(Previous entry — first entry)

Sunday, January 24
Morning

$400K for this Alien Containment lab. Worth it, I suppose, but I’m getting down to lint in my pockets at this point. Talked to my handler about budget advances, but he just turned me down gentle. Suggested I should seek revenue opportunities based on my existing resources.

February can’t come soon enough.

—

Tuesday, January 26
8:00

Production run on our first ten laser pistols just completed. Looking forward to field testing the things. With nothing else for them to do with their time, I’ve put the engineers on building another ten. I doubt we’ll need them, but the resale market has to be good.

And the larger radar array is now live. Hope that helps with our tracking. No sign of alien craft for several days now. Too much to hope that we’ve seen the last of them, though.

—

Wednesday, January 27
11:36

Report just came in of an alien strike of some sort in Novosibirsk, of all places. Not sure what to make of it; if civilians are involved, where’s the Russian military on this?

Scrambling the transport. Let’s go take a look.

—

Thursday, January 28
1:03

Engaging alien terrorist action in Novosibirsk. Dawn in this part of Russia.

—

01

Contact right away; grey bastard near some gas pumps. Feels like a dare, Beetle takes it. Solid hit but no kill, grey return fire kills Beetle. Dammit.

Weasel tries to finish the job. Another hit, no joy, Weasel iced as well. God dammit.

Sgt. Wolf engages and closes the deal.

Goddam mess. Troops already shaken up.

…

Glimpse of a grey in the shadows east of the gas station. And a civilian wandering around nearby, apparently hoping to get himself killed.

—

02

Falcon spots something new: an actual floating saucer, fifty yards off or so. Engaging with auto-cannon.

Direct hit with high explosives. Thing’s still just floating there. Jesus.

Gila joins in with her new laser pistol. Two solid hits. Boom! These things don’t go down quiet — there’s a crater in the middle of a city block where that disc was. Possible the blast took out the grey we spotted a second ago, as well.

Or not. Peregrine has contact near the gas station. Engaging from this position means firing explosives between gas tanks. After Beetle and Weasel, he’s mad enough to try.

Notch one, Peregrine.

…

Fire from another disc, down to the east. Three more civvies spotted to the north, wandering around the gas station. They look too shellshocked to get anything out of; hopefully they’ll stay out of our way at least.

—

03

Eyes on that disc. Hamster opens up with a laser. Couple hits but no joy.

Falcon tags in with some explosive rounds. Bingo! Another crater. Hope whoever owns that grocery store has insurance.

Fanning out.

…

Shots fired, no visual — though the screaming that came with it doesn’t sound good. Likely civilian casualty.

Grey spotted to the east, inside a building; incoming fire through the window, Falcon is unconscious.

—

04

Throwing some blind fire at the east building where Falcon’s shooter is holed up. Sounds like Peregrine got a kill. That auto-cannon deserves a medal.

A lot of ground to cover. Making a line pushing north and east.

…

Falcon bled out. Christ.

—

05

Gila has contact. Another goddam disc. How many of these things are there? Opening up.

Solid hit, disc returns fire but no damage. Hamster closes the deal. Three discs down, there goes the other half of that grocery.

…

Civvie gunned down from fire from unknown hostile, in the east alley between the grocery and a warehouse north of it.

And some sort of explosive projectile fired into grocery rubble as well, near Gila but not close enough to cause any harm. I guess we aren’t the only life in the galaxy that likes to blow things up.

—

06

Gorilla has eyes on the grey that likely popped the civilian. Auto-cannon burst resolved the situation but may have caught a civvie in the blast.

Gila: contact with grey in back of grocery. Probably our pyro. Laser, clean kill.

…

Mission complete.

—–

Debrief:

Lost three civvies, one to friendly fire. Frustrating, but considering it took us twelve hours just to get out to Russia, that’s not terrible. I’m told that while civilian losses are “undesirable”, it’s more a matter of funding negotiation than anything as far as the sovereign government is concerned. That’s…comforting?

Lost three X-Com operatives, though. This is a bloodier assignment than I think anyone expected. We need better guns, better eyes, better intel.

These discs worry me. A lot of this worries me.

(On to entry #6…)