My name is Danielle Revenu, and I am a Star Breacher.
My story begins a few months after the alien war got fired up. I had excellent performance ratings in the military and an X-Com recruiter had contacted me to encourage me to fight the big war to save the world. The retirement pension came early and it was big, he said. He would tell me of the things I would have after the war, but it all seemed so meaningless, if the Earth was doomed to fall to these marauding invaders.
I was among the minority who felt the aliens were a major threat to our way of life. Nay, to our lives. They won't stop until our civilization crumbles, till every last human on the planet is either killed or hauled off on one of their ships, and it was anybody's guess as to what happened to the people they took away. We didn't know much about the aliens but we knew enough to know we were in very grave danger. But most people thought the aliens were just showing up occasionally, randomly, like small terrorist groups. Some people thought they weren't even real.
And so it was that I chose to join X-Com, if for no other reason than to fight for the survival of my own species. I didn't want to go to war, but I had to. Right, you're probably thinking, "a soldier who doesn't want to go to war?" Yeah, well, get used to it. I'm not the fighting type. As a child, I was often invited to the boys' snowball forts. They all wanted me on their team because the team that had me would never lose. It would never win, either. None of the boys ever managed to hit me with a snowball, yet I rarely succeeded in scoring any hits, either. Perhaps I was terrible at throwing snowballs, or perhaps I just didn't like to hurl things at my friends.
It's no different now, I never liked fighting and wars make me uneasy. I'm almost not even sure why I joined the military. As I look back to recall the chain of events that led me down this path, I can see no pattern that clearly presses on me to become a warrior. Yet here I am.
Here I am on the flight deck, carrying a few bags of things, ready to board the secret X-Com plane and be transported to the hidden base. The military had put me on plenty of planes before, but I wasn't prepared for this. This was a monster of a stealth fighter, of a type I had never seen before. The beast was covered in dark matte paint and marked with drab tan and brown X-Com emblems. It was a two-seater and it looked like it was built for aerial reconnaissance missions. Was this the right plane? Was there some clerical error? Was this for real?
Real or not, they stuffed my bags into cramped storage compartments and sat me down in the rear co-pilot's seat. It finally dawned on me why they had me put on this heavy awkward-fitting suit. It was a flight suit. And I was going in the air.
They revved up the engines and taxied to the short runway. The very short runway. I was just thinking about how likely it would be for a Boeing 767 to take off from a strip this size, when I was thrown back in my seat. For a moment the plane seemed to have tipped up at a fierce angle and the Earth's gravity had suddenly increased dramatically. Then I watched the lights and markings on the air strip rush past on either side at ever-increasing speed, and in mere seconds we were in the air. It happened so quickly I almost didn't notice the all-encompassing roar of the engines firing at full power.
This craft was like a dream, a fantasy aircraft that you read about in stories. Nothing like this could really exist. The roar of the engine was more like several explosions happening in rapid succession, smoothed out and strung together in this tremendous du-du-du-du-du-du-du sound. I couldn't see the ground anymore, and the weight of the acceleration prevented me from moving. I was pressed deep into the soft seat, and it was beginning to eat me alive. We continued to accelerate on a steep upward trajectory and I felt my ears pop several times. The air was thinning, and bright white streams were forming around the nose of the aircraft, shooting back along the fuselage. Then everything began to fade away.
I awoke to a searing headache and a dull roar coming from all around me. As I regained awareness, I found myself still in the co-pilot's seat, and we were cruising at high altitude. It was night. My whole body felt funny, but I could move again. I turned my head to look out the side, and saw beneath us the ground was so far away I could scarcely identify anything. It was broad daylight, yet the sky was black. The wings had faint white streams rolling over them like angelic remoras chasing after a giant shark in the sky.
I don't remember very much after that up until landing, but I have a faint memory of me screaming a lot and begging for my mommy. It was embarrassing to start my first day with such a display. I hoped I could live it down. The room around me was a medical examination room, but it was filled with strange equipment and on the wall there were depictions of the aliens' anatomy. From there it was a blur. The doc came in and gave me a basic physical, and told me I'm good to go. He said drink plenty of fluids. The headache was mostly gone now. I was taken to the bunk room and shown to my bunk. Both male and female soldiers were bunking together in one big room. Some soldiers greeted me with warmth and friendliness, and talked to me about life on this base. It all seemed like some elaborate fantasy. Here I was, in an underground X-Com facility. I'd always knew that somewhere out there something like this existed, but I guess part of me was never certain it was real. Yet here I was.
I couldn't sleep that night. They had done so much to ensure I was comfortable, but my mind was reeling with the magnitude of the situation. I'm in an X-Com base, soon I'll be in X-Com training, and then...and I didn't want to think about what happens after training.
The next morning I was to dress up in the X-Com armored combat uniform and show up for training. The suit was surprisingly light and comfortable. As I tried to find my way to the training unit, a female soldier stopped and greeted me. I saw her name tag said Captain Helga Steinbach, and she clearly displayed the X-Com rank insignia of captain. My military training came back to me in an instant and I snapped to attention. "Greetings, Ma'am!" I belted out. "Relax," she said warmly, "you don't have to call me captain. Ranks work differently here. You can call me Helga."
