Author’s Note: The action heats back up again! Sorry for the small chapter this time around but I couldn't finish it before the weekend ended. I'll be posting another chapter tomorrow to make up for it.

Enjoy!

Pentagon Central Courtyard, Washington D.C., the Game

*wooOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOoooooooooooooooooooOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOooooh*

The sound of an air-raid siren greeted Bradley as he spawned inside the Pentagon Central Courtyard exactly where he had appeared the first time. It was now early in the morning but bright spotlights trained on the enclosed park made the place feel like the middle of the day. Personnel ran around him as soldier carrying large boxes of ammunition and other supplies used the courtyard as a shortcut to quickly move from one end of the building to the other.

“What they heck is going on?” Bradley wondered aloud. He attempted to ask the question to the people running about, but that seemed an exercise in futility. Whatever seemed to be happening was far too important to explain.

Briefly, Bradley caught sight of Lieutenant Winslow in a window as he ran down on of the Pentagon’s corridors. Bradley made chase. ‘If anyone would be able to explain what’s going on, it would be him,’ he thought.

“Lieutenant!” he yelled after the man, “Lieutenant Winslow! It’s me, Bradley Cooper! Can you tell me what’s going on?!”

“Bradley, when did you get back?” Winslow asked, stopping in the middle of the hallway. He slung an M16 he had been carrying over his shoulder. “I want to say congratulations on completing the Tutorial and I definitely want to hear all about it later, but we don’t have time right now. We’re likely going to be attacked soon.”

“Attacked? By who?” Bradley asked. “I didn’t know that any of the other countries were prepared enough to try attacking us.”

“No, not humans, aliens,” the Lieutenant clarified. “They said they weren’t allowed to violate the solar system’s airspace… or whatever you call it, but it seems they’ve found a way regardless.”

“Wait, but how do you even know?” Bradley argued. “They’re in space right?”

“We didn’t tell anyone yet, but we actually got a few of our spy satellites and the Hubble Telescope online a few weeks ago. It seemed like the most important thing to do,” Winslow answered in a hushed voice. “We tracked some strange signals coming from space and when we trained the Telescope on it? Alien spacecraft. It’s been sitting in orbit for now, but who knows when it will decide to come for a ‘visit’.”

“You mean it’s staying in orbit… like it’s waiting for something,” Bradley asked, horrified realization etching itself on his face.

“Yeah, I guess?” the Lieutenant shrugged. “Why, you have any idea what they want?”

“Possibly… I think it might be here for me, or rather, us,” Bradley replied. At the soldier’s confused expression, he clarified. “The Ambassador Bright –er Nova said he would be sending a ship to meet us in a few days to send us to learn from them on another planet. Didn’t anyone tell you?”

“What? No! I honestly didn’t even know you finished the Tutorial until you showed up,” the Lieutenant explained.

“So I’m the first to arrive,” he asked rhetorically before shaking his head. “Anyway, that’s not the problem, we can’t fight that ship! Who knows what they’ll do if we take out a diplomatic envoy.” ‘And it would ruin any chance of seeing an alien world,’ he added internally. Bradley groaned. “Why did it have to come so early?”

“Maybe the Ambassador mean a few days in Game time,” Lieutenant Winslow pointed out. “You’re right, we don’t have time for that; the last thing we need right now is destroying a political envoy or being the aggressors here. We need to warn the Commander to call off the defense… or at least try to communicate.” Not wasting any more time, the soldier sprinted down the corridor, Bradley reluctantly running after him.

Outside the front entrance now, Bradley got to see the outside of the building for the first time. He had seen glimpses through the wooden planks and sandbags barring the windows but had never seen it so clearly until now. He found himself in the middle of a parking lot crammed with as much military hardware as it could contain: tanks, armored vehicles, trucks, weapons, ammunition, crates of explosives and even the occasional tanker truck full to the brim with fuel. The culmination of close to a thousand military personnel bored out of their minds. In the distance, he could make out the contrails of jets circling in the sky above him and he could just make out the shape of RAM and Phalanx Close-in Weapon Systems on top of Centurion platforms sitting on the highway surrounding the Pentagon.

“Quit gawking, we’ve got to move!” the Lieutenant admonished, emphasizing the words by waving his hands in a ‘come here’ gesture.

They made their way to one of the security checkpoints and a quick order from the Lieutenant had the private radioing for a Humvee brought to their location.

