Part 1:

First Contact (The PeaceMakers)

"Shit," Marine Sergeant Will Parson said as he read the orders. They'd just come in from the Cybernet onto his PC in his Hawaii vacation home. The message was short, but it held disastrous consequences.

"Your leave is cut short. You and your division are ordered to immediately report to Hawaii Crayson Center for a new operation. This is urgent. Failure to respond will result in termination of commission and rebuke. Repeat: you and your division are to immediately report to Crayson Center for briefing on a mission. Leave is over."

Parson cursed under his breath again, looking out the screen picture windows onto the calm blue ocean barely 100 feet away, down the beach. After months of hard work, he'd been looking forward to taking a four month leave. Now, barely one month was over and something had happened that was important enough to warrant cutting short his hard-earned vacation. The tightneck bastards enjoyed doing this to low level military men. Parson swore at the politicians, throwing down the paper violently and stalking out of his house.

15 minutes later, in full Marine uniform, he knocked on the door of young Warren, a private under his command. Lucky that all of his division were here for vacation.

A groggy-eyed Warren answered the door after five minutes of knocking and shouting. "What?" he asked sleepily, leaning against the doorframe.

"No more sleeping, private!" barked Parson. "Have you checked your communications?"

"Did something come in, sir?" Warren asked quietly.

"Yes!" Parson snapped. "We have orders to report to Crayson Center right now."

"Why?" asked Warren.

"The orders didn't say," Parson replied.

"Why not?" asked Warren.

"The damn tightnecks want to hang us by strings, that's why," Parson replied angrily. "We're just puppets to them, chesspieces that they can move around wherever they want to on a second's notice at will." He paused. "But there's no time for that. We have orders. And we've no choice but to follow them."

"I guess I'd better get dressed, then," Warren sighed, closing the door.

Parson then went and got together the rest of his division.

An hour later, Division 114 of the United States Ministry of Defense (MOD) was together in the briefing room of Crayson Center, Hawaii.

The "briefing room" was a small, humid room with folding chairs set up in rows, a cold tile floor and bright lights hanging from the ceiling. In the front were an overhead projector, a screen, and a small wooden table.

Will Parson sat in the front row, along with 2^nd Lieutenant Pete Strather, Gunnery Sergeant Michael Levy, Communications Officer Samantha Yegyazarian, Tactical Leader Allister Duren, and Artillery Man Les Venexia. In the second row were the privates and soldiers: Cale Trucker, Alan Shear, Fiora Wesgail, Darren Brookes, Tony "Shock" DeMonté, and finally Seth Cohen. All had been enjoying their time off. All resented the politicians who had made the decision that resulted in them being here.

After five minutes of listening to the Privates complain about what was going on, a door in the front of the room opened and a man and a woman came out wearing business suits.

"Good afternoon, men," the man addressed them. He was a tall, light-skinned brunette. The woman had the same hair and wore glasses. She was about six inches shorter than the man.

Parson remained silent.

The woman took up the talk: "The reason you were called here is urgent. We are aware that you had been granted a four-month leave with pay and you will be paid twice the amount and have twice the vacation time when you complete this mission. Our government apologizes for this inconvenience but it's urgent."

"Urgent?" Pete Strather piped up, incredulous. "What could be so urgent that we had to be called? There are hundreds of units in operation now! Choose one of them!"

Parson shot a glare in his direction. Strather's face turned a mild shade of red.

"All of the units in your specialty are in operation," the man said calmly.

Shocked silence filled the room. All thirty-six units were in operation? How could that be?

"Besides the Marine units, several Army divisions and Air Force commands are in use, too," the woman continued. "The AFOC in Colorado has put in two units, and a team from the WarTech Center in New York are also involved."

"They're all involved in the same thing?!" Strather demanded.

"What the hell is this?" inquired Parson.

The man hesitated a heartbeat, then spoke. "That's what we're here to tell you. My name is Director Sean Bendt, and this is Valerie Seagal." She walked over to the video projector and pressed some buttons. A square of light shone bright on the screen.

"As you know, yesterday some of the tiny debris from the passing meteor storm crashed into Skywheel station," the man explained. "Its structural integrity is in danger. Power is out in more than half the station. Only a few main systems are still online, the life support and computers. Hull breaches were isolated with airlock doors, making the place into a series of connected hell holes. Although most of the personnel was evacuated, we need you to go in and rescue them. Get them out alive, before they die."

"Why is this a job for us?" Parson asked. "We're a battle unit, not search and rescue."

"There is a search and rescue team on the job," Valerie said. "But we need you on this because something very important was developed."

"It appears that the meteors weren't the only things that crashed into Skywheel," Sean stated. "Somehow, what appears to be. . . . .well, aliens, got into the station through one of the hull breaches."

"What?!" blurted Strather. "That's ridiculous. Those were meteors! They couldn't support life!"

"We're not saying it was the meteors that brought the aliens in, but somehow they took advantage of the crashes to penetrate the station."

Valerie pushed a button on the projec/tor, and on screen an image filled the square of light. "This was taken by the Station security cameras and sent to us approximately four hours ago."

On the screen, the video played.

He was running. Running away, from something. From what? He looked back, but couldn't see anything, just people, their eyes blind with fear, running without aim or thought, just the instinct to get away, away from what was behind them. He turned and ran with them, as fast as he could, their fear filling him with fear as well. Over the shouts of mindless panic and fright, he could hear, in the darkness behind him, an ominous growling. Far behind him, human screams pierced the air. The noise of the running people increased in volume, and they ran faster. He kept up with them. He did not want to see what was back there.

