I remember that AlphaProgDes did this some time ago, and I thought it was fun, so I'm starting another one. It's pretty simple, you just add a paragraph or two to the story I write here. You can't suicide or kill the character off, and the scope focuses on a bomber pilot....with that said, here goes:

The bomber was holding steady at 20,000 feet, poised to strike. It was a rather quite day, with no major offensives going on. The pilot wasn't very comfortable with what he might have to do next. High command had issued the orders, and obviously they thought it was alright to use the weapon, but somehow, it still didn't seem right. The final go-ahead had yet to come, and the pilot was hoping he wouldn't have to carry out his mission; that somehow, high command would decide against it, even though it seemed very unlikely. The pilot looked out the cockpit; the five moons were clearly visible, but starting to fade as the sun rise came through. Then the radio crackled to life.

"All units, everest, repeat, everest. Good luck and god speed"

The pilot tensed: everest was the final go-ahead code word. The mission was a go. The pilot banked the aircraft towards the city. He flicked the bay doors switch to open. He entered target coordinates, and waited for a confirmation. He was ready to go....

...

The pilot tensed: everest was the final go-ahead code word. The mission was a go. The pilot banked the aircraft towards the city. He flicked the bay doors switch to open. He entered target coordinates, and waited for a confirmation. He was ready to go....

I woke up in a cold sweat. Another nightmare; they had become more frequent, probably due to the stress of the decision I was being expected to make in the next few days. Perhaps they originated from my guilt, the creator of a weapon so terrible it had become known simply as "The Weapon", and nobody dared speak of the terrible consequences of such a weapon ever being used.

I walked out through the door to my quarters into the corridor, and noted that it must still be night, as the lights were still dimmed. I decided to make one last check to the control system, concerned that it wouldn't perform properly tomorrow. As I walked down the corridor, half asleep still, i stepped in something warm. When I looked down my heart skipped a beat, and it took a second to realize I was standing in a pool of blood, which was oozing out from under the door to another set of living quarters. I instinctively reached down for my sidearm, which wasn't at my side of course, since I had checked it in before going to sleep. Before I had time to raise the alarm, I was hit by a burning sensation in my lower back, and collapsed into blackness.

"Sir, sir! Get up sir! You're alright"

I got up, someone had raised the alarm. The young ensign looked terrified of something.

"Sir, it was another enemy attack! They must have cloaked just outside the perimeter!"

"Sir, sir! Get up sir! You're alright"

I got up, someone had raised the alarm. The young ensign looked terrified of something.

"Sir, it was another enemy attack! They must have cloaked just outside the perimeter!"

What happened? Who shot me?

The ensign suddenly turned red. He was a young lad; in less violent times, a boy his age would be considered a child, and to be fair, he had set his rifle to non lethal.

"Sorry Sir, it was dark, and..."

"Ensign, we've been infiltrated and one of the research assistants is probably dead. Give me your sidearm."

He obeyed, and removed his sidearm and handed it to me. I gingerly stood up and Just then, an armed response team arrived along with a medic. We both stood back against the wall with our arms over our heads. The officer shouted at me and the ensign to stay still. The ensign and I both realized that the assassin might still be in the room, while we had been stood nearby talking about it.

The officer barked at the lead soldier in the response team to cover the door. He reached out to swipe his access card over the lock, and it slid open. Before he had time to give any more orders, he was thrown back against the wall, accompanied by a sickening thud and the sound of ribs breaking. A brownish blur shot out of the room and disappeared down the corridor. I just had time to catch a glimpse of mammalian looking hind legs and a small hairless tail. The lead soldier and the man next to him opened fire with their phase rifles. I stepped away from the wall and looked down at the sidearm which I was still clutching, and turned off the safety switch, but when I looked back up there was no sign of the creature. The officer was still barely conscious,

"Fall back!"

He tried to stand but stumbled, so two of the soldiers picked him up. The two men who had opened fire continued to cover the corridor, walking backwards and keeping their rifles pointed in the direction the creature had moved, while we ran, or stumbled, as fast as we could in the opposite direction. We got to the door where the corridor connected to the main artrium and I pressed the open switch. Nothing happened. We were trapped in the small ring of corridors with the creature.

The creature's deep growl echoed off the walls and rippled slowly through my chest. Even though I was armed and a few others with me, we did not know how long we could hold the creature off. How thick was its skin? Was it virtually invincible? How did it get here? These questions flooded my mind but I knew they were only distracting me. I quickly discarded my thoughts and focused on the unpredictable situation at hand. Weren't we prepared for situations like these? Didn't they tell us to always 'expect the unexpected'?


