The Origin of F.O.R.C.E.

There is a popular belief that on the evening of July 8, 1947, a disc-shaped spacecraft crashed in the desert near Roswell, New Mexico. Just look up the references yourself.

What really happened was one of the most closely guarded secrets the U.S. Government ever kept. The keyword in that last sentence is ‘was’. The actual story spans more than six decades through some of the most turbulent times in World history. Hidden secrets of the highest governmental agencies had to first be discovered and then cleared for dissemination before this narrative could be published. As a result of your government sponsored indoctrination (I mean education) you probably harbor some skepticism at this point. Beware. I am about to rip your skepticism out by its roots.

John Paul Moon Seeker was born Navajo. After 35 years in the New Mexico desert, he felt comfortable with his Native American heritage. Constant exposure to the sun had begun etching permanent dark creases in the corners of his eyes and mouth despite his young age. Ignoring the history lessons from his Grandfather, he had grown up a cowboy at heart and spent way too much of his hard-earned cash on the huge, steel belt buckle engraved with his initials and wedged between his stomach and saddle. Years of sand and rough stones had etched deep scars in the well-worn leather boots pushed into the stirrups of his equally well-worn saddle.

John Paul loved to take his horse for a trot in the desert after sundown. The searing desert heat dropped a good 30 degrees from mid-afternoon to dusk, and the peace and quiet of the sand muffling his horse’s gait was like music to his ears. This was a daily personal time where he could be alone with his thoughts. Only thing was, tonight was the last time Moon Seeker would be alive to enjoy his peaceful desert.

One thing about being in the quiet desert, evening after evening, is that your brain knows what is normal. Mountains don’t change. The positions and angles of giant boulders don’t change. The color of the sand doesn’t change. Human eyes are built to recognize change because change could indicate a threat. Whether John Paul realized it at the time, his Human eyes were doing their hereditary job. Movement made his eyes twitch to the right. Just coming over the top of the northern mountain range, he spotted something. The sky was clear, and John Paul’s eyes locked on the movement and focused.

The movement became a speck that darted at tremendous speed towards him. To say that John Paul was startled, shocked and curious was an understatement. He stared as the speck grew from the size of a marble to the size of a baseball. As it got bigger, he became aware of a weird humming vibration, deeper and louder as the object neared.

There was a wavy, blurry, mist-like corona around the glowing ball, and the brightness intensified to the point it began to take on the appearance of a welding arc. The light became so brilliant and strong, John Paul threw his arm up to shield his eyes. The humming vibration kept growing stronger, escalating until his teeth hurt as if he had bitten down on a frozen ice cream bar and broken out a filling to expose a raw nerve to the cold.

The inside of his head began to feel warm, then hot. His nose began to drip as if his sinuses drained. His horse started shaking its head like it did when it was being tormented by stinging flies buzzing its ears. Just before John Paul lost consciousness, there was a moment of unbearable heat behind his eyeballs and a warm gush down the back of his neck. As their brains baked inside their skulls, Moon Seeker’s body, and that of the horse he was riding, toppled to the sand.

The humming continued for a short time and then faded like the volume on a radio decreases when the dial is turned down. The ball of light continued to grow in size as it approached the bodies until hovering overhead, its size and shape were plain at last. It was a disc-shaped object about 40 feet in diameter and 20 feet in height at its center from bottom to top. The lower half of the craft was all that now glowed and appeared blurry. A spotlight spiked from the underside of the disc and illuminated the dead rider and horse. What happened next was unexpected and violent.

From three hills overlooking the death scene, puffs of smoke appeared. The dimming light of dusk made it easy to follow the red glare of the projectiles as they bracketed the flying disc. Two thundering explosions rocked the object. Even with its size and apparent weight, it shook and lurched to one side as a massive fireball burst out where one of the explosive shells impacted. It became apparent the disc was trying to rise. The glowing, blurry light oozed from the bottom of the craft upwards, but when it reached the hole blown in its side, the craft wobbled like an off-balance pie plate on the end of a juggler’s stick. Trying to gain altitude, the disc seemed to run out of air like a deflating balloon. It gained speed on the side opposite the jagged hole and rammed itself into the desert floor with a resounding crash, shaking the ground with tremendous force. The disc skipped like a flat stone thrown at a pond, leaving gouges in the earth as it propelled itself in short hops to its final resting place half a mile away. White steam mixed with an orange glow curled up from several gashes torn in the metallic hull.

