Sorry about that, here's (hopefully) the full thing:
Author: Hopkins, Alex
On the morning of 27/06/98 we got a call-out about a fight going on in an underpass on the edge of town. The cops had seen signs of weirdness and done their best to keep people away from it, but they needed us out there smartish. Nothing they could deal with.
We didn’t dawdle by any means, but by the time we arrived the fight was over. The winner – a grey, hard-skinned lad, looked like he was made of stone – was still there, standing over the body. A human body. So we had a go at him, told him he couldn’t just come on our turf and start murdering people, the usual spiel, hoping we could take him down between us. And hoping that Harkness picked up the message we left him.
The grey lad turned and laid down his weapon, said he’d no wish to harm us and he’d done us a favour. He spoke perfect English. And Welsh. He said his name was Iannamet and he asked who we were. When we explained, he asked if there was anywhere we could go to talk. Mike was wary of bringing him back to the Hub, thought it might be a ruse, but I thought we should trust him.
If what he told us is true, it was a good call.
The guy Iannamet killed wasn’t human. We didn’t need to take his word for that – the autopsy (cross-ref: #2008/087) showed it to be true. The dead guy was in fact an agent from a group known only as Cell 114. Iannamet had found him alone, weakened, and decided to take him out: he escaped through the Rift and Iannamet followed him here to finish the job. Iannamet said that it’s possible the agent was trying to contact a cell of his fellows on Earth – hence he’d already taken on human disguise – so we should be on our guard. They could be here already. Harkness told me he’d heard of them too, but he wouldn’t say where.
Nobody knows that much about them: they’ve never been able to get close enough for a proper study.
However, they have an established M.O. – which is:
1) Send one agent to the target planet – an advance guard.
2) Disguise the agent as a member of the dominant species, with false memories so even they don’t know they’re an alien. They’ll be equipped with an implant which maintains the disguise and keeps them in contact with the others.
3) Let the agent blend in, gather intel, and transmit back.
4) Plan a strategy based on said intel.
5) Send more agents, similarly disguised – never very many. According to some reports, as few as three of them can take out an inhabited planet.
6) Activate when the time is right.
Iannamet doesn’t know where they come from, what species they are, or even what they can really do. But when they strike, they do so from comprehensive information about the planet they’re attacking. He said he once saw a planet they’d taken on: the war had started in the morning and it was over by late afternoon. A couple of weeks later it was stripped bare.
He described it in more detail than that, actually. We all listened.
We thanked him for taking out the agent, then he left. His ship was cloaked somewhere in the bay. Nice fella.
I gave the team the rest of the day off. It’s hard to concentrate in the afternoon when you’ve heard something like that in the morning.
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timeasmymeasure
no subject
Date: 2008-01-24 06:13 pm (UTC)Author: Hopkins, Alex
On the morning of 27/06/98 we got a call-out about a fight going on in an underpass on the edge of town. The cops had seen signs of weirdness and done their best to keep people away from it, but they needed us out there smartish. Nothing they could deal with.
We didn’t dawdle by any means, but by the time we arrived the fight was over. The winner – a grey, hard-skinned lad, looked like he was made of stone – was still there, standing over the body. A human body. So we had a go at him, told him he couldn’t just come on our turf and start murdering people, the usual spiel, hoping we could take him down between us. And hoping that Harkness picked up the message we left him.
The grey lad turned and laid down his weapon, said he’d no wish to harm us and he’d done us a favour. He spoke perfect English. And Welsh. He said his name was Iannamet and he asked who we were. When we explained, he asked if there was anywhere we could go to talk. Mike was wary of bringing him back to the Hub, thought it might be a ruse, but I thought we should trust him.
If what he told us is true, it was a good call.
The guy Iannamet killed wasn’t human. We didn’t need to take his word for that – the autopsy (cross-ref: #2008/087) showed it to be true. The dead guy was in fact an agent from a group known only as Cell 114. Iannamet had found him alone, weakened, and decided to take him out: he escaped through the Rift and Iannamet followed him here to finish the job. Iannamet said that it’s possible the agent was trying to contact a cell of his fellows on Earth – hence he’d already taken on human disguise – so we should be on our guard. They could be here already. Harkness told me he’d heard of them too, but he wouldn’t say where.
Nobody knows that much about them: they’ve never been able to get close enough for a proper study.
However, they have an established M.O. – which is:
1) Send one agent to the target planet – an advance guard.
2) Disguise the agent as a member of the dominant species, with false memories so even they don’t know they’re an alien. They’ll be equipped with an implant which maintains the disguise and keeps them in contact with the others.
3) Let the agent blend in, gather intel, and transmit back.
4) Plan a strategy based on said intel.
5) Send more agents, similarly disguised – never very many. According to some reports, as few as three of them can take out an inhabited planet.
6) Activate when the time is right.
Iannamet doesn’t know where they come from, what species they are, or even what they can really do. But when they strike, they do so from comprehensive information about the planet they’re attacking. He said he once saw a planet they’d taken on: the war had started in the morning and it was over by late afternoon. A couple of weeks later it was stripped bare.
He described it in more detail than that, actually. We all listened.
We thanked him for taking out the agent, then he left. His ship was cloaked somewhere in the bay. Nice fella.
I gave the team the rest of the day off. It’s hard to concentrate in the afternoon when you’ve heard something like that in the morning.