I didn't expect that. This place had seemed much more relaxed than any military installation. It was starting to look like a bunch of campfire buddies rather than a warfighting installation. "Helga," I spoke tentatively. "You must be Danielle, the new recruit," she said with a smile on her face. "Come on, I'll show you to the training room."
I followed her down the hall, around a corner, and into...the cafeteria. She went up to the counter and collected a few packaged food items, then sat me down at a table and proceeded to open the food and eat. I suddenly became aware of my hunger, so I ate the food. Between bites, I had to ask, "aren't we supposed to be headed for training?" Helga responded, "yeah, but I didn't want to head out on an empty stomach."
We arrived in the training room with everyone else already present and engaged in some sort of weapons' simulation. The training officer approached us and said tersely, "you two ladies are late! I'll expect this won't happen again?" Helga spoke confidently, "This is the new rookie, Danielle. I had to make sure she got a bite to eat." "Ah, Danielle," his face brightened immediately, "pleased to be working with you!" He extended a hand. "Call me Dani," I said confidently, shaking his hand. "Dani, then." He smiled.
Training here was rough, but everyone was kind and encouraging. I quickly made friends with most of the soldiers in the platoon. It was a small platoon. Over the next few days I trained hard, and they put me through a battery of tests to see what I was made of. When the results came in, I was told I had exceptionally good reaction time and that I was to be a breacher. I didn't know what that meant, but everyone cheered for me. It certainly seemed to win me some popularity points.
I sat down to lunch with an experienced breacher. His name was Tom King and he was rank Sergeant in the X-Com rank system. That was the first rank above squaddie, the term they use for non-ranking soldiers who have been in combat. I was a rookie, meaning I had no rank and I hadn't been in combat. I postured the burning question, "so what does it mean to be a breacher?"
He told me, "You see, there are four jobs of soldiers in X-Com. There's the rangers, who scout the field and relay intel to the commander. They are a support soldier." He stopped to eat a spoonful from his bowl of stew. "Go on," I pleaded. He chewed for a moment, then swallowed. "Then there's the snipers, they get into strategic positions and take out the aliens at medium range before they have a chance to react." I listened, eager for him to tell me about breachers, but I knew he was saving it for last. "Then there are the heavies. They carry heavy weapons on the field to fire upon groups of aliens, or to take out larger alien threats. they can also remove obstacles from the field." I couldn't help but chuckle at the way he so calmly said it: remove obstacles from the field.
"And then there are breachers. They are the first to go in the alien ship." Well that wasn't very reassuring, I thought. "You see, each craft we have encountered so far has exactly one entrance door, so the aliens know which way we're coming in and they are waiting for us." Definitely not reassuring. I sunk into my chair a bit. "Couldn't we just wait for the aliens to come outside?" I inquired. "They won't come out." He said it with a confidence that suggests the aliens remain inside like a stubborn child who refuses to move. I pleaded, "couldn't we just break down the walls and come in from another direction?" "The walls are too strong. We can't break through without destroying the whole craft along with half the countryside around it." He said this matter-of-factly, as if it was a trivial detail he'd read out of a book.
I felt sick. I felt a sense of impending doom, like they tell you about in medical journals, in their lists of symptoms people get. It's that one you think oh nobody actually gets that, but here I was, feeling like I was going to die soon. Here was a living breacher sitting before me, he'd had experience. He was first inside the craft once. And he survived. He survived once maybe, maybe two times. Eventually he would die and I would die too, and we'd be heroes but we'd be dead.
"So what's that star on your uniform?" I asked, changing the subject. "This? Oh this means I am a star breacher. We get this star after we face off over a dozen aliens at once. Me, I burst through that door, guns blazing, and I was surrounded aliens. They were left and right, firing their plasma weapons at me. Shots whizzing past, I'm dodging side to side, killing every single one of them. One. By. One." I was staring at this man with a look of horror in my eyes. He seemed to delight in my horror, as he continued, "I was hit by one of them. Glanced off my armor. That's how I got this burn," he lifts his uniform shirt to show massive scarring all over his left side torso.
Helga sneaks up behind him and pokes him in the scarred side, causing him to recoil and spin around. He sees her and immediately puts his shirt down. "Ow, that hurt!" he protested. Helga turns to me and says "don't let him scare you. Nobody ever faced off against a dozen aliens at once." She looks back to Tom. "Oh yeah, and Tommy actually got this scar on a different mission. He was running in the open and got hit by a stray shot." "I was rushing to save Sam," he reminded her, "I'm a hero!" "Yes you are," she agreed.
"So is it true..?" I tentatively asked, "are breachers the first into the alien ship?" Helga nodded, "yes, but don't let that scare you. We rattle them up a bit before we go inside. No breacher has ever been killed breaching an alien craft, and once you get your star, you don't have to be first inside anymore.