“We need to see the Commander,” Winslow calmly informed the driver. “He’ll be at the FOB. We need to be there yesterday so don’t hold back on the accelerator.”

“Yes sir!” the driver replied enthusiastically.

With both of them taking the back seats, the driver floored the gas, sending the vehicle hurdling around the tight corners around the parking lot and onto the highway.

As they raced North on the Washington Interstate, they passed by massive trucks anchored to the ground loaded with car-sized missiles and smaller ones loaded with large radar dishes. They regularly swept the horizon for enemies. As they travelled over the Potomac, Bradley stared in awe at the sight of a U.S. Navy Supercarrier anchored just off the shore of the Ronald Reagan National Airport.

“Just how many people are actually in the Game right now?” Bradley asked, stunned at the amount of hardware being fielded around him.

“Well there was only a few dozen in Washington when you were here last,” the Lieutenant replied, “that’s why I was in charge of the Pentagon: not enough people to warrant more leadership. With the threat of invasion though, we’ve called everyone back here to the best fortified position. We’ve got about eleven-hundred here now, but even that is only barely enough to get some of this working.” He pointed at the carrier to their right. “The Stennis alone requires over five times that. At the moment it’s a glorified floating piece of asphalt until we get more people. Still, the aircraft repair facilities and defense systems are top notch. We’re actually lucky to even have it at all. The other nuclear-powered carriers were all copied into the Game while they were still running… their reactors likely all melted down. They’re probably sitting at the bottom of the ocean now. The Stannis was thankfully in port upriver at the time being refitted.”

‘Huh, I never thought about it, but how many things needed constant maintenance like that and are now broken beyond repair?’ Bradley thought. ‘How much radiation leaked because of that, not to mention other civilian reactors around the globe? Not only that, but there are already that many people… Based on the size of that Military base in the Real World, I thought there were only one-hundred or so people involved, but maybe there are more facilities involved.

‘If that’s how many are going to be playing when it’s a secret, I can only imagine what it will be like when they open it to the public.’

Capitol Building, Washington D.C., the Game

“Welcome to FOB Washington,” Lieutenant Winslow proclaimed with little ceremony, racing from the car and up the steps leading to the Capitol.

Like the Pentagon, the soldiers converted Washington’s National Mall into a large outdoor storage facility. Pallets of canned food, freighter containers of electronics and all sorts of practical miscellaneous goods lay tightly packed in rows. The Capitol itself seemed completely untouched, except for an Abrams Tank stationed in between the first set of staircases, the piles of sandbags at all the entrances, and the occasional patrols of soldiers walking around.

To one of these patrols, the Lieutenant had to show his ID before being allowed to enter the building itself. Bradley had never been inside the Capitol before and so found himself staring at the marble decor and bronze statues within despite the urgency of the situation. The soldier would have none of that and practically dragged the engineer through some of the more opulent sections.

It did not take long before they found themselves at their destination: The Capitol Rotunda. Underneath the incredibly intricate stonework and detailed filigree of the dome sat the comparably drab greens of army combat gear. Radio communication systems covered the walls and the desks of administrative staff on computers filled in-between. At the center, several temporary walls covered in maps surrounded a large desk. Around the desk, several officers stood around some paper, pointing and arguing.

“Look, all I’m saying is that we should relocate everyone to the Pentagon,” a younger man argued. “We have all already set it as our collective Spawn Point and Control Point so it’s clearly the most valuable target. We should concentrate all the defenses there and make it impossible to take.”

“That’s the whole problem!” another slightly older man retorted. “We are concentrated too much. This isn’t some terrorist cell coming at us with inferior weapons on a suicide run, these are spacefaring aliens! With what I saw in the Tutorial, they could probably level the Pentagon with that spaceship of theirs just by landing on it! What we should do is spread out and set up ambushes when they arrive. If we can take their technology, we will be able to decide the next engagement. Worst-comes-to-worst, we respawn in different locations, rearm, and institute long-term guerilla warfare. They are bound to slip up eventually.”

“I think we all understand your positions, Captain Moore, Captain Garcia,” a third, almost middle-aged man replied, looking to older and younger officers respectively, “but as enjoyable of an exercise that all sounds, remember that the primary goal of the mission is to protect American interests in the Real World. That means finding and removing any piece of intelligence or weapon which could be used against us. While this alien spaceship is threatening, it does not change that primary mission.”

“But Colonel Evans, sir, then why did you order us back here in the first place if the invasion does not change the mission?” Captain Moore asked.

