He took a step in,
and was greeted by the sight of a lone plinth upon which stood
an object covered in cloth. He crossed the room as the door
hissed closed behind him and drew up next to the plinth. He
looked around as if to check that there was nobody else in the
room, and then reached forward and drew away the cloth with a
flourish.
And there was the Book!
The cloth in his hands was charred, as if it had been set upon
smouldering embers, and he discarded it as his eyes took in the
venerable tome before him. He reached into his pockets and
withdrew a pair of white gloves, which he promptly put on. He
flexed his fingers experimentally, and then reached for the
Book.
* * * * *
Colonel Moss marched along the corridors, adjusting his cap on
his head as he strode toward his objective. Damn, but the
prisoner had nearly incapacitated him. One moment the man was
chained to a chair, the next he had shot his way out of his
cuffs and wrestled Moss to the ground. Bastard. He would hunt
him down soon enough. He rounded a corner into a brighter-lit
area of the bunker, and was greeted by a door in front of which
stood two armed ETCF personnel. The Book Room. He needed to make
sure that it was still safe, that the spy had not managed to
somehow get in and steal it. He nodded at the guards, and they
looked at him quizzically.
“Sir...?” one ventured hesitantly, wide-eyed.
“What is it, corporal?” Moss barked impatiently.
“Uh...you walked in here a minute ago and didn’t leave, sir...”
“What?” Moss asked, aghast. He quickly composed himself. “Sound
the alarm, lock the whole building down! Nobody leaves or enters
this room without the password “chalk”, d’you hear? Watch this
door!”
He stepped forward and initiated the biometrics. A moment later,
the door hissed open and he strode inside. The door closed
behind him, and he was alone with a uniformed figure. He
levelled a pistol at its back; his own sidearm, not the
prisoner’s strange pistol. The figure turned around, and Moss
froze.
He was facing himself.
“What the- who are you, imposter?” he demanded. “Answer me!”
“I’m Colonel Moss,” his doppelganger said with a crafty smile.
“No!” Moss yelled in angered confusion. He lowered his pistol
and shot a round into his opposite’s foot. The figure let out a
yelp of pain and collapsed to the floor. At the same time, it
shimmered and resolved again as a woman in a Russian Cosmonaut’s
flight suit. She was striking, with Nordic features and long
blonde hair in a ponytail spilling over the open neck of her
flight suit, but her hands were spattered with blood as she
clutched her shattered toes in agony. Moss walked up to her and
placed his pistol on her skull.
“Now tell me, who are you and how...how did you manage to
do...that?” he asked, half interrogative and half in awe.
“My name is Natasha,” the woman gasped between grunts of agony.
“...and I am a Russian citizen.”
“How did you impersonate me?” Moss demanded, leaning closer.
Suddenly, she vanished. Moss scanned the room frantically,
trying to figure out what had happened. A moment later, a hand
shot out as if from nowhere and caught him across the jaw. He
reeled, disoriented, but he had been a hand-picked ETCF member
from the beginning and he rapidly regained his bearings. He
looked left to see Natasha standing in a fighting stance, foot
seemingly healed, and he feinted a lunge and then parried
Natasha’s response. Even in her flight suit she was agile as all
hell, and he copped a kick to the chest before he could land
another blow of his own.
Lunge, parry, lunge, block. The Russian’s ferocity was
astounding; he was too busy warding off blows to even level his
pistol at her. They struggled close to the plinth, and Moss
seized his moment. Feinting left, he kicked his foot behind her
knee and grabbed her right arm. As her leg buckled, he shifted
his weight to knock her against the Book.
Her exposed left hand hissed as it touched the book, and her
concentration was broken. Suddenly the wound in her foot
re-appeared and she collapsed to the floor in pain. Moss brought
his pistol to bear, and produced a radio handset.
“Eyrie personnel, this is Vulture,” he intoned. “I need an armed
detention team to Cell 3A right away. I have a dangerous
prisoner in my custody.” He glared down at the wounded Russian.
“Make that two detention teams, and contact the General.”
He watched over her as a minute passed. He thought that he could
hear a noise on the other side of the door, two soft thuds and a
bang. The door hissed open.
“You took your bloody time,” Moss said, turning to face the
detention team. “What was that racket about?”
He found himself staring down the barrel of a very strange
pistol. Holding the pistol was Richard, and behind him the
slumped forms of the two door guards could just be made out
before the automated door slid shut.
“You again!” Richard hissed. “Hand over your weapon,” he said
forcefully as Moss turned to face him. The Colonel sighed and
handed over his gun. It would not be wise to argue with the man,
much less the pistol. Richard noticed Natasha and pointed the
pistol at her. “Who the hell are you? Are you with them?”
“Перейти
ебет себя!” she
spat. She eyed him balefully for a moment, and then glanced at
the Book. Richard followed her gaze.
