Project Covenant

Overview

Project Covenant was founded shortly after World War II when an alien vessel landed in New Mexico, followed shortly thereafter by a landing outside of Kapustin Yar ("Russia's Roswell") in the USSR. People had seen what horrors man had ushered into existence just a few years before with the introduction of nuclear weapons; the possibility that one superpower or the other might gain the upper hand through researching alien tech was unthinkable. Nuclear weapons were already out of the bag, and there was nothing they could do to stop proliferation and an eventual arms race. But what if one of these technologies made even nuclear weapons useless? Sometimes the most threatening weapon is an impenetrable shield...

A small group of spies, scientists, military leaders and politicians broke their oaths of loyalty and founded a new Covenant for the sake of humanity, vowing that the weapons and technologies they discovered would never be used by men to conquer men, and also to build a secret military infrastructure--an extraterrestrial combat force--to repel a full-blown alien invasion should that threat someday come to Earth.

Since 1947, Project Covenant has been responsible for investigating possible alien activity, covering up XT influences and hoarding and protecting XT technology. If there ever were any Men in Black, these guys most closely fit the bill.

Project Covenant's response protocol was drawn up from information teased from the data banks of multiple alien computers from several ships that landed and were captured. The alien strategy became known as the SAIC doctine: surveillance, assimilation, infiltration, corruption. This method of invasion took years to complete, so the founders planned to take advantage of that window. They focused much of their efforts on counterintelligence and intelligence-gathering, hoping that if they could at least spot the first two steps in the XTs plan, they might stop the last two. During this window between detecting an invasion attempt and alien boots on the ground, the founders figured they would have years to come out of the shadows, fill their ranks and get a fully staffed force ready to fight the enemy.

These plans, however, did not account for the fact that the aliens (the Collective, from whom all the captured ships had been stolen) were in the process of changing their tactics, and the data in their ships' computers did not convey this updated information.

As they say, "You're always ready to fight the last war again."

Project Founding

The following history of Project Covenant is recounted by Agent Lillian Kjelstad, custodian of Bunker November

The inspiration for the project began before the alien ships began to land on earth, though those events really gave the founders motivation to turn their concerns into a reality. With the Manhattan Project bringing nuclear weapon technology into reality, many in the scientific community had grave concerns about how the control of such destructive weapons would change the world.

Some scientists such as Dr. J. Robert Oppenheimer were approached by this concerned group, but Oppenheimer plunged forward with his research regardless, driven by the perceived need to end World War II. The weapons were not developed until after VE day, and were too late to be used against Germany, which Oppenheimer was reportedly disappointed by. He and many of his colleagues were grateful to be able to contribute to the war effort, but were "very upset" when a second weapon was deployed to bomb Nagasaki, feeling it was unnecessary. They naively realized then that control over the technology they had discovered had slipped out of their hands, if they ever had any control of it at all. Oppenheimer slowly crept back to those concerned scientist with a much-humbled view of his own importance.

Within public circles, though the father of the atomic bomb found a certain scientific credibility, and Oppenheimer used this clout to lobby for international control of atomic power and to avert nuclear proliferation. He met with many other scientists and foreign interests to further these aims. With the start of the Cold War, the first alien spacecraft began landing on Earth, complicating matters immensely. Oppenheimer, along with many noted scientists were called to examine wreckage. Seeing what they had on their hands--honest-to-God extraterrestrial technology--they saw a second chance to maintain control where they had failed so miserably before. With notable scheming, treachery, misdirection and co-opting of key officials, the scientists barely managed to conceal the original landing, passing it off as something mundane. To this day, conspiracies abound, and the truth is caked in so many layers of deceit that it may never be truly known.

This event gave Oppenheimer and his new colleagues even greater drive; the same mentality that wrested control of the bomb from them was still holding that weapon at the throat of humanity. The last thing they wanted was something new and more powerful to come onto the scene and make matters even worse. They were able to draw in key personnel in the military and intelligence communities on both sides of the Iron Curtain, operatives who had been involved in some of the opening battles of the Cold War. They understood the motivations of the political figures and parties all too well, and came to believe that alien technology in the hands of these groups could easily spell the end of humanity.

Because of his work on the Manhattan Project, Oppenheimer and several of his staff were closely watched by the FBI to make sure he wasn't selling secrets to the Soviets. Many of the persons he met with were Soviet scientists and NKVD agents. Some of his overseas contacts were British nationals. Despite the United States' alliance with England during WWII, certain factions within U.S. government still maintained a frosty relationship with Britain, and disapproved of Oppenheimer's association with them. Because of these meetings, Oppenheimer eventually lost his security clearances and was largely stripped of any political clout and authority. Dropping out of the limelight only freed him to pursue the goals of the group he had joined. With knowledge of extraterrestrial life, and their apparent hostility, the group not only sought to safeguard humanity from having other-worldly weapons used against them, but sought to build an invasion preparedness network that could respond to an alien attack.

