Chapter 9 Failing to Prepare is Preparing for Failure

We heard the droning of an alarm and the people in suits and ventilated masks started to down their tools and exit the room we were all peering into, in amazement, with our eyes transfixed on the dead specimen. I was glad the piece of glass between us and those adorned in the PPE now exiting the room was thick. The thought of being in the same room as the corpse sent shivers down my spine. 

"Come on, lets join the scientists in their debrief meeting," Agent Riley said to the group, not being phased by the alarm that was sounding. We all managed to peel our eyes away from the scene in front of us.

Agent Vox nodded at Agent Riley and ushered us all out of the room.

We were taken into a large modern looking office, with a large screen at one end of the room and impressive furnishings inside. There was a long rectangular thick glass table with dark wooden supporting legs, that looked to have been polished within an inch of its life. There were tall slick looking black chairs surrounding the glass table, with the same dark wood used on the table supports for the legs of the chairs.

We made ourselves comfortable and a Latinx woman appeared with a refreshments trolly and placed drinks and food down the centre of the table. As she left the room, she crossed paths with several people entering the room. I recognised Dr Dawkins, who was followed by two other men, who both looked at if they were in their fifties and a woman, seemingly in her forties. After the unknown individuals entered, Kai and Dr Derwent walked in. Smiles, introductions, and hellos followed.

Dr Dawkins introduced us all to Dr James Crick, Dr Fraser Watson, and Dr Rose Franklin. The Dr's were molecular biologists, biophysicists, and neuroscientists.

"Right, now introductions are out of the way, let's talk about our vaquita B533," Dr Dawkins stated.

"What?" Jen asked, before anyone else could get a word in edgeways "What is a vaquita?"

"The vaquita is a type of porpoise. It is said to be the most endangered marine mammal in the world," Dr Dawkins replied, without missing a beat.

"What Dr Dawkins means, is we appear to have another very rare creature in our midst, that has been named B533," Dr Franklin added, seemingly translating Dr Dawkins words for us.

"You'll get used to his ways if you're here long enough," Dr Crick added.

"The creature- B533- seems to have a very thick outer layer, I guess what we would refer to as its skin. Its eyes appear to be strong and thick also, very different from our own. On first managing to penetrate the skin and looking inside B533 a great deal of heat was released from the corpse, even after it has been dead for some hours. Which suggests the creature was used to cold temperatures with a body which was extremely insulated," Dr Derwent stated, seemingly wanting to move the process along and share information with myself, Lava, Beckett, Jen, Paley and Adelaide quickly and efficiently.

"Yes, they will be used to very cold temperatures on Proxima B," Paley casually added, "They need to be able to keep their internal organs warm, so their multiple hearts can pump blood around the body. And I think you should call the species the Anhurian's. It has a ring to it, don't you think?"

"How did you know they have more than one heart?" Dr Watson asks Paley, seemingly amazed.

"A good guess perhaps," Adelaide responded.

"We already knew that Proxima B was of significance," Lava added, "And we are aware of the temperatures experienced there, we were however not aware that there was life to be found there initially."

Paley appeared to remember himself, and Anhur's safety after others had stepped in to dampen the flames, he was fanning, "Well, erm, yes, it was of course an educated guess, knowing what I do about the planet." He seemed satisfied with his answer and nodded to himself. He had presumably forgotten the conversation he had had with me about not telling any members of authority anything specific.

"Well unbelievably Sir you are correct," Dr Franklin interjected, "B533 has two hearts."

"One is located in the head, what we would usually assume is the area for the brain and the other is located in the lower back area," Dr Watson added.

"We assume that this must offer quicker circulation and flow of their version of blood," Dr Crick said, "Helping them to survive in adverse conditions."

"So, how do we kill them?" Officer Beckett asked.

"B533 was shot many times. There are indentations on the outer skin from Glock 17 rounds, which did not penetrate the skin. A round from a L129A1 sharpshooters rifle managed to penetrate B533's head, piercing one of its two hearts. And two Hatton rounds were found in the back of B533 from an SAS soldiers Remington 870 Shotgun. One of those hit B533's second heart," Dr Dawkins answered.

Seemingly satisfied with that answer, Beckett asked another question, "And how fast did this thing move?"

Dr Dawkins exchanged looks with Agent Riley and Agent Vox and without a word being exchanged Riley stepped in, "We have footage of B533 when it went down. Agent Vox, please can you bring the footage up on the screen for us?"

Vox moved over to the TV and connected his – what appeared to be- military graded laptop using a cable of some sorts to the screen in front of us.