All was quiet for a moment. Then a line of vehicles appeared and sped towards the downed craft. Armored personnel trucks, jeeps pulling large spotlights and trucks with mounted cranes all seemed to come from nowhere but actually emerged from camouflaged tent-like coverings. The hidden equipment had blended so well into the desert landscape, all of it had remained undetected. Dust clouds billowed behind the lines of trucks and jeeps converging on the grounded disc.

“Approach with caution.” Military men don’t need to be told this but saying it made Colonel Daniel Grant feel better.

“I can’t believe we were so lucky tonight,” muttered Corporal Tom Unger, the communications specialist.

“A lot luckier than that guy on the horse. His number came up and that’s all she wrote. Definitely wrong place at the wrong time,” Captain Jim Blunt replied.

“I want a medical team to take the cowboy and his horse. Full autopsy on both,” Grant said. “I want to know what happened to him.”

“Alpha Team, take point. Half inside that thing, the rest guarding all possible points of escape from the hull. Shoot anything that looks like a threat. Keep in constant radio contact,” Blunt ordered.

“Light that thing up like it was high noon,” Grant commanded.

Illuminated by the powerful searchlights, the craft’s hull was revealed in stark detail. There were no rivets or obvious fastenings holding the metallic-looking hull plates to the body of the craft. The overall color was a dull sheen ranging from dark gray to darker gray. The only visible opening was the gaping hole blown inward by the armor-piercing projectiles. There were no antennas or other projections jutting from the hull. The trajectory of the crash left the disc leaning at a 30-degree angle with part of hull buried in the desert floor.

Per instructions, Alpha Team inched its way towards the gash blown into the hull and half of them crept inside. The rest took positions in a semicircle covering the opening. There was radio silence for a moment.

“Place is a mess. No resistance so far. Corridor inside opens up left and right. TAKE COVER!”

Automatic gunfire drowned out any comments. Two streaks of silver light, the width of a cigar, flicked out of the jagged rip in the side of the craft. One of the light beams glanced off a curled piece of the blasted hull with a sizzle like bacon frying. Silence followed. Seconds can seem like an eternity when utter quiet follows the sound of gunfire. The silence was broken by a weird, roaring scream. There was something about the scream, some quality that raised the hairs on the back of the neck and arms. It was not a Human sound. The guttural tone seemed to come from a throat thick with mucus.

A body flew out of the rip in the hull as if it had been shot from a circus cannon. It soared several feet through the air before it ended its unnatural flight in a crumpled heap. More gunfire erupted. Backing through the mangled gash came three soldiers, Master Sergeant Deke Williams, Corporal Eddie Smith and Corporal Donald Carson. They fired back into the hull breach with weapons set on full auto.

A hand-like appendage appeared and gripped the edges of the rip. Pulling itself into the searchlights was what appeared to be a muscular, tailless iguana. Standing like a human, the creature moved its head back and forth as it surveyed the scene. Reptilian-slitted black eyes with darker black pupils focused on the soldiers, and the creature grinned. Gunfire touching the lizard wasn’t reaching its body. Sparks could be seen flashing near its chest as bullets bounced away.

One of the tanks positioned around the craft started firing its 50-caliber machine gun at the lizard, but just like the smaller arms fire, the larger bullets and tracers from the machine gun glanced off the reptile without harming its body. Tank commander John Green watched in horrified fascination as the heavy caliber bullets from Walter Burns’ tank ricocheted off the alien. Several of the rounds deflected back to pound against the armor of Green’s tank with a sound like a muted bell.