“That is because-” Colonel Evans began, before he finally noticed Lieutenant Winslow and Bradley standing a dozen feet away. “Lieutenant Winslow… could you explain to me what a civilian is doing inside a secure army installation. I know this is a game, but we are under orders to take this as seriously as any of our other duties.”

“I know, sir, that’s why I’m here,” the Lieutenant replied, saluting the Colonel. “Bradley Cooper here has some urgent news about the aliens.”

The Colonel sighed, massaging his temples. “Lieutenant, I know guidelines dictate that any eyewitness or messenger of military information should be escorted to the officer most capable to receive that information, but that does not qualify for non-military personnel.”

“Please-er Colonel, uh, sir,” Bradley struggled to reply, “this is really important! The aliens aren’t the enemy!”

“So you know why they are here?” the senior officer asked, walking over to a desk and reading the contents of a piece of paper. “They were only sighted less than two hours ago. With how time in the Game runs faster than Reality, the solider I ordered to log off should not have had enough time to report.”

“He wasn’t sent from the Base,” Winslow cut in, “he is the reason they are coming. Apparently the Haxlardian Ambassador is planning on sending them on some sort of Cultural Exchange to another planet. That spacecraft may well be that envoy.”

“Do you have any proof?” Colonel Evans asked.

“Uh, well, not really-” Bradley began before he remembered something the Lieutenant had them all do. “Oh, actually there is!”

‘System: Share – Colonel Evans: Current Quest,’ he thought.

[table=green]Sharing – Colonel Christopher EvansHaxlard/Earth Coalition QuestBrigadier General George Stratton and Haxlard Ambassador to Earth Incandescent Nova have given you the opportunity to learn at the Iras Entry-Level Academy.Item(s) Provided:NoneQuest Difficulty:UnrankedSuccess Conditions:Arrive at the Haxlard spaceship.Failure Conditions:Are not logged into the Game for an extended period or otherwise cannot be found before the ship departs.Quest Rewards:Admittance to the Iras Entry-Level Academy[/table]

“Well it does appear that he has a ‘quest’ of that nature,” Colonel Evans agreed. “I don’t know of any method to fake that.”

“That could be true, but we cannot rely on the System to give us accurate information,” Captain Moore added.

“Actually, I disagree,” the Colonel opposed with a shake of his head. “Until I am given cause to believe otherwise, I am going to take everything that the System says as the infallible truth within this Game.”

“What?!” the two captains exclaimed. “How can you be so foolhardy!” Captain Moore demanded. “We have no control over the System! It is an alien computer controlled by aliens who have already threatened us with eradication!We cannot trust it! How could you even think of that?!”

“It does not matter what you or I thinks,” the Colonel replied simply, “it is simply the truth. You already trust the System already.”

Captain Moore looked visibly angry, but Captain Garcia no longer appeared to take his side. “I can assure you that I do not,” Captain Moore denied with a glare.

“But you trust that I am actually the Colonel?” he asked.

“Of course… I might disagree with you on this, but you still are my commanding officer,” the Captain replied.

“But the System created all this,” he replied, gesturing to their surroundings. “The air you breathe, the ground beneath your feet; everything here is created. At least, if our scientists are correct about the purpose of the Game Capsules. This is, essentially, the Matrix; an artificial world created by a machine. Just like that movie, this Matrix need not be completely genuine. It would be just as simple for the System to place each of us in our own little worlds and feed us lies. To you, I could be merely its puppet; a construct created by it solely for the purpose of convincing you that the System is infallible. I have thought it through, and it is better to assume it everything it does is true until proven otherwise. Otherwise I would be second-guessing everything I do, and that is no way for an officer to do their job.”

“I… don't necessarily agree with you,” the Captain said after a few seconds of reflection, “but you've made it clear that I still have a few things to think about. When I-”

Before the Captain could finish, one of the people working at the other desks spoke up and cut him off.

“Colonel!” the desk soldier yelled, putting down a radio headset he had on. Everyone in the room stopped what they were doing and looked at the man. “I just got word that a large UFO has finished entering the atmosphere! It somehow avoided detection until our weather satellites picked up an extra heat signature over Asia.”

“How could that happen?” the Colonel asked. “There should have been heat as it entered the atmosphere, not-”

“Sorry to interrupt Colonel,” the radioman apologized, “but we’re already picking it up on our forward radar! The F-18s are already on-route to intercept.”

