With the threat of OLGA hovering, I regretably surrender France and head back to Germany with my lederhosen. I will not test that mettle EVER!!!

However, I did dig into my own archives and found this story I wrote based on a little game called XCOM Ufo Defense.
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Excitement. Terror. Confusion. All these emotions were bouncing around in his head as the modified C-123, dubbed the Skyranger, circled the Pennsylvania countryside below looking for a clearing large enough to land in. Looking back, the last three weeks seemed almost a dream to 22-year old Alan Blake, just last month his biggest concerns were passing his finals and trying to find enough courage to ask Cheryl out to a movie. Now here he was preparing to find and capture an alien UFO in the late evening at some poor farmer’s home. Life was definitely full of some unexpected twists.

It all started four weeks ago in his dorm room where he was watching CNN in a vain attempt to avoid any form of studying, when two rather ominous men opened his door and strode over to his small desk.

“What the…” Alan exclaimed, “Who are you guys, and what are you doing in my room?”

The larger of the two men merely turned around and shut the door; while the smaller opened the briefcase he was carrying and sat down on the chair in front of the desk. Reaching into the briefcase, he brought out a manila folder and laid it on the desktop.

“ Alan Blake, age 22, from Phoenix, AZ…studying Aeronautical Engineering I see, and rather poorly at that.” The man glanced up at Alan and continued, “6’2”, 185lbs, IQ 120. You come from a good home, one younger brother still in high school. All this sound correct, I assume?”

Alan just sat there staring at the men, a look of utter confusion on his face. “Who are you guys, and where did you get that information. Am I in trouble?”

“No, no at all. Actually, we’re here to ask for your help.”

If possible, Alan looked even more confused. “Help, what do you mean, help?

“That unfortunately will have to remain unknown for the time being, however, I will tell you that your country needs you. She needs you more that you can possible imagine, and we were sent to talk to you and solicit your agreement to help.”

Without effort thoughts of John Wayne, Top Gun, and his grandfathers quickly followed each other through his head. Like most boys his age, he’d dreamed of being a hero diving into a foxhole and taking out that machine gunner with his Bowie knife. However unlike most who were also filled with disgust for the government after Vietnam, he had been weaned on stories of World War II from his grandfather and great-grandfather. Unknowingly, or perhaps intentionally, his personal heroes had ingrained in him the need to serve his country.

“What do you need me for, I’m not even in the Army, and I haven’t even graduated college, what could I do?”

“If you agree to help you be told all you need to know, but until then I must unfortunately decline to answer that particular question. Mr. Blake, we understand that this is a bolt out of the blue and you must be completely confused. Rest assured, you can help or we wouldn’t be here. We are asking you to sacrifice everything you’ve known, your comfortable surroundings, and follow us into the unknown. That is a scary prospect we can understand if you want to turn us down. We can only say it one last time, your country needs you and we hope that you can put aside your fear and step up to the challenge that only a few each generation are called upon to meet. Once again, Mr. Blake, will you help?”

The question fell on Alan with a palatable weight, all his life he’d heard and read about the sacrifices endured by his grandparents’ generation, and now it looked like he was being asked to shoulder a similar burden. He was scared, he was confused and lost, but the one single coherent thought was the sound of his grandfather voice, “I didn’t even hesitate, Uncle Sam pointed his finger and said he wanted me. That was all I needed to know.”

“Alright,” Alan said, “I’ll help, but I need to tell my family that I’m leaving.”

“That will be taken care of Mr. Blake, we will see to it that they are told everything that they need to know. Now we must be off, grab your coat and follow us. Everything you need will be provided.”

After that rather dramatic meeting, Alan’s whole world had been a blur of training, briefings, training, briefings, and little sleep. He found out that he had volunteered for something called the Extraterrestrial Combat Unit, or X-Com, and it wasn’t just his country that needed him, but the entire world. Weeks had blurred by training on how to fire a M-16, something called a rocket launcher, a Heavy Cannon, and some kind of mini-gun called appropriately an Auto Cannon. He discovered that he was actually quite a good shot and when combined with his inherent strength, he was increasing assigned the heavy weapons in his training.

In between all the small arms training he received a multitude of briefings, and like the other eleven trainees in the room, he had been amazed to find out that not only was Area 51 a reality, but that was were they were right now. Apparently, all those crazy stories about UFOs and aliens hadn’t all been made up for the National Enquirer. The aliens has been increasing their penetrations of Earth within the last few years and the governments of the world were now worried enough to actually spend money on training a force to counter the alien and their increasingly hostile acts. The second week of January was unusual, as their briefing was interrupted by a feed from what must be from a control center somewhere on the base. It showed a map of the USA and a red “+” that some disembodied voice was describing as contact UFO-1. After about a minute the map also showed a yellow “+” that our instructor announced was a X-Com interceptor. He turned and typed something into a keyboard and the screen split to show a swept-wing, twin-tailed fighter.

“This is a heavily modified F-15C Eagle carrying the latest in missile technology, although truth be told, we took the old Aim-54 Phoenix’s from the Navy and just updated the seeker head algorithms. Ah, here we go it looks like we have an interception and we’re receiving the pilot’s data feed.”

The screen was replaced with a view of what the pilot was seeing, overlaid with the radar outputs from the interceptor. As the interceptor closed, the small side screen showed a view of the UFO built from radar returns. It was very small, and shaped like the Apollo space capsule Alan had seen floating to earth after its moon voyage.

“Target locked and missile ready. Permission to engage requested. Permission granted. Fox-three.” The voices on the radio were so fast that he hardly had time to understand the words, when the screen showed a blaze of light as the interceptor released a missile and its motor powered it up and away from the fighter.

“Five seconds to impact…3..2..1. Hit, a hit control.” The pilots excited voice jumped out of the speakers. “Contact lost on radar, time to impact point 15 seconds.” As the seconds passed the pilot came back over the radio. “Splash one, control. Looks like the target just broke completely up, must have been a lot more fragile that we thought. Returning to base, Valkriye 1 out.”

That had been one week ago, and now apparently X-Com had tracked another UFO, now designated UFO-2, here to a remote part of the Appalachian Mountains. The UFO had landed before the interceptor could engage, so someone in command had called for Alan and the X-Com squad to board the Skyranger and proceed to the alien-landing zone. Even though no one had briefed Alan, you could tell they were just champing at the bit to find an undamaged UFO to look at, apparently this secret stuff was habitual with command types.