Silence. Terrifying silence. No one was breathing; they were holding their breath in fear. Cherish it. The creature had not made a noise. Then a ground-rattling force shook us and a metal-breaking sound pierced the emptiness. Sparks of electricity shot from the roof, traveling quickly with a dissipating charge. Lights cut off. The power was gone.

"Switch on head-lights!" one of the men ordered. With a few clicks, our battery-powered helmet lights flickered to life. Down the corridor, we figured out what had made the noise.

The creature had escaped through the several-layers of military-grade plated ceiling.

The officer was still injured, but conscious. He looked at me without saying anything. I was now the commanding officer.

"Escort the medic to inspect that man's quarters, so we know what we are dealing with."

They paused for a second, then obeyed. Since the door and the hole in the roof were the only ways out, it was clear that the creature was no longer with us. The medic and I entered the room, and were surprised to find that the creature had made a very clean kill. It must have been preparing to eat the body, or perhaps leave some propaganda. The unamed creatures which we had been sharing this planet with, in an uneasy peace, were a complicated race of civilized animals, known to eat their prisoners and, when pressed for resources, lower ranking members of their own society.

"Its target must be the control system in the hanger, we need to get there now."

I had a security detail sent to the B67 bombers, just to make sure that the weapon was secure. We were fairly certain that the creature was one of the 'Chameleons' as we had named them. They were capable of cloaking a lot like a chameleon. It had probably gotten in to the perimeter that way. They were probing us again, just to see what we could do. I still couldn't quite get over the weight of the decision bearing down on me. I couldn't think about that now though. We needed to get together a specialized chameleon tracker unit to sweep the area for anymore infiltrations, and to ensure that this one didn't get through.

By now, the entire base had woken up and radios were abuzz with a combination of panic and excitement. For the next hour I received radio communications from squads in each sector indicating no sign of the creature. I had the wounded officer escorted to the medical bay, and we sadly wrapped the dead research assistant in a body bag and sent him to the freezer. There was no time for a funeral. I had an incoming message from high command. While another young ensign, who's name I could never remember, sadly cleaned the blood from the floor, a couple of soldiers carefully catalogued every item in the research assistant's quarters. It seemed that nothing was amiss. So was this just a probe of our security? A test of our behaviour? Or did the creature arrive here by mistake? We knew little about our enemy at this point, other than that they liked to shoot down, on sight, any aircraft we sent within a few miles of their single massive city, and that everything was then scavenged from the crash site.

The message from High Command was cryptic and panicky. We weren't the only ones who were attacked.
A member of our unit approached me. He was only one rank beneath my own, or at least before I became commanding officer.

"What is your title?" I asked.

"Brigadier Keegan Palimer, sir!" He saluted, "I've received news that all of the passages to the hanger have been completely warped. A few men have seemed to be inside the passages when it happened. There's no way to recover the bodies, or what's left of them anyways..."

Damnit.

This was definitely fully planned out. Somehow this creature got into our high-security base. Somehow that beast was trained to get to our hanger. Somehow I was going to stop it.

"All entrances to the hanger are closed?" I asked Palimer.

"Yes, sir."


Our facility was multi-level and made of incredible material. It would take a lot of firepower to make an opening for only a few men to enter. The hanger was located south of our current location; almost in the center.

"I need three squads to follow me and we'll need all of our explosives. We're getting in from the top."

We climbed to the top of the hangar. We were all suited up in exoskeletons designed to help with finding chameleons. The demolitions expert, a lieutenant, call sign Delta, placed the C4 explosives. We tried to get as clear as we could on top of a hangar building. The explosion shook the entire foundations. I told the men to drop in, but to be very careful of their fire; we couldn't risk losing the B67s if the situation with the race of creatures were to get out of hand. We dropped in one by one.

"I got movement, nine o clock" said Delta.

I whirled around and saw the creature, uncloaked, ripping out the circuitry from the one of many control systems. I raised my side arm, and fired. The anaesthetic round slammed into the chameleon, and it fell away from the control system.

"Check the system, and sweep the area for any more of those things" I ordered.

The soldiers gave the all clear. We approached the control system.

"Is that chameleon dead" asked that same ensign, whose name is escaping me again.

"No, just knocked out, conventional bullets don't do anything, you have to put an extra punch in them, or use a phase rifle" replied Delta.

"Sir, this thing's disabled the defense grid of the perimeter, it'll take at least a couple of hours to fix it" said a technician.

Things were getting out of hand. The radar operators were also reporting signs of unidentified, slow moving aircraft headed this way, probably transports of some kind. Then, the first artillery shells began to fall...