Some men get the world, others get ex hookers from Arizona.

Right now, it felt like I'd gotten screwed out of both. These aliens had a technological advantage, a tactical advantage, and for all I knew, a numerical advantage. I'd dealt with that sort of scenario before, but then I had other advantages. I'd had surprise on her side, that went to the aliens this time. I'd had intelligence support, knowledge of her enemy. Once again, this advantage went to the aliens. The only advantage I had was the possibility that the aliens would underestimate them.

I leaned against the wall of the corridor, I needed to stop having these moments, this was the fourth time today that I'd let my mind wander down that particular dark corridor. Then it hit me, just like it always did, the transition was seamless. One second I was in the hallway, the next I was standing in that phone booth. It was dark, I was the woman in the suit again. She was speaking into the phone, but I couldn't understand what she was saying.

There was a glare to the side, and the woman looked up to see two bright orbs of light some ways off. The woman ignored it, and went back to her conversation. Then there was a massive crash and the woman looked up again, just in time to see the lights had slammed into a car, sending it rolling. The orbs, now clearly visible as headlights, whirled around as the car they belonged to went into a tailspin.

She moved to get out of the way, but wasn't fast enough. The car hit her, pinning her against the metal of the phone booth. And then suddenly I wasn't seeing from the woman's perspective, I was flying through the night air, to where the rolled car lay on its side. I flew straight into the little four year old clutching a stuffed dragon and screaming for her father. I flew right into my younger self.

And then it was over, and I was back in the hallway, leaning against the wall. "Fuck," I shook my head trying to clear my mind. I hadn't had a waking attack in more than a year. I hadn't had the dreams in a few months. "Fuck," I said again as I pushed myself off the wall and started walking again. I really needed another tour of this place, one that wasn't impaired by Ambien.

I passed a door marked, training area, in the large block letters military organizations tended towards, perfect.

I slid my ID through the card reader and stepped inside.

Two things surprised me at that moment, one of them shouldn't have. The first was the sheer size of the facility. It was a massive cavern, two football fields if I had to hazard a guess, divided in two, a firing range to the right, a space for physical training on the left. The firing range ran the length of the room with a rangemaster's station for checking weapons in and out on the wall near me and on the opposite end was another tunnel with a sign above it reading, SIMULATIONS. Something to investigate later, mock-ups most likely, but considering who I was dealing with, it could be something more exotic. The other side held a multilevel gym, the bottom floor held all of the standard gym equipment surrounding a CQB arena, the floor above that held a glass floored running track that encircled the exercise area. Against the wall opposite to the door was a tunnel marked, POOL, and a door on the leftmost wall was labelled, LOCKER/SAUNA/LOUNGE.

This level of spending on leisure facilities was something that one could find for professional sports teams, not military units. This level of construction was also not something that happens in a day or week or even a month. Our benefactors had been establishing this facility for quite some time.

The second thing that struck me was how busy the facilities were. Almost every station on the range was occupied, odd thought, there wasn't nearly as much noise as there should have been. The physical side was less occupied, but there were two men sparring in the ring with two onlookers waiting their turn while others worked at weight stations and a few ran laps on the track.

"Damn posh setup, ain't it." The voice was deep, masculine, southern English accent, and right fucking behind me.

"I very nearly dislocated your jaw." I wasn't joking, there are very, very, few people capable of sneaking up on me.

"Easy girly, no need to lose the plot, I'm just takin' the piss out of you." My newfound stalker stepped around to face me. He was taller than me, probably eight inches at six two, if my math was right, and it usually was, very large, I'd eyeball him at somewhere between 160 and 190 pounds. He seemed older too, having a few more lines on his face and a bit more gray in his hair than Bradford or the other soldiers that I'd seen. He looked to be in his upper fifties or lower sixties, ancient by military standards, particularly if he was British enlisted, and he did not sound like an officer.

From his conduct, it wasn't hard to tell he didn't know who I was, or he just didn't give much of a shit. If he was here and he was as old as he looked, there was something that kept him from being put out to pasture. Still, no need to make enemies on the first day of school, I extended my hand, "Knight, US army special forces."

He accepted the hand shake with a firm grip, none of the bone crushing nonsense you got from fresher blood. "Thomas Holmes, British SAS, call me Church."

"Bit old for this aren't you?" I offered a small half smile to take any sting out of it.

