For whom the wind blows
(birthday present for Tanya at @one-that-had-to! I tried, and hope you like it!)
The Commander shut down her computer at the station overlooking the Hologlobe. She stifled a yawn behind her hand. It was late in the night and the chill of the underground base sank deep into her skin.
How long had it been since the invasion had started? At least two years? The fight seemed endless. Upgrades from the Council had allowed XCOM to marshal a fleet of Skyrangers, of which twenty had been deployed today to quell invasions all over the globe. The aliens never slept, and seemed determine to force Ai Wen to the same fate.
Her headset crackled. “Commander, when you’ve got a moment, check out the Hyperspace Relay,” her second-in-command said. “Picking up some weird readings. Wonder what you’ll make of it.”
“Is Dr. Shen delegating?” the Commander asked as she made her way through the base.
The night shift soldiers snapped off salutes in her wake. Ai Wen blinked, and their eyes were far larger than a human’s and their noses were flattened and toad-like. She ducked into a war room and rubbed her eyes. No, her soldiers were human. There were no strange alien-human hybrids here, thanks to Vahlen’s best efforts.
Central came back on the line. He chuckled, but it sounded strained. The Commander chalked it up to the collective lack of sleep that plagued the base. There was always something on fire, somewhere across the globe, as XCOM stamped out pockets of alien resistance.
“Contact isn’t on Earth,” he said. “Not like when we picked up the Temple Ship. You’ll need to evaluate the threat.”
Lovely. I’ve always wanted to meet ET 2.0.
Ai Wen held her tongue. Central did not appreciate jokes these days. He was a far cry from the man who had suggested she go for a military victory, as if she were playing Civilization.
“Copy that. I’ll be on site in five.”
The Hyperspace Relay had become their main base for extraterrestrial scanning. XCOM had captured the Temple Ship and its Gollop Device at least a year before. The strange glowing orb had been integrated into the Relay’s functions with the knowledge Vahlen had extracted from a captured Ethereal. The Commander had thought it strange that the Ethereal had handed knowledge over so willingly; perhaps Vahlen had gained a reputation among the invaders that had crept up their echelons?
The technicians stood to attention: for some reason, still in jet black armor. She saluted back.
“You may leave,” the Commander said. “There’s fresh coffee in the break room.”
They nodded, and left. The plague of automaton-ization and fatigue was infecting more than just the senior staff. Ai Wen supposed the fear from the base attack had never truly left her men.
She placed her right hand on the Gollop Device. It was warm to the touch, but as she reached further into its heart, the room grew cold. Fresh pine and clear breezes filtered through the depths of the chamber.
Images spiraled onto the face of the rotating relay. She saw a woman – dressed in a green uniform, an American by the medals on her chest, hair tied back into a half ponytail that framed a heart-shaped face. The other woman’s clothes morphed into attire fit for a wedding as she stumbled into Mission Control.
“A human?” Ai Wen thought. “But the relay has only ever shown aliens readying on distant planets. Vahlen thinks this device can interface with different dimensions… she must work for XCOM, but this is not my XCOM. Could there be other worlds where others did better than we? I’d hope we could talk…”
The woman began to tear into the Council representative who stood next to Central.
“I can’t say I’m fond of the Council either. With a name like Tatiana Musilova? They’d throw her to the sharks if they could.”
Ai Wen closed her eyes as the vision began to split and spiral into thousands of possibilities. She tried to concentrate on the individual threads. She caught a glimpse of Commander Mercier in one universe – this fellow Commander too had a multifaceted relationship with names – with a bird of prey no bigger than a soccer ball perched on her shoulder. They shared similarities, this sparrowhawk and human, refusing to be tamed by the winds that buffeted them and the wolves that circled them.
Another vision showed the Commander and Central perched on the ramp of a great ship, as the night skies swirled above them. The overgrown earth around them was desolate, as if the world had fallen to the aliens and nature had retaken its path.
Some images split too fast, and Ai Wen could only catch a man who resembled Central, greyed and haunted, as he sobbed by an operating table, or the ghostly green light that filtered out of a tank.
She was caught by the fellow Commander’s spirit: battered, occasionally broken, but still the other soldiered on. There were worlds where there was a child who had the Commander’s pistol and Central’s knife. There were worlds where the Commander walked down the roads of some Eastern European city, a box of breakfast under her arm, to greet her Central at a hotel. There were worlds where the earth shook and the Commander fell to a Muton’s blow, and a world where naught but her ghost was left haunting the ever-faithful Central who kept fighting for XCOM’s creed.
The other Commander was steel when the situation required it, sharp and honed and ever professional. Yet she was undeniably human in the private moments between the Commander and Central: talks near a hot spring while Central swam, walks with a scrubby bearded man around a dilapidated haven, a quietude while the two stripped down guns and compared weapons.
She was an immigrant too, whose family had fled to the west. Ai Wen sympathized with how English clunked off Tanya’s tongue and teachers who failed to help her. The world was not built for women like them – endless roadblocks littered the road before them. Ai Wen saw an adolescence marked with delinquency that had sharpened and honed into a steady trigger finger and professionalism in the army; and yet, it had also suppressed her in a fashion, if the woman called Amelia was any indication. But where else could Tanya go? It was the army, or jail, for the people whom the world had failed.
Tragedy had followed in the path of a commander who shone like the stars. But still, she guided XCOM forward, and bit by bit, they carved out a path. Tanya was the wind in the trees and the finger readying on a trigger and sacrifice and sacrifice for she placed others before herself. She balanced herself with a Central who was ever present and ever steady. Victory would come. It would come at a cost, Ai Wen believed, but somehow, Tanya would prevail.
At least, that was what Ai Wen prayed would be the fellow Commander’s fate.
Her headset crackled with Central’s frequency. “Commander, any luck with the Relay?”
“No action needed,” the Commander replied. “The situation will manage itself.”
“Copy that,” Central said, and disconnected.
Ai Wen looked at the woman who walked through the woods. A sniper rifle was slung over her white-trenchcoat clad shoulder. She was in her element: these woods, she could call home. No hunter here would have any luck capturing this sniper, when victory sang in the winds whispering through the forest.
“Fair winds, Commander, and best of luck,” Ai Wen whispered. “May you do better than we did.”
She stood back. The other Commander’s image disappeared into purple smoke.
For a moment, Ai Wen saw a strange glyphic language bordering the periphery of her vision. She breathed in stale air as she fanned her fingers. There was an almost weightless feeling as she stood in the Relay’s room.
Sirens blared. “Commander to Mission Control,” the AI blared. “Incursion in West Africa, Patrol District 7.”
The Commander left to fulfill her duty.
She still thought of a woman with wind under her wings and her finger on the trigger of a sniper rifle.