The footage that sprung onto the screen appeared to be footage from military personnels bodycams. Someone had edited the footage to show several differing angles of the assault on the creature, from different soldier's body cameras. On the footage, the creature had found itself in a beautiful countryside, surrounded by plush grass and wildlife. There were no roads to be seen nearby and no houses in view. The creature seemed to be wandering, maybe scavenging for food. It didn't look as if it was moving that quickly. Not as quickly as Jen had made out from her encounter with Anhur and B533's kind inside the skyscraper like vessel in the desert. But it was not moving so slow as to appear injured at this point in the recording. There was some whispering and exchanges over the radio from the soldiers, who appeared to be confirming their plan of attack on the creature. There was a silence for a split second then the silence was filled by the sound of gun shots. The creature started to run but was being hindered by all the bullets flying into it, making its run seem to be less in a straight line and more as if the creature was swaying side to side as it ran. There was a panicked voice over the radio, it seemed the creature must have been heading too close to some of the soldiers. Suddenly several people in camouflage clothing stood up and started to run out of the creature's way, shooting as they moved. There was a huge cracking sound like thunder and the beast fell to the ground. At that point the bodycam footage switched to one of the soldiers near to the alien body who, with a few others, ran over the B533's body. It was motionless, and they declared it as deceased.

"Was it lost? It seems like a strange location to be in," Lava asked once the clip had finished. It was a valid question, surely the creature could have caused a lot more carnage in a heavily populated area with plenty of buildings to weave in and out of, away from the army.

"We are not sure at this point," Dr Dawkins responded, "We are not sure what their motivations are, and we are unsure of how much of a threat they are. And any attempt at communicating with the unidentified objects at the sites we have identified – one of which you all visited – along Latitude 38.8880 has not yielded any success. And now there are additional UFO's that have appeared within the last 9 hours or so. Whatever is going to happen, we believe it will happen soon. We are currently working on the theory that the original UFOs were waiting on re-enforcements before descending on heavily populated areas of the globe."

"We hate to admit it, but there is still a lot we cannot be sure of," Agent Vox added looking at Lava and then Officer Beckett.

Kai spoke next, "What are we to do next? We can't just sit around waiting, twiddling our thumbs."

"We want to help. We want to be out in the field," Officer Beckett added, looking at Dr Dawkins and then Agent Riley and Agent Vox, assuming they were the ones to make the decisions around here.

"What are your experiences with weapons and combat training?" Riley asked, opening the question out to everyone in the room in response to Becketts statement.

Jen scoffed at the questions, then realised that this was a legitimate question. Beckett turned to look over at Jen and raised an eyebrow, "I take that to mean you have zero experience Jen."

"Yes, that's right. I haven't even held a gun before, let alone fired one," Jen replied.

"Obviously I am well versed in the use of firearms and being in the line of fire," Beckett said "What about you Henry? Any gun training from back in the day?"

Dr Derwent shook his head, "No, not the type of guns you're referring too Officer Beckett. The only shooting I have done is clay pigeon shooting back in my younger years."

"Ah, me too, what a lovely coincidence," Paley said from his seat next to Henry. Paley swooped towards Dr Derwent, flinging an arm over Henry's shoulder in solidarity. Paley then turned to look past Henry, "What about you my dear?" he asked, peering at Lava who was sat the other side of Dr Derwent.

"Well, I have had some basic training with weapons, but I didn't serve in the IDF," Lava responded.

"What is the IDF? Please do enlighten me." Paley asked quizzically.

"It stands for the Israel Defence Forces. As an Arab, I didn't have to serve."

"Ah right, I see," Paley replied nodding to himself as he seemed to be doing quite often as of late.

I supposed it was my turn to contribute to the conversation, I added "I have no experience with weapons or combat."

To which Vox replied, "I thought you might, you know, with the culture around rap and guns."

Adelaide very quickly retorted, "No one cares for your little microaggressions young man, least of all me."

Agent Vox quickly nodded and lowered his head, waiting for someone else to fill the silence, most probably so he could quickly forget the exchange.

Agent Riley filled that space, Vox right-hand woman running to his rescue to move the conversation along. Perhaps feeling his embarrassment Riley said, "Follow me, we are going to help you all familiarise yourselves, or re-familiarise yourselves in the case of some of you, with some weapons and protective clothing. Now I am not saying that there is an expectation for you to shoot or kill anything, but we must prepare in case we need you on the ground, at the heart of something that could be hostile and dangerous."

I was enjoying seeing this new honest and cooperative Riley.

"Okay, let's go," Officer Beckett responded, eager to take us into his realm of work, his comfort zone, his playground.