“How the heck did it get here so fast?” Lieutenant Winslow asked rhetorically. “Our forward radar only extends 300 miles at most, for it to come from Asia in that time…”

“Hail the craft with Radio, try as many frequencies as you can,” the Colonel replied. “Let me know when those fighters are near firing range.”

“Colonel!” Bradley exclaimed. “You can’t attack them!”

“I can and I will,” the Colonel replied. “Even if you are correct, we cannot assume these aliens are the same ones mentioned in your ‘quest’. If they don’t communicate their intentions and leave when we tell them to, they are the enemy and are to be taken down with extreme prejudice. Those are our current rules of engagement.”

“I have Alpha One on the line,” the radioman said moments later. “They will be in range in 30 seconds. There has been no response from our hails.”

“Tell them to fire a warning shot and hail them again,” Colonel Evans got out, teeth clenched.

“Understood… they have fired the shot… there is still no response.”

“Tell them to fire on target.”

“Colonel, please,” Bradley pleaded.

“Lieutenant, get the civilian out of here,” the Colonel ordered.

“…yes sir,” Lieutenant Winslow replied.

Even from his spot outside the Capitol Building, Bradley could clearly see the battle unfold in the skies. It had been a fierce fight to see. Missiles, bullets and artillery all hammered at the spaceship from mobile platforms throughout the capital. All proved ineffective against the ship’s powerful shielding. The jets strafed by the massive ship with salvos of missiles and machineguns but did little better.

The alien craft itself had a rounded nose at its aft housing what looked like a massive magnetic rail system. Smoothly extending outward from the nose, the aft grew thinner by the midsection which in turn connected to the larger engine-section at the back. Large strips extruded out from the stern which glowed with energy. Across the entire ship, modular plates serving all sorts of functions were inter-spaced with smaller automated weapon systems which occasionally fired at the missiles used against it, shooting them out of the sky far before they could hit their target.

The ship hovered over the city. Without any clear sign of a propulsion system or any aerodynamic properties, the act seemed in clear defiance of gravity. Several hundred feet long and hundreds of feet in the air, it cast a long dark shadow over Washington. Despite such posturing however, the ship never once used its weapons against the U.S. forces fighting it. Eventually the human weapons ceased their attacks and the alien ship began to make a landing somewhere off in the distance.

At that moment, the Colonel, Lieutenant and several other military officers stormed out of the building. At the same time, several Humvees swarmed the entrance, and the officers began to make their way into the vehicles. Seeing the commotion, Bradley made his way back over to them.

“Captain Moore, Captain Garcia, prepare to destroy any sensitive materials you can; we’ll use Plan Delta for the disposal. I’ll give you further details in a moment,” the Colonel ordered the two men saluted and left in their vehicles. “Lieutenant Winslow, make your way back to the Pentagon and find the other civilians. Keep them safe. Also if a ‘Sergeant Major Conrad Schneider’ asks to see me, send him to my location right away. When you’re ready, find me again.”

“Of course sir,” Winslow saluted. He then made his way to Bradley. “Bradley, you and me are going back to the Pentagon.”

“What? I thought I would be going to the alien ship-” Bradley started.

“No can do, that was never in the cards,” the Lieutenant cut him off, shaking his head. “We don't know if the aliens even are the ones we want or not and we aren't going to risk civilians pointlessly. In the meantime, we have bigger problems.”

“Bigger than that huge alien spaceship?!” he exclaimed, pointing towards the horizon the ship left to.

Wilson nodded, hopping into the passenger seat of the Humvee. “We have over one hundred hostile signatures closing in on our position. At least we know the Alien ship does not plan to attack us. These hostiles though, they aren't alien and that's a lot worse. Aliens can be nice. This?

“This is an invasion force.”

----Status Window----

Spoiler :

Status WindowName:Bradley CooperSpecies:Human (Earth)Level:29Experience:405/2000Class:Cybernetic ScavengerAlignment:Friendly (+2) / Order (+1)[/tr]Age:26Gender:MaleRenown:Unranked (10)Notoriety:Unranked (0)----Regenerative Attributes----Health:220/220Health Regen:21.55/hrPsionic Energy:1/1Psionic Regen:0.82/hrShield Energy:N/AShield Regen:N/AStamina:85/85Stamina Regen:812.09/hr----Attributes----Strength:10+20Agility:12+20Intelligence:75+20Willpower:38+20Charisma:20+20Perception:36+20Endurance:12+20Luck:32+20----Resistances----Physical:5.0%Mental:16.0%Psionic:2.1%----Career----Titles:NoneOccupation:Earth Coalition – Civilian Employee – RecruitCurrent Quest:Embark for Iras----Currency----Currently Held:0 CreditsCurrently Owed:0 CreditsMarks:0P, 0D, 0GAbility Points:645----Faction Standings----Earth Coalition:EmployeeHaxlards:Friendly*Administrators:Privileged*Pirates:Vilified*Revenant:Known*

