It lasted until he heard one of his men scream and looked up to see the last remaining alien tear into Sergeant Harris and rip him apart with inhuman strength. Illuminated by the falling tower of flame behind them, the creature hacked and sliced through Harris’s flesh like a madman even after he’d stopped shrieking, right until the pointed warhead of a Spitfire missile hit them both and stopped it. And if this detonation looked a bit different than the other two… well, Brennan was too distracted to care right then and so were his men.

THUS ended the first encounter between humans and extraterrestrial life-forms, with twenty-one dead and four injured American soldiers, a total of thirty-nine dead aliens (including six armor hosts and five bone riders), a spaceship blown to smithereens, and a huge hole in the ground. All in all, it could’ve gone better.

FOUR

IN CONTRAST to popular belief, Area 51 was not the place where the US

military stowed alien remains and UFO wrecks. That was primarily because there hadn’t been any until the Widowmaker and her crew met their end in the Texas hill country. That didn’t mean the military didn’t have bases equipped to deal with the unexpected. In the wake of the crash and subsequent confrontation, it was quickly decided to transport the alien bodies to the closest of these facilities. This happened to be Camp Jackson, located in the New Mexico desert north of Silver City. Nicknamed the Basement because most of the site was hidden deep underground, Camp Jackson could provide more than just safe storage. It was staffed with some of the finest scientific personnel employed by the United States military and housed a battalion of Army Rangers. Secure enough, the Powers That Be concluded.

Moving the alien remains took priority for the simple reason that organic matter is almost always prone to disintegration. Flying was out of the question since there was no telling what effects the changing of air pressure would have on the already somewhat porous cadavers. Instead, the bodies were carefully transferred into hazmat containers, labeled, and loaded into the cushioned backs of three military transport vehicles while the Army set up a perimeter around the crash site. The crater itself couldn’t be approached yet because the ship hadn’t merely exploded, it had melted into a steaming, highly corrosive mess and was still in the process of dissolving further. So far it had been impossible to collect samples and it didn’t look like there’d be enough left in the end to study.

The convoy transporting the bodies consisted of three cargo and two gun trucks. It left as soon as its top secret freight was secured, but by the time it made its way slowly along the winding gravel and back roads to Route 173, the sun was setting, and when they finally merged onto I-10

West, it was pitch dark. In the cargo areas of the first two vehicles, the