(Previous entry — first entry)

Thursday, January 28
Evening

Goat, Cheetah, and Badger to active duty.

Standing force down to a dozen and a half. I need some more recruits.

And I need a new facility in Europe. Ears, at least, at first; an Interceptor as well, ASAP. We’ll go from there.

But there’s no money yet. I can’t say I’m looking forward to the budget meeting, exactly, but I’m ready to get it over with.

Laser pistols performed well. Squirrely aim, but they fire fast and clean. May phase out conventional rifles for all but my snipers going forward.

—

Monday, February 1
00:43

Who holds a budget meeting at midnight? I’m all for promptness but we could at least wait till normal business hours.

But then I wasn’t expecting to be literally handed a suitcase full of money, either. “Petty cash”, apparently.

So much for the weird news. The good news: the international consortium funding the project is happy with our work. Seven nations, in particular, gave us a funding boost.

None of those countries saw any direct intervention by X-Com in the last month, though. We may have briefly buzzed Spain with a fighter jet a couple weeks ago, I suppose, but that’s usually not grounds for a pay raise.

The good news is we’re flush again; with three million in pocket I can safely start construction on a new base.

—

8:17

We’ll be breaking ground shortly on X-Com’s European headquarters, near Brasov, Romania. I’ve codenamed the facility “Bram”.

I’m a sucker for horror stories.

Literary conceits aside, it’ll give us good coverage and response time for Europe and the middle east and, once we can get a hanger built, fill our operational gap in SE Asia.

—

9:23

More bodies coming in. Troops, scientists, engineers. It’ll take most of the month to get even a skeleton of facilities built at Bram, so I may as well spend my surplus on the here-and-now.

—

Wednesday, February 3
12:07

Another run of laser pistols completed. Still no usable progress on the rifles. I hope my engineers don’t get bored, but I’m sending them back for more; if nothing else, we can raise some extra funds this way, as my handler has promised to facilitate any arms sale from our surplus stores.

It costs us about eight grand in material to build one of these things, and we can turn them around for twenty grand. At $12K a pop, that’s not bad.

Of course, my fabrication guys are making $25K a month each. It takes ‘em just under two man-weeks to produce a pistol. So that’s a little more than $24K of pistol per man per month. So they’re only just barely paying their own salaries, here.

Wonderful. At least it’s not out-of-pocket, I suppose.

—

23:03

Laser Rifle project finally bore fruit. Good looking weapon, more kick than the pistol. Guess the engineers get a new project after all.

Those grey corpses have been sitting in our meat freezer for too long already. Time to cut one open.

—

Wednesday, February 10
Morning

Alien Containment unit is up and running. Of course, we haven’t really considered live capture as a primary tactic yet, but for happy accidents this might be useful in the meantime.

More interestingly, the autopsy results are in. Lab guys are calling these grey guys “Sectoids”. Humanoid, and apparently entirely asexual. No hardware at all.

Either these guys are walking ferns, or someone is growing them to spec, it sounds like. That’s…I don’t know what to make of that. And who is doing the growing? Those floating discs? Someone we haven’t seen yet?

Anyway, not much use for the rest of these popsicles. I’m going to sell ‘em off, free up some space for a decent steak or three again. I’ll throw the lab guys at this alien alloy we’ve seen at the crafts we’ve cleared out; maybe we can use that to improve our gear. Even the field a little. Maybe that’s what those goddam discs are made of.

—

Thursday, February 11
Morning

Commenced building living quarters at Bram. Radar array goes up after that, at which point we’ll have a functional if skeletal manned listening post in Europe. One can’t help but wonder what Spain will think of THAT.

On advice from my construction foreman, I’m pursuing a “controlled corridor” approach to the new facility — the hanger and access shaft are the two conspicuous security vulnerabilities, should hostiles (or drunken Romanians?) attempt to breach the base, and so we’re building those separate from the remainder of base, which should make controlling any kind of incursion easier.

Seems a bit paranoid, but then so do stories about alien invasions in general. I’m willing to run with it.

—

Friday, February 12
10:00

Initial laser rifle run complete. Swapping out our conventional rifles entirely. This should be enough guns to keep our crew armed, so it’s back to surplus-and-sales fabrication. Margins on the rifles unfortunately aren’t much better than the pistols, but it’s better than paying these guys to sit on their hands.

—

Monday, February 15
11:33

Craft sighting, mid-flight, near Winnipeg. Moving fast.

13:12

Out over the Atlantic now, headed toward Europe. Hope we don’t lose this one too.

15:32

Looked almost like it was making a line for Bram. That’s worrying. But course change near Germany — maybe we’ve got it now?

15:34

Exchanged fire! So these things have guns.

Alien craft hit but not disabled, breaking away from the Interceptor. God what I’d give to be able to launch some backup from Bram right now.

15:36

Re-engaged. Craft down! Troops en route. This should be interesting.

—

20:44

Engagement, alien craft forced down by Interceptor fire near Bydgoszcz, Poland.

—

01

Sgt. Wolf draws fire from unknown hostile on exiting ship. Returns fire with canvas of HE auto-cannon rounds. Fire returned, from high ground apparently; possible hostile on roof of building west of landing site?

Heavy fire canvasing the building; Sgt. Ox gets the kill.

Alien craft just southeast of the transport. Smaller than previous ships we’ve encountered. Closer to a saucer in shape, as well. Scouting vessel?

…

Door noise from the ship. Something in there.

Fire from the west. Looks like it wasn’t a lone gunman. Incoming takes down one of the heavy gunners.

—

02

Putting more fire into the western structure, but we’re firing blind. Not a good situation. Flanking it, sending scouts on the run to close in on either side.

No visual contact at the ship yet. Door not visible yet, must be south-facing.

…

More incoming fire from the west. Looks like two different shooters, one holed up on the second story of the building, the other firing from somewhere on the ground south of that.

One of the scouts gets iced. Dammit.

—

03

Gila reports contact on the southern shooter. Something new, purple, dressed in a robe. Definitely not a grey.

Goat has a good firing position. Takes the shot, hostile down.

Second shooter is on the roof. Gila takes the shot this time. That’s two down.

…

No movement. Smart money puts a bogey in the craft.

—

04

Fire team at the ship, perimeter sweep with the rest of the crew, clearing out these sheds. No sign of hostiles.

…

No movement.

—

05

On your mark, get set…

…

All quiet.

—

06

Gazelle breaches the craft. Three more robed hostiles. Shit. Can’t take them all; he backpedals to make room for supporting fire instead.

Cheetah gets an angle on the door, hits two hostiles, one of ‘em drops.

Chimpanzee drops the second one for good. Peregrine drops number three. Surgical. I love these laser rifles.

…

Mission complete.

—

Debrief:

Two men lost, six of these robe-wearing things on ice. Not a trade I feel great about, but at least we’re getting the better of it.

No new surprises from this ship, other than it being a new, smaller make. Same smattering of recoverable tech. No survivors from among the hostiles.

(Next up: #7 – Casablanca blues)