"Got to give you kids some adult supervision, come on, I'll introduce you to some of the lads." He turned and gestured for me to follow him towards the physical training side and the CQB ring. "MacLeish, MacGill, Tsang, Taylor, listen up lads, this is Knight, she's new blood and she's a bloody yank, this is Echo squad on the books, but we call it Bastard squad." He pointed to each as he named them, MacGill and MacLeish were the two that had been in the ring, both had fiery red hair and rugby player builds, Tseng was a small, but athletic looking, Asian woman. Taylor was a tall blonde man with a distinctly surfer vibe to him

"Interesting choice of name," there was most likely a story behind it.

MacLeish stepped out of the ring, picking a water bottle up off the floor and taking a quick sip, "It's not what you think, the sword, not Church."

"Shut your trap you bloody jock," Church growled, but he was smiling.

"Or what, you'll gum me to death gramps?" He shook his head and laughed as he turned to me, "Name's Duncan MacLeish, or Excalibur, SAS by way of the Royal Marines" He jerked a thumb back at the other redhead, "That's the other Duncan, call him Caliban, real chatterbox that one" MacGill nodded, but didn't say anything. "He came up with me. Yo, Frosty, Surfer Boy, you're up."

It was the short Asian this time, "Yuki Tsang, callsign Snowflake" she cut a glare at the first of the Duncans, "Joint Task Force 2, through the Royal Canadian Air Force." There was something about her eyes, it wasn't necessarily cold per se, but there was something clinical there, calculating.

The Surfer stepped up, a towel draped over his neck, "Name's Noah Taylor, call me Dart Special Air Service Regiment. Forgive my mates, what are you coming out of?"

All from Commonwealth countries, interesting, I'd have to meet more than one squad before I jumped to any conclusions though. "United States special ops, Intelligence officer officially."

"And unofficially, you're a friend of the Family, that the make of things?" Church was eyeing me differently now, no doubt I wasn't the first black operator he'd met.

"About right," considering where we were and what we were dealing with, I'd say we were past the little secrets at this point.

"Like our new commander then, all the blethering is saying she's some kind of black bag killer, clever one too, by the scuttlebutt." MacLeish definitely didn't know who I was, "Heard they call her the Reaper, wrote the notice for a couple of hundred blokes, not all of 'em on the level. She ran that business in Qom all on her own."

The exact number of confirmed kills for me was 234, a hundred and twenty of those were done using a sniper rifle, sixty using medium to short range firearms, twenty five using knives and swords, twelve using explosives, thirteen were faked accidents, four with my bare hands. Ninety were in the same eight month period.

That may seem like a lot, and it is, but there are two reasons confirmed kills per person in militaries are so low, one is that they usually operate in groups and it is often hard to distinguish who exactly killed who, that's why snipers rank so high, it's easy for us to keep track. The other is that in warfare, the goal of an army is rarely to kill enemy combatants, it's almost always a step in that goal, the overall objective is to force the enemy to retreat or surrender. For the past seven years, the end goal of almost every operation I've been a part of has been assassination of high value targets.

"She headed up the task force for the Qom thing and provided sniper support for the main team hitting the enrichment facility, she wasn't alone. I was on that op, it was multinational." All not technically lies.

"Yeah, well our guys in the new VAJA are saying they talk about her like she's some kind of bogeywoman, say she personally put a bullet in the Grand Ayatollah's head." That part was true, but only because I was the best sniper available at the time. It was part of a long period of heavy instability in the Mideast following the collapse of Iran and the domino effects in Iraq, Afghanistan, Pakistan, and Turkmenistan.

Before I could respond alarms began to blare and a voice emerged from hidden speakers. "ECHO TEAM, REPORT TO HANGER BAY ALPHA, ECHO TEAM TO HANGAR BAY ALPHA. X-RAY ACTIVITY DETECTED, REPEAT, X-RAY ACTIVITY DETECTED."

Everyone in the room stopped what they were doing and looked up to listen. The members of Echo team had turned solemn as tombstones, as far as they knew, this was a death sentence.

Church looked at me, "Well, guess it's our turn into the breach, nice meeting you lass." He looked at his team, "Alright, you heard em' Bastards, time to show those ugly alien bastards our hearts, and show them theirs."

The other members of the team didn't seem quite enthused about the prospect, but they managed a decent "Yes Sir!"

As they said their goodbyes and filed out, Bradford's voice came through my earpiece, "Commander we need you in Mission Control."

I tapped the button to speak. "I'm on my way."

This would not be like last time.

…

Pulling another one out of the old files, for new readers sorry about the sudden perspective change, but I wrote the original chapters a long time ago and in that time I've switched from third person to mostly first person perspectives.

Either way R&R people.