“That’s...that’s the book...” He turned to Moss. “Stand aside.
No, get in the corner!”
Moss stepped back to the other side of the room as Richard moved
over to take the Book. He wrapped it in the cloth and hauled it
off the plinth, but as he did so Natasha’s hand shot out and
grabbed his ankle.
“That book is mine,” she hissed, eyes watering with pain. “I
will not let you take it.”
“Please don’t make me shoot you,” Richard replied. She
reluctantly let go and he turned to leave.
A gun barrel appeared very close to his face, swiftly followed
by several more. Behind them were a squad of black-suited
tactical troopers, each emblazoned with ETCF in white stitching
on their left breast. And behind them was the General.
“I’m afraid I can’t let you leave with that,” General Reginald
Eiling said, stepping forward. “Hand the Book to me.”
“No...I...I can’t. Stay back!” he shouted uncertainly. “I will
shoot you!”
“No,” the General replied. “No you won’t. You could easily have
killed Colonel Moss here or the two guards outside, but you
didn’t. I don’t think that you are a cold killer, and I don’t
think that you know why you want that book either.”
“I...it...”
“You see? This is all stemming from your memory loss. You woke
up next to the Book so you think that you need to have it in
some way, but you don’t. Your mind is playing tricks on you. You
only want that book because you think that having it will give
you your memories back. I’m afraid it won’t. Hand it over and we
can work with you to try and piece your life back together.”
“Don’t do it!” Natasha hissed. General Eiling turned to look at
her.
“Ah...salamandra, I presume? You’re a long way from home. Tell
your superiors that the Book is the property of the United
Nations, and if they want to study it they’ll have to go through
me. I’m sorry about your foot, but that should teach you not to
sneak around behind our backs. Now,” he said, turning back to
Richard. “Give me the Book, and I will give you an offer you’d
be wise to accept...”
#Post#: 640--------------------------------------------------
Re: Recruitment
By: Knight Errant Date: January 26, 2013, 7:31 pm
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Part 3: Recruitment
“I’m telling you, sir; this is a bad idea...” Colonel Moss
hissed as he and the general conversed out of earshot of the
others. “This...Richard...he’s dangerous. You saw what he did to
the guards, what he did to me. He’s probably faking his memory
loss, is clearly after the Book and carries a Quianry weapon.
Surely you-”
“It’s not a Quinary weapon,” the General interrupted. “Even
theirs expend ammunition and have to be reloaded from time to
time, and they don’t have the same stopping power...not at that
size at least. I believe that it may have come from a third
party.”
“Who?”
“I cannot say for sure. I would have AVRO investigate but
Richard clearly has some power over that weapon, something I
can’t explain. I think that it is best to leave it with him. So
long as we can keep hold of the Book for the AVRO teams to look
over...”
“If the Russian doesn’t steal it first...” Moss said darkly.
“The Salamander? Is she still here?”
“She says that she will stay in the area to...guard the Book, if
you will. She’s probably making sure that it’s never far from
her sight.”
“What does it mean to her anyway? What do the Russians want with
it?”
“I don’t know. I’ll have to check with Commander Abbott, maybe
get him to ask the Russians themselves.”
“They’ll never give us a straight answer,” Eiling mused. “But it
could be handy having a Salamander on our side. We could use her
powers.”
“With all due respect, sir, you’re out of your mind on this one.
You and I both know that she’ll take every chance she gets to
steal the Book; we’ve had a demonstration of that today.”
“We can guard against such eventualities. A simple microwave
beam in a hallway should be enough to break her concentration if
need be – you know that they need to concentrate on their
disguise when they shift shapes? If we use the Book as a lure,
an incentive, then we can turn her powers against the Quinary.
Show me an operative who can infiltrate like she could? We’re in
a war for our species here, for our planet, and humanity must
prevail by any means necessary.”
“Where does humanity stop, sir?” Moss scowled. “How many of your
precious ‘powers’ does it take to stop being considered human? I
know that we can use them for our means, but we shouldn’t rely
on them completely. A regiment of men could-”
“Hold your tongue, Colonel; I’ve heard this one enough times
already. My decision is final. I suggest that you go and check
off with AVRO or Abbott or whoever you need to. I will deal to
these two myself.”
“Yes, sir,” Moss said sullenly. He saluted and then stalked away
down the corridor. The General took a moment to compose himself,
and then walked into the holding room where Richard and Natasha
waited.
“Good evening,” he said, striding into the middle of the room.
“Allow me to formally introduce myself. I am General Reginald
Eiling, head of the United Nations Extra-Terrestrial Combat
Force. This facility is but one of many across the world under
my command, and serves as a co-ordination centre for regional
ETCF activities.
“You may be wondering what the ETCF actually is, or at least
what it does. Our job is to combat threats to Earth which
originate off this planet; alien incursions if you will. This is
a vital role, as we have learned that an alien alliance called
the Quinary intends to invade Earth and subjugate, if not
downright exterminate, the Human race in the process. We are the
planet’s front line of defence, and we are comprised not only of
the best of the world’s militaries, but also those who have...”