Where were they running? Monstrous roars sounded behind him, coming closer, and he knew in his gut no human or machine could ever produce such a devilish noise. He ran, and the people ran, and he looked ahead and knew where they were going.

Someone was yelling. "No! Not that way! You'll be trapped!" But the people didn't care, they didn't care where they were running to, they only cared what they were running away from. He dimly saw, as he passed through an airlock, that another man slammed his palm down on the control. The airlock door slammed down, cutting all the dozens of people off behind him. Their shouts rang clear through the damaged seal and they banged on the door in desperation. He stopped and looked back, aware that several other people did so as well. Everything was hazy through the panic. He couldn't think straight. Everything seemed far away; it was as if his senses were shutting off.

Shouts and pounding could be heard from the other side of the door, and a loud, slow, steady stomping. Suddenly the shouts turned to screams. The pounding stopped. A minute later blood oozed through the holes in the seal. His eyes went wide and he turned and ran, hearing a much louder pounding on the door now. He didn't care. He ran.

He ran toward the center of the station.

"Oh, my god," Fiora breathed.

"We have reason to believe that these aliens are the same ones that invaded the UAC Mars Base seven years ago," Sean said. "First, they have reason to attack us, after what our man did to them, and second, several camera captures of the aliens match our descriptions in the records."

"Shit," muttered Parson.

"It is your job, then," said Sean, to get up there, hold off the aliens while our search and rescue team gets in, gets the personnel, and then escape."

"Sounds simple enough," Parson said. "If one man could do it seven years ago, then twelve of us should handle it fine." But he wasn't so sure.

"There is a complication," Valerie said, shutting off the video projector. "Shortly after the crashes, several large warships appeared out of deep space and made contact with our fleet. But the context was not war or invasion.

"It was peace."

"What?!" Strathers exclaimed. "What the hell?"

"Both the AFOC and Space Command have confirmed: the aliens' message to us was the equivalent of the white flag," Sean said.

"We think it may be because they too have their people on the station, and their people are in danger of dying as well. We think they may want to rescue their people as well as we do," said Valerie.

"That's preposterous!" Strathers declared loudly. "You should be ashamed at the very idea! Those aliens are sub-intelligent. They're evil. They're narrow-minded, homicidal, killing machines and every one of them deserves to die. There is no way they could have enough feeling to want to rescue their soldiers. They're not human!"
"Maybe not," Sean said. "From what Flynn Taggart said, the high command of the aliens seems to be on an intelligence level that equals or surpasses our own."

"I find the very idea to be presposterous," Strathers declared arrogantly.

"Look," Sean said to him. "Just because you're offended by the idea that just because you don't like something that it is, in fact, real, doesn't mean that it isn't true. This is a real possibility for peace."

"These aliens have never caused anything but death and destruction!" Strathers declared. "We should have killed their whole race when we had the chance."

"When did we have a chance," Fiora said in her characteristically soft voice, and the room hushed at her words.

"One man alone almost didn't come out of the Deimos installation alive," Sean explained patiently. "The aliens had reworked the architecture so fully that the place felt almost like Hell itself."

"The situation is this," said Valerie. "We have a chance to make peace with the aliens once and for all, and end these bloody conflicts that have plagued us since they first showed up. The AFOC and the WarTech Center have negotiations specialists working toward a truce. The general gist of things so far is that the aliens say that if we can get their people safely back to them, they'll agree to leave us alone – forever."

"I don't believe it," Strather muttered discontentedly.

Parson glared at him briefly.

"But," Sean Bendt said, "there is an extremely high calculated probability of this thing falling through, and war could erupt between us in the space of one minute."

"Yeah, like 100 percent probability," Strather muttered, under his breath to himself. Parson ignored it.

"For this reason, General LeVierce and General Valen will be leading an attack on against the warships. The object of the operation would be to cripple the ships, then board and eradicate the alien population within."

Jaws fell open in the rows. The magic name Lance Valen inspired fear and admiration in anyone who had heard of him, the most famous, fearsome military man in the history of the United American Military, who had led the final victorious charge into the alien's stronghold six years ago to against seemingly impossible odds and come out alive. Word was out that he was also one of the masterminds behind the clever and successful solution to the Descent incident, involving mines that had become infested with corrupted automatons. General Valen had yet to lose a battle. The highest honor that could be bestowed upon the lowly private was to be transferred to serve under General Valen, whose success rate was as high as his casualty rate was low.

". . .yes, the General Valen," Valerie took up. "There Is Only One."

"Ah, anyways," Sean continued, "in the event that things don't go, quite the way, we'd. . .ah, hoped, then you'll become a part of General LeVierce's company and fall under his command."

Parson sighed. He would have much preferred to be under Valen.

". . .however," Sean went on, if LeVierce's team is otherwise occupied, and he is the forward man, then you will go to Valen."

Small hope lit itself inside Parson. Even Strather was subdued.

"When events further develop, you will be informed of your next orders," Sean Bendt said. "You will board a shuttle in four hours for the UAC base on Mars. Remain in the vicinity of Crayson Center until that time. You are now dismissed." He saluted smartly and followed Valerie out of the room.

There was a general stirring among the troop. Parson and Strather stood to leave. He could hear Warren saying quietly, "Wow.......General Valen.........." to one of the other soldiers. Here was a real chance to serve under the best fighter in the land...... here was motivation.......and inspiration.

In no way did Parson wish for war to break out between the humans and the aliens, but if that were to happen, then the most desirable position for him to be in would be under General Valen's command. He remembered meeting and shaking hands with the famous man once a few years ago during the court martial of a soldier – the memory of this simple action was so strong that it overshadowed the rest so completely that he could no longer remember even who the court martial had been for or for what charge.