----General Ability Window----

Spoiler :

General Ability WindowAbility Name:Ability Rank:Ability Proficiency:Ability Rarity:Explosives UseGFGThe ability to set, wire and detonate explosives in effective ways without killing yourself in the process. A higher rank indicates greater lethality through the proper implementation of: environment, directionality, defensive bypass, and explosive composition.Ability Name:Ability Rank:Ability Proficiency:Ability Rarity:Mind SurvivalGEGThe ability of the mind to persist through overwhelming mental trauma. Provides resistance against abilities which damage the mind.Ability Name:Ability Rank:Ability Proficiency:Ability Rarity:Pistol ShootingGGGThis ability maps the progress of firing a pistol. A higher rank indicates a greater lethality.Ability Name:Ability Rank:Ability Proficiency:Ability Rarity:Rifle ShootingGGGThis ability maps the progress of firing a rifle. A higher rank indicates a greater lethality.Ability Name:Ability Rank:Ability Proficiency:Ability Rarity:StrategyFFGThis ability maps the progress for making plans. A higher rank indicates greater plans which: achieve goals sooner, with fewer losses, and with less required resources.Ability Name:Ability Rank:Ability Proficiency:Ability Rarity:Trap MakingGFGThe ability to create traps which kill or otherwise hinder your adversaries. A higher rank indicates the design of more effective traps which: are more difficult to detect, are harder to disarm, and can cause more efficient damage to the enemy.

----Cybernetic Ability Window----

Spoiler :

Cybernetic Ability WindowAbility Name:Ability Rank:Ability Proficiency:Ability Rarity:Cybernetic FocusFGDWhen performing tasks that are trivial for a digital computer, some of the work is offloaded to the Cybernetic Interface Chip, heightening focus and simplifying the task.Ability Name:Ability Rank:Ability Proficiency:Ability Rarity:Connect (Basic)GGDAllows communication of single integer numbers, characters and regulatory tags to devices. Does so using the Cybernetic Interface Chip’s Regulatory Identification and Human-Computer Interface’s Wireless Perception abilities.Ability Name:Ability Rank:Ability Proficiency:Ability Rarity:Machine Language ComprehensionGGDThe ability to communicate with sapient machines.Languages Known:Revenant StandardAbility Name:Ability Rank:Ability Proficiency:Ability Rarity:Regulatory IdentificationGGEThe Cybernetic Interface Chip’s ability to identify the regulatory standards, encoding, decoding and commands used by a device to communicate.Wireless Perception (Basic)GGDThe ability to perceive wireless communications actively searching for connection. To avoid oversaturation, the Human-Computer Interface does not transmit secure communication or ordinary electromagnetic waves to the Cybernetic Interface Chip.

----Scavenger Ability Window----

Spoiler :

Scavenger Ability WindowAbility Name:Ability Rank:Ability Proficiency:Ability Rarity:Intrinsic Evaluation (Basic)GEDThe ability to intrinsically know the value of an object. Whether an object will work correctly, for how long, and how much it is worth.

----Implant List Window----

Spoiler :

Implant List----Biological Implants----Implant Name:Implant Rank:Implant Proficiency:General Status EnhancerDN/AProvides a boost of 20 points to all attributes.----Mechanical Implants----Implant Name:Implant Rank:Implant Proficiency:Cybernetic Interface ChipD+FConnected directly to the brain, when interfaced directly with a computer, implant, or memory module, this chip converts thought into the intended electromagnetic input expected by the device. Higher ranks improve the data rate, allowable frequency range, and provide higher levels of security. A Revenant Firmware Upgrade allows it to parse Sapient Machine Language. Has been enhanced by the Cybernetic subclass.Implant Name:Implant Rank:Implant Proficiency:Human-Computer InterfaceD+GAllows direct cognitive access to a computer system via wireless communication, allowing the brain to issue commands directly to the device. Can only guarantee a proper interface with devices of equal or lower rank. Has been enhanced by the Cybernetic subclass.Implant Name:Implant Rank:Implant Proficiency:OpenN/AN/A