-here he looked at Natasha- “...unique abilities which could
help to tip the balance in our favour.
“I said I’d offer you a deal, and this is it. Richard; you
clearly have skills which you yourself cannot even recall.
Earlier today you took down three armed ETCF personnel with your
bare hands; not an easy feat given the level of training my men
receive. You also have that...strange pistol of yours, which
Colonel Moss says you can ‘summon’ into your hand at any time.
We could use an operative like you, and in return we will do
everything we can to help piece your life back together and find
out how you got here in the first place.
“Natasha; you clearly have some interest in the Book we
recovered, and I understand your unwillingness to leave its
side. I am willing to let you stay in proximity to it, and I
will allow both of you to sit in with the Advanced Vector
Research Office study teams as they look over it if it will help
either of you to achieve your peace. We can’t let either of you
have it, but you can still observe it if that is what you
desire. What I need from you, Natasha, is your skills as a
Salamander operative. Your shapeshifting abilities could prove
vital to our mission, and I am sure that your government would
be happy with you staying on in these circumstances.
“I need you both in my team; humanity needs you and the many
others like you, and I hope that you will accept my offer. Will
you?”
He looked around at both of them, who had been measuring his
words carefully and absorbing everything. Richard looked up. “I
accept.”
“Natasha?”
The Cosmonaut looked down at her now-bandaged foot. “I suppose
that is the way to go. Very well, I accept.”
“Good,” the General replied. “Welcome to the ETCF.”
#Post#: 650--------------------------------------------------
Re: Recruitment
By: Peaceman Date: January 27, 2013, 3:12 pm
---------------------------------------------------------
[center]-Agent 6-[/center]
[hr]
Agent 6 sat in his office reviewing the film from his agencies
attack on the Mamba a terrorist organization operating with
lethal tech out of South Africa. Several mistakes had been made
by the new recruits. He had reminded his superiors that American
Delta Force Operatives were to full of themselves to make team
players, but his superiors insisted these guys had what it took
to be Agents, yeah, right.
His Communications signal blinked on his desk. "This is Agent 6
on a Level 12 secure line, are you secure?" "Agent 6 this is
Agent 1 the lines are secure if you could come to level 4
conference room, we have guests who are inquiring about the
Agency." "Understood Agent 1, I'll be there in just a few
minutes."
A few minutes later he was at level four of the torus. Two
people is US astronaut uniforms were in the conference room. The
conference rooms most prominent feature was a large viewing pane
so that you could watch the Earth drift by below them. Agent 6
could see the Russian space capsule docked on Ring 2. "The US
should be ashamed for giving up its place in space, its a
disgrace." stated Agent 6 as he took a seat between Agent 5 and
Agent 7.
The lead astronaut an Air Force Colonel started in "In the late
20th Century Scientists sent out a message into space for any
race that was listening to reply as a sort of Interstellar phone
call, this is public knowledge.. What is not public knowledge
was 7 years later a Species replied. Called the Quinary they
are a race in an evil business called 'The Planet Trade', in the
message we sent pictures of our planet out, and the Quinary
knew they could get a fortune for our planet, so they replied,
telling us to leave our planet or be exterminated. We had 10
years until they arrived and that was 9 years and 2 months ago,
to avoid mass panic this information was never released but
every National leader was told of the grave threat that
approached and told to start military recruiting on a wide
scale." The Colonel fidgeted and continued, "While a Secret
Black ops projects was charged with finding people with
special abilities and soldiers that are the best in the world,
no expense is to be spared to get this 'team' anything they need
to assist in the defeat of the enemy."
Agent 6 looked at Agent 1, "Permission to speak", she nodded.
"As is typical with world government you waited until the last
minute to arrange a DEFENSE! Even Sun Tzu and Machiavelli knew
that the best defense is a strong offense. You have piddled away
important time that could have been used deterring our enemy."
Agent 1 responded "ENOUGH, Agent 6 you are not helping." "Sorry
ma'am." replied Agent 6.
"Since you were the first to rebut the US, I have decided you
will assist the US in their request for assistance." commented
Agent 1. Agent 6 was appropriately rebuffed, "Yes Ma'am, I'll
get ready to leave right away." Agent 6 got up and returned to
his office.
He packed a small carry bag from his office and ordered the
computer to secure his room. Then he went to the armory and drew
his weapons out of the armory with extra ammunition packs.
As he waited, he sent Agent 9 a quick message "Agent 9, I've
been sent on a mission, will miss dinner, make it up to you
promise, Agent 6."
He met the Astronauts at the capsule where they had suited up.
He was introduced to the cosmonauts then joined them in the
cramped confines of the Russian capsule for a return to Earth in
a primitive fashion.
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