With the original test of the first atomic weapon named "Trinity," Oppenheimer joked that they should give their new group the name "Covenant," as they were making a promise to mankind that they would safeguard them from this brand of destruction. The name stuck, and the group became known as Project Covenant.

Staffing

Initial project members were mostly scientists, but they were able to lure in some political figures, as well. Co-opting military men was risky, but when nuclear proliferation became a reality and the conflicts of the Cold War began playing out, it became easier draw in defectors. Also, with espionage between the Western and Eastern superpowers raging, it was sometimes surprisingly easy to stage kidnappings and disappearances and have intelligence agencies on both sides immediately assume the other was to blame without looking for a third party that claimed no national allegiance.

Membership to the Project was not restricted to Americans; some of the earliest supporters were Soviets and German scientists liberated from Nazi Europe during Operation Paperclip. The Soviets started out behind in the arms race (though they would soon catch up), and the Europeans saw that their homeland would likely once again be a battleground if hostilities broke out between NATO forces and the Eastern Bloc. Many Japanese researchers were drawn into the project out of respect, among other things; their nation was the first to feel the wrath of nuclear weapons. Though not a major contributor at first, in later years, Japanese interests would provide much-needed financial aid to the project and research assistance.

Known Personnel

General MacArthur Nils
Lillian Kjelstad

Facilities

Bunker Alpha--"Area 51," located beneath Groom Range Test Facility
Bunker Bravo--"Kapustin Yar," located beneath the city of Znamensk
Bunker Charlie--"Tunguska," located near the site of the Tunguska Impact Event
Bunker Delta--"Hammer," located near Luchegorsk, the site of the Sikhote-Alin meteorite impact event
Bunker Echo--"Underworld," Located deep beneath Vauxhall Cross, London
Bunker Foxtrox--"Bikini," Underwater facility near Bikini Atoll
Bunker Golf--"Doughnut," located deep beneath the GCHQ in Benhall, a district within the town of Cheltenham, Gloucestershire
Bunker Hotel--"Apple," located outside of New York City
Bunker India--"Lonar," located near Lonar crater lake, India
Bunker Juliet--"Princess," located beneath Ft. Meade, Maryland
Bunker Kilo--"Lovecraft," located near the site of the Araguainha crater in Brazil
Bunker Lima--"Red Square," located near Moscow
Bunker Mike--"Whiteout," located on the northern tail of the Antarctic Peninsula
Bunker November--"Eagle," located in Elma, Washington

Early Days

In the infancy of the Project, the founders sought to try and reclaim some control over nuclear weapons. With Oppenheimer as their front man, they hoped to make some headway reigning in these weapons of mass destruction. This soon proved futile, and other more imminent threats occupied their attention.

First Contact

In 1947, an unidentified flying object (UFO) was reported to have landed at a ranch in Roswell, New Mexico. Roswell Army Airfield was nearby, and personnel from the facility were called in to investigate. Shortly after, they realized they had more on their hands than they were prepared to deal with. An OSS team--the predecessors of the Green Berets--was called in to provide assistance. They checked out the landing site, finding what appeared to be a vessel settled in a small crater, and hostile forces defending it. Thanks to superior numbers and unrivaled discipline, the men from the OSS were able to dispatch the hostiles before they broke containment. The vessel was secured, though local military officials were reluctant to report higher up their chains of command what field operatives were reporting.

This gave personnel from Covenant the only window of opportunity they would ever get. Dr. Oppenheimer was quietly called in to investigate, and his team were also able to interview some of the OSS men who had encountered and fought against the invaders. These men would be the first of many intelligence operatives the Project would draw in. With their assistance and connections, Project members were able to misdirect and deceive the military as to the nature of the landing. With help from Soviet project members, they were able to procure enough unrelated classified evidence so as to make the whole incident seem relatively innocuous. The landing was largely swept under the rug until the 1970's, when distrust of the government became more of a fad, and scrutiny of its post-war activities was not frowned upon so much. Though, by this time, members of Project Covenant (and even the U.S. military) had had a couple decades' head start in covering the incident up. By the time anyone started looking, the truth was so heavily covered that the only people who would know what truly happened there were the people who knew what happened, and as time marched on, their numbers dwindled, and the secrets of Roswell followed them to the grave.