There were some final words and some goodbyes at the lab and the exchange of phone numbers, military provided numbers of course. Dr Derwent and Kai had to quite literally be prised away from conversing with Dr Dawkins, Dr Crick, Dr Watson, and Dr Franklin. It was quite apparent that they would have been able to stay there and talk about the alien specimen for days. But there were more pressing matters to deal with. We had to be prepared for a possible full-blown invasion.

We all left the place where B533's body lay, unbeknown to the surrounding residents. Residents who were oblivious to the fact that whilst they were going about their daily business, in the building down the street there was an alien body being prodded and probed.

We headed to an unknown location. This time we did not travel by car, we travelled via a domestic flight to Gatwick airport. Once there we were met by people dressed in military uniforms and taken by car to our destination. Adelaide requested to be exempt from any quick-fire training that we were to undertake, as she was a pacifist. Instead, Adelaide opted to go with Agent Riley and Agent Vox to join some of the data analysis team members who were stationed at our unknown location in another part of the building, to help where she could.

Once we had all managed to shower and change into the clothes we were given, very basic white t-shirts and black material trousers, accompanied by some training shoes, we were directed into a large room. The room reminded me of a more polished and better funded school hall where students would have physical education lessons If it was raining outside, and they could not use the school playing field. The room had a soft foam like flooring and light grey walls. There were two other doors, besides the one we had come in through, which lead off into other rooms.

We made our way through one of the two doors on the other side of the room. The area we entered was well lit, and about half the size of the previous one. At one end of the room there was a long wooden table with weapons on, almost reaching from one side of the room to the other. And at the other end of the space, the opposite side to the table, were several hanging targets, that looked like they had been used for shooting practice at some earlier point. As we made our way over to the weapons, we could see there were two army officers stood behind the long table.

We all made our way over to the two strangers, minus Beckett who was nowhere to be seen at this point. Perhaps this was too basic even for him.

"Hi everyone. I am Lieutenant Knightly, and this is Lieutenant Briggs," Knightly turned to look at Lieutenant Briggs and he nodded and said hello to all of us newcomers.

Knightly continued, "I have been informed that most of you are coming to us today with minimal or no experience with handling weapons. So, if we are going too fast at any point or you want something repeating then please let us know. To begin with, we will be handling the weapons with no live rounds in."

"Thank God, I don't want to accidentally shoot someone," Jen said, then when we all turned to look at her, she blushed, "Did I just say that out loud." Lava offered Jen a smile and nodded.

"Right let's break into two groups and spread out a little. You, you, and you with Lieutenant Briggs" Knightly barked, pointing at me, Jen, and Kai. "And you, you and you with me" she continued pointing at Lava, Dr Derwent, and Paley.

Lieutenant Briggs did not waste any time, he went straight into explaining the weapons in front of him. "This is a nine-millimetre, you want to hold the magazine, there is a spring in there, with tension in it" he lifts the weapon and demonstrates as he provides instructions. "This magazine holds fifteen rounds. When loading the magazine, be careful, ensure that the flat side of the round is on the palm of your hand and is aligned to the flat side of the magazine. Push down and then push back." Lieutenant Briggs made the process seem quite easy and smooth, but I had no doubt it would be anything but that for me.

"Ok, grab a firearm," Briggs continued, "Now I am going to show you how to load the magazine into the magazine well of the firearm." He paused so all three of us could pick up a nine-millimetre weapon. "So, when holding the firearm hold the back strap of the firearm to the flat side of the magazine. Give it a nice tap on the bottom. Release the slide to push a round into the chamber. In this case we will pretend it slides in until we feel more confident handling the weapon. Then it should be ready to fire." Lieutenant Briggs aims his weapon at the target opposite him, on the other side of the room.

After several hours, and a few breaks in-between we were able to move to the next stage. We all gathered around, back in the room we had been training in. "Right, we are going to try to get comfortable using 9mm snap cap dummy rounds and shoot the targets," Lieutenant Knightly declared.

We all spent hours getting used to holding a weapon, aiming, and shooting and anticipating the kick back from the gun. My aim was nothing spectacular and neither was my eyesight, but I managed to be at the very least mediocre in my efforts.

That evening we were all extremely warn out and ready for some much-needed sleep. We met back up with Adelaide who filled us all in on what had happened on her end. Later, we were also joined by Officer Beckett who had been somewhere else, working with some familiar faces as he put it. He was eager to hear how our first day of training had gone.

Makeshift dorms had been made up on a few floors of the building we were in, and we were ushered into a large room with fourteen single beds and shown where the toilets were on that floor we were sleeping on.

No sooner had my head hit the pillow and my eyes closed, I was asleep. It was a sheer rarity for me to fall asleep so quickly. All that focusing on the firearms targets had taken it out of me, both physically and mentally. I welcomed the sleep with open arms.