“Hudson,” Green shouted. “Aim the big gun at that thing’s chest and fire at will! Let’s see if it can handle a cannon shot.”

The turret of Green’s tank was already pointed at the saucer. Private George Hudson made a quick site adjustment and with a gliding movement, the tank’s cannon focused on the alien lizard. Just as the targeting bullseye centered on the creature’s chest, Hudson pulled the activator.

In the meantime, the iguana alien, confident in its safety from the gunfire, took a step and reached out like a striking snake. Grabbing Corporal Smith, the lizard jerked him close. The creature took hold of the man’s left arm and, with no apparent effort, jerked it off with an audible tearing sound. Throwing the writhing body of Smith away, the lizard dropped the arm. Advancing a step towards Sergeant Williams, it reached for him.

At that moment the tank commanded by Green shot the lizard full in the chest with a high velocity artillery round. The creature exploded, and its entrails spewed over a wide area.

In the sudden silence following the massive explosion, Green shouted, “Weren’t expecting that were you, Asshole?”

As medics rushed to the aid of Corporal Smith, trying to stanch the fountain of blood gushing from his mangled shoulder, Williams and Carson looked at each other, and with matching nods, picked their way back into the broken hull. After what seemed like an eternity, a terse radio burst from Williams broke the silence.

“CLEAR!”

More soldiers began clambering up the craft’s hull to the ripped openng. Squishing and sliding on various pieces of alien body parts, they disappeared inside.

“Recover Junior One,” Grant ordered.

“Problem, Sir. Junior One destroyed. UFO trajectory was through it when the cowboy was attacked. It’s lying in pieces about two klicks NNE of our current position. Looks like Junior was targeted and destroyed as they zeroed in for the kill.”

Grant didn’t like hearing his eye in the sky was no longer there. The Observation Balloon called Junior One was one of a dozen put into service in the 1,000 square kilometer trap area. It’d been lofted over a week ago to give a quick warning about unusual aerial phenomena. Made from a top-secret silvery foil capable of staying aloft for months, each balloon carried a package of long-range cameras, heat and sound sensors and recorders, radiation detectors, barometric and thermographic tracking devices in constant radio communication to ground units. These so-called weather balloons were like having a full-time squad of Human observers on-site 24-hours a day. Tethered at selected locations, it was the analysis of reports from Junior and its siblings that led to the positioning of the tanks that had blown the UFO from the sky.

The whole operation had taken several months to plan and execute. Worldwide reports of UFO sightings over sensitive military facilities in the U.S., Great Britain, U.S.S.R., India and South Africa, had caused concern at the highest government levels charged with protecting national security. People were still sensitive about military security following the aftermath of WWII. It was obvious that someone or something was determined to observe and interfere with Humans. The need to do something more than simply respond after-the-fact had been deemed necessary by the highest military and civilian governmental authorities. Was there a threat? If so, what was the threat? How could the threat be removed?

Trying to predict when and where to confront the unknown adversaries became priorities. Info from the Juniors was updated every four hours with any substantive data being prioritized to hourly updates and, at last, minute-by-minute updates. Location Chihuahuan03 had become very active over the past 2 days. The tank trap had been set.

“Captain Blunt, send a team to recover all traces of Chihuahuan03. Scrub this entire area. I want every bolt and nut, scrap of paper, metal shavings and body parts - everything bagged up and removed to the Nevada facility. Carry on,” Grant ordered.

“Sir,” Blunt replied as he trotted away.

A hint of a frown and deep worry lines across his forehead were the only displays of emotion from Grant as he watched the silver body bags being removed from the broken, dark gray craft. Five of them Human. Four others, including the tattered body of the creature blown to bits, were too large for body bags. They were wrapped in tarpaulins and dragged out.

“God help us,” Grant thought.

“Captain Blunt, we have a live one.”

“Say again, Alpha Team. A live what?”

“Sir, you have to see this to believe it! A real whatsit. Hiding under a cabinet of some kind.”