More Landings Follow

In 1949, a similar landing outside of Volgograd drew the attention of the NKVD. They sent osnaz troops to secure the site. Armed with intel from Roswell, they were better prepared, but there were still losses. The Soviet scientist Vladimir Gurov, scooped up in Operation Paperclip and easily turned to serve Project Covenant, was vital to the Project's early success. He discovered how to operate the Excavator Probes contained within the vessel at Roswell, and gave a ready means to hide these alien vessels which were rapidly piling up. The Roswell craft was hidden deep beneath Groom Lake, which would later become one of the most secret test facilities in the United States. The Volgograd craft was more rapidly hidden, and piled over with Soviet bureaucracy. It became Kapustin Yar, a rocket launch and development facility. It would later be known by some conspiracy theorists and UFOlogists as "Russia's Roswell." In later years, Kapustin Yar would become a cosmodrome, further covering the secrets hidden beneath--ironically--with layers of transparency.

At first, deciphering information from captured craft was slow and difficult, as most of this research was being done in an age bereft of digital computers. Once again, the genius of Vladimir Gurov came to the rescue, and he was the first to begin cracking the secrets of the alien computers and deciphering their language. Samples of what he had uncovered were sent to agents within the Government Code and Cypher School in England (the successors of the minds behind Bletchley Park, responsible for cracking Enigma during WWII), and to allied members in the newly-formed CIA. With this assistance, Project Covenant was able to begin piecing together information from the alien computers, and formed their understanding of the alien orders of battle, how they would stage any invasion.

The 1950's and 1960's were a busy time for Project Covenant staff. They responded to several landings, and also formed a means to predict the landing sites based on ancient impact craters; for some reason, certain sites were the target of alien landings. Gurov once proposed that the alien propulsion systems may have warped time itself, and caused some form of disruption to be cast backward that manifested in the physical universe as a massive kinetic impact with the target (Earth). This idea was never proven, but several times, based on evidence gathered from sites around the globe, Covenant reaction teams were onsite close to the predicted times that alien craft made their landings.

With over a dozen landings taking place in a little over a decade, the members of the Project were tempted to move to full invasion-readiness status, but the frequency of incidents tapered off, with the last known event occurring in 1980 at Mount St. Helens in Washington State. Project Covenant also stepped back from declaring invasion-readiness based on the 1972 Schism Event, which shook the Project to its core and cost them decades of progress.

Schism Event

Almost from day one, the brightest star within the research departments of Project Covenant was Vladimir Gurov. Early on he had far surpassed even Oppenheimer's progress in trying to unravel the alien technologies. Some thought it was due to all the hands he had passed through--Russian upbringing, German captivity and American rescue. Others thought that was a far too simplistic rationale. Whatever the case, he seemed in tune with the extraterrestrial artifacts, and over the years he slowly unraveled many of their secrets, some of which (benign technologies, naturally) influenced human technologies and found their way into consumer markets to help build revenue for the Project.

In the late sixties and early seventies, as electronics technology became more advanced, Gurov was able to delve deeper into captured alien resources than he was ever able to before. Over the years, many had given up trying to keep pace with his discoveries and simply waited for his findings and progress reports. This complacency would prove to be a disastrous precedent, as it gave Gurov plenty of wiggle room when he decided to betray the project, and plenty of opportunity to cover his tracks when he left.

To this day, no one fully understands what went wrong, or if it was simple human betrayal, but the end results became clear to Project staff soon enough. Gurov had left for parts unknown, and managed to abscond with almost all of his research and some key artifacts, as well. The Project was left with a bunch of facilities and only a handful of artifacts they comprehended at all. Project growth and expansion slowed to a crawl, and much of their intelligence assets were tasked with recovery of either Gurov or the items and information he had stolen. Gurov understood the steps the Project's bagmen would take, however, and he was able to evade capture or even detection for years.

In the late 1980's, Lillian Marie, a CIA field operative working in Europe, uncovered traces of a covert group she had dubbed the "Red Hand." When her reports began to filter back to the Agency, Covenant sleepers still embedded there took note, and converted Marie to their cause. She had finally gotten a track on Gurov, and this allowed the Project Agents a chance to begin recovery operations. This proved a daunting and often impossible task, as Gurov had nearly full access to alien technology, and he employed it liberally, but never in ways such as to tip off the public. For years, the Red Hand and Covenant carried out a deadly dance, and for many in the Project, it began to parallel far to closely the same struggles the United States was having with the Soviet Union. They chose to step back from their pursuit and focus on their original charter, namely invasion preparedness. Certainly, they didn't want Gurov to sell secrets or try to use the technology he had stolen against humanity, but he had not done so yet, and there was little they could do to stop him.