The person who initiated the briefing was Commander General Girsang, who explained the whole situation from the start of the operation to our current situation to the whole team. He highlighted three important things – the occurrence of a new type of flying and invisible alien unless splashed with water, the occurrence of a new type of an alien combat vehicle, and the reactivation of the volcano. When he had done with the overview upon those highlighted things, Commodore Quentin proceeded to give a more in-depth explanation upon the sudden miscommunication.
He began by briefly telling the whole team the summary of what had happened during the extraterrestrial terror in Chicago three years earlier, and specifically emphasized the necessity to aim right at the barrels of the aliens' firearms should they use one, unless the teams' firearms were chambered in a cartridge powerful enough to penetrate through a concrete wall. When he had finished with his explanation, he continued to explain about what E.X.T.I.R.T had known so far about the Beetle Hovering Object.
Based on the characteristics of the track trace that had been created accidentally by the object and had been informed by me, the Ballistics Division and the Materials Engineers of E.X.T.I.R.T had estimated that the force created by the 'invisible wheels' of the object was no less than the force from the muzzle energy of a .30-06 ball cartridge in a ten feet or roughly three meters range.
He told us that he would not waste our time by explaining the science, but that energy was more than enough to destroy our hand palms, and therefore should we see one without its camouflage on it would be best to just avoid and evade, unless they could completely guarantee that they could take down the object quickly. As for the matter on how to take down the hovering object in an extremely emergency situation, he left the explanation spot to me, which left me a little nervous since I had no preparation whatsoever to explain.
"Remember, you are currently not to teach the Basics of Naval Engineering class in Rhode Island…" Commodore Quentin told me through my mask radio as he walked past me.
"No worries, sir." I responded to him quickly by as I gently tapped the mask headband while trying to hold my laughter.
I skipped detailed introduction about myself to whole team since I believed it would not be that necessary considering our current condition, and thus I immediately bridged from what Commodore Quentin had mentioned about the new hovering object and correlated it back a little towards what we had found out during our crisis back in Chicago. I mentioned that back then, there was also a similar and even larger counterpart of the object, which we called it as the Narwhal Flying Object.
I also mentioned briefly about both the similarities and differences among both objects, but I heavily emphasized two things – their ability to technically melt or rather disintegrate human beings from each of their large protruding 'horn', and their weakness when they were shot at the parts responsible for their movements. Therefore, I warned them with a serious note that they were not to face directly right in front of their parts, no matter the situation.
As for their weaknesses, I mentioned that if we were equipped with a firearm of larger cartridge like .30-06, then it would be no problem to shoot straight at their weakness points. However since I realized that there was apparently none among the whole team who was equipped with such weaponry, I asked on the spot if they had carried some sort of an explosive. It made me glad when one of them told me that they had carried a good numbers of C-3 and pineapple grenades with them.
With that in mind, I could easily continue to explain what was needed to do next in order to take down the objects. I told them that just before we had rendezvoused with each other, I had unexpectedly blew out three out of four of the wheel fenders of one of the object by throwing a mine dynamite towards them. I also pointed out that it was imperative to throw the explosives as close as possible to the wheel fenders because as I remembered clearly that the dynamite had at least nearly touched one of the wheel fenders right before it exploded.
When I had finished explaining about the objects further to the whole team, Commander General Girsang then proceeded with the conclusion of what we had to do next. First of all, the three of us would be to continue our way on past the rift, and to go to the volcano peak before we would then try to find out the thing that had caused the whole incident. However, under no circumstances at all that we were to directly engage the thing once we had located it.
Secondly, the backup team would be to stay right there on the groups of small rocks where they would stay low right there until the three of us had found out the cause of the whole incident and descended back from the peak. The whole team would also be under no circumstances at all to engage any nearing and visible aliens, even if they were within the melee range. As for the third, and last thing, especially for the three of us and both Commodore Quentin and himself, we would be to immediately report through the radio in our masks should we saw one or more hovering objects.
With the briefing had been completed, the backup team quickly and silently moved towards each of their designated points before taking a spot to camouflage themselves among the rocky surroundings. Commodore Quentin and Commander General Girsang also proceeded to move out, but then Jessica suddenly asked Commodore Quentin a favor.
"Commodore, may I ask something?" she said in a rather hurried tone.
"Go ahead, Miss…" he responded in his unique hoarse voice.
She asked if he did not mind keeping the three artifacts that we had found out as she also quickly took them out and showed them all to him. I could not see his facial expression, but apparently he became quite awestruck by those ancient traces of prehistoric lives. And as I had thought, Commander General Girsang seemed to also bat his eyes towards those artifacts. I had first expected Commander General Girsang to suggest if it would be better that he held them. But, to the least of my expectation, he did not seem to mind when Commodore Quentin agreed and took them all with care.
I was rather confused though, as I thought that Commander General Girsang would somewhat at least show an objection and mentioned something about keeping their own national prehistoric artifacts. Either both him and Commodore Quentin might have thought that it could be some sort of a prove for the alien's reason of invasion and therefore should be on the hands of E.X.T.I.R.T, or that they might have the permission from the National Board of Archeologists in the first place.
On the other hand, Jessica also seemed to have something else in her mind that had made her decided to give them to Commodore Quentin, a flag officer of the Navy of a foreign country rather than a general officer of her own country's elite armed forces. That said, since she did not show even a single hint of regret or forced in doing so, I tried my best to just shrug it off, at least for the moment. The three of us then immediately made ourselves be on our way to the newly formed rift, with a completely clear and detailed objective in our minds…