Blunt trotted to the downed craft, clamored up the angled hull and slipped through the gash. Inside the ruined outer wall of the craft was a wide corridor that circled its inner core. The artillery explosion had blasted through both the outer hull and the inner core wall. As Blunt worked his way down the slanted deck toward the inner core, he could see three of his men surrounding a metallic cabinet toppled against a table. They had their weapons aimed at an alien iguana-creature hunched down and trying to hide as much of itself as it could under the cabinet. The creature’s size wasn’t apparent, but its eyes weren’t as large as the ones of the lizard the tank blew up. Blunt’s first impression was it had to be a young one.

As Blunt stared into the black eyes, impressed by the size of the dark pupils, he felt a tugging in the front of his head behind his eyes. Despite his original misgivings, he had the distinct feeling, in fact, he knew there was no threat from the creature.

“Lower your weapons. Stand down,” he ordered as he moved to get a closer look at the lizard.

All the men lowered their weapons on his command, but quick as a wink, as if it had been waiting for the opportunity, the lizard flipped up what looked like a toy ray pistol you could buy your kid at Woolworth’s as a Christmas present. A beam of silvery light the size of a fat cigar swept across the middle of the nearest man and sliced him in half at the waist. The creature then pointed the weapon at the next soldier. Almost instantly, two men were down, and the beam was sweeping toward the third.

Blunt had never moved so fast in his life. He dove at the iguana, grabbed the creature’s hand holding the ray pistol and forced it down on top of the creature’s foot. The silvery beam had the same effect on the iguana’s foot as it had on the now dead soldiers. It sliced off half the foot, and Blunt was pleased to hear a keening wail from the iguana as he wrestled the ray pistol from its grasp.

Blunt pointed the ray pistol at the creature, but again made eye contact with it, noticing the size of the thing’s pupils and how dark they were. He again felt the familiar tugging in the front of his head behind his eyes, but this time he was both scared and prepared. He broke eye contact and pressed what he hoped was the activating stud on the ray pistol. The silvery light beam erupted from the pistol barrel, slicing the other foot, the whole foot, off the iguana. The creature flopped to the deck writhing in pain. There was no blood where the silver light touched the soldiers or the iguana. It appeared the beam cauterized the flesh as it sliced. The tugging feeling in Blunt’s brain ceased.

“Stings like hell, doesn’t it?” he shouted at the lizard creature as it rolled on the deck.

Blunt pulled off his jacket and threw it over the head of the now docile, whimpering lizard, tying the arms of the jacket around the thing’s neck to make sure its eyes stayed covered. Only after he finished tightening the knot did he pick up his walkie-talkie and order in a medical team.

“I want this thing wrapped in duct tape like a mummy. Do NOT remove the covering from its eyes under any circumstances! Put it on my plane for the trip to the Nevada facility.”

Taking the ray pistol, Blunt exited the craft and climbed into his jeep. The trip to the airfield with the iguana youngster seemed to take an eternity.

***

Hisspat Zeck reclined on his flight couch watching a monitor where glowing blue dots, showing the global positions of his five scout craft on the planet, danced around the screen.

“Soon,” he thought with great satisfaction, “I’ll be able to start the journey home. It has been many years since any exploration team returned with news of success. I will be famous!”

Grinning, Zeck imagined how he would describe planet HG-281 to the fawning press.

“Yes, Ladies and Gentlemen, HG-281 is a grand find. The planet is suitable for habitation with just a weak race of odd beings infesting it. The animals call themselves Humans. They are easy to control or kill. In fact, the Humans are quite tasty when ground into a nice, gritty paste.” At the thought of eating, Zeck’s stomach growled with a petulant murmur.

Six months of local planet time his research team had observed, measured, captured, tested, killed and eaten the planet’s bipedal Humans. The animals were no match for the physical strength of his men and were subdued and captured with little effort. In fact, his soldiers had to be careful when handling the beings because of their weak, soft bodies. There were only a handful of Humans who had been able to resist mind control, and those had been eliminated quickly. Various weapons had been used to measure effectiveness for easy kill. The directional heat emitter and the cutter ray were best.

The Humans had no spaceflight capability, and what aircraft they used were so primitive they might as well have been paper toys flung into the air. Their power production was limited to burning a mineral they called coal or a liquid they called gasoline. Large military weapons were limited to explosive devices. The misguided Humans had banned chemical weapons for some odd reason. The only real danger was from their Level One atomic explosives. Chrysallamans had surpassed Level Fifty in atomics over 200 years ago. This planet was already part of the Chrysallaman Empire. Its inhabitants just didn’t know it yet.

Zeck’s mental musings were interrupted when one of the glowing blue dots turned dark, expanded slightly and reduced itself to a pulsing orange-tinted cinder.

Jerking erect, Hisspat’s fingers flew over his entry pad, keying symbols that flashed reports across his monitor indicating one of the scout craft had been damaged. He tried to contact DrrTrr Zennk, commander of the scout ship, UurBereck, but just as the commlink in Zennk’s combat vest linked up, showing him outside his craft reaching for what appeared to be a uniformed, combat Human crouching near him, an explosion destroyed the communicator and flash-blinded Zeck with its intensity.

Zeck’s look of stunned disbelief was almost comical. After pushing the communicator activating key several times without success, he became convinced the impossible had happened. DrrTrr Zennk was dead or at the very least his communicator was destroyed. The only way Zennk would have been outside the UurBereck was if he had landed to pick up more samples. Somehow the Humans had disabled the UurBereck, and it had crashed. Logic indicated the explosion shown by the communicator in its final transmission meant a planned attack.

Impossible! DrrTrr Zennk was one of his best commanders. Dedicated, ruthless, cunning. How had the Humans known where to find the UurBereck? They had no known technology capable of locating a Chrysallaman craft let alone the power to disable one. Yet there before his eyes was the proof.

Hisspat pushed the toggle that recalled all his remaining scouts from the planet back to his mother ship’s docks. His monitor showed the glowing blue dots begin rising from the planet’s surface in response. Only the orange-tinted cinder remained in the western area of the land mass called the United States by some of the captured Humans. Wrinkles formed in Zeck’s brow. He keyed a sequence of commands on his entry pad to search for crew life-signs onboard the UurBereck. Commlink data indicated no survivors. The young son of DrrTrr Zennk, WrrNrr Zennk, wasn’t equipped with a commlink since he was not a member of the military. Since all other crew members were dead, Hisspat decided WrrNrr Zennk was dead as well.

Planetary exploration protocol dictated that the loss of any scout craft required immediate recall of all remaining scouts to the mother ship, shutdown of any reconnaissance and return to Chrysallaman home base. The whole point of stealthy reconnaissance explorations was to discover new planets for possible colonization without alerting the planetary inhabitants.

Zeck was upset as he pondered the awful events of the last few minutes.

“No scouting mission in the history of Chrysallaman lore ever suffered a loss. Curses be heaped upon these Humans!” he thought as his large, black eyes narrowed.

He imagined the report that would be issued.

“Never in the history of the glorious Chrysallaman Empire has a scout ship been harmed, let alone destroyed, and Hisspat Zeck was the commander of that ill-fated mission. Zeck was stripped of all rank and privileges just before his humiliating death.”

Revenge against the Human worms for their atrocity would be so sweet, but Hisspat knew his duty. He must obey his masters. The need to obey your masters was ingrained in the psyche of all Chrysallamans. He would return to home-base and report. There was no choice. A shudder ran over his torso and his dark green skin turned a shade lighter.

“At least,” Zeck thought, “Stasis during the 30-year journey home will be a welcome reprieve to avoid thoughts of the ingenious ways the Emperor will attend to my death.”

Glancing down at his indicator board and seeing the four remaining scout ships had completed their docking maneuvers, Zeck flipped the warning lights and ten seconds later, a blurry, glowing fog enveloped the Chrysallaman mother ship VrrSilliac Xur. Engaging its lightspeed drive, it flashed away from the planet Earth toward its home world.