(Previous entry — First entry)

Friday, March 19
Morning

Time to build up the command structure. Congratulations, Colonel Tiger.

It’s increasingly clear we’re dealing with a significant and organized threat, and X-Com will need to staff up to meet it.

Expanding our warehouse space at HQ. A lot of alien tech coming in, we’re going to need space to keep it all until we can figure out what’s worth keeping and what’s worth putting on the market.

And I’m transferring our second Interceptor to Bram.

—

Tuesday, March 23
0:11

Terrorist attack in Manila. Still two suits of armor short. Will have to make do.

Chasing the sun and losing. We’ll get there after dark. Dammit.

—

14:06

Onsite, Manila. Combat log excerpts follow.

—

Gunfire in the dark. Sounds like a civvie bought it.

We take down the east wall of a warehouse to get at a floater Sparrow almost ran into.

…

Unidentified shooter to the south gutshots Marmot. She’s still standing but she’s bleeding bad. Porpoise, scouting east, gets fragged by a grenade. Sgt. Bull gets revenge on the lobber.

Big ugly thing coming up the road form the south. Never seen this before. Bipedal, orange, size of an elephant. Bull blows its head open with an HE round.

Marmot advances and IDs her shooter. A floater. Wolvie takes him down.

…

Marmot goes down brave, putting some laser fire into another floater at point blank. Lemming finishes the job.

…

More floaters, a couple more of those big bipeds. Big ugly beasts, those. Last one chewed up a couple more civilians before we could put it down.

Mission complete.

—

Debrief:

Lost two promising soldiers. The only two not in armor.

Porpoise was probably a no win situation, grenade out of nowhere landing at her feet, but Marmot might have gotten away with less of a wound with some armor, and some field medicine might have stabilized her in any case.

Feeling like we’re always one step behind.

—

Wednesday, March 24
14:00

Armor production complete. We’ve got a full complement of suits now. Will likely want to produce more in the future, but switching over to medi-kit production for the time being.

—

14:30

Small craft in the air near Salt Lake. Lost it almost immediately.

—

Thursday, March 25
11:22

Medium craft, midair and northbound over the coast of Brazil near Sao Luis.

Lost it over the Atlantic.

—

Friday, March 26
2:31

Picked that medium craft up again, near Sicily. Scrambling Bram’s Interceptor.

3:47

Firefight over Carcassonne. Intercepter took some serious hits, but pilot says its still airworthy. UFO broke off, headed west.

3:57

God dammit.

Pilot caught up with the bogey just as it crossed the border into Spain. More fire exchanged, then we lost the pilot.

Interceptor presumed destroyed.

Scrambling the jet from HQ, hope we can finish the job. We’ve taken one of these down before, it can’t have much left at this point, but pilot is on orders to be cautious.

—

4:56

It’s raining shit now. That medium bogey is on the ground now, Interceptor is still en route, but now the radar guys just picked something bigger than anything we’ve seen headed south from almost the same point, crossing over Gibraltar and moving incredibly fast.

If that medium craft took one of my Interceptors down, what could this thing do? And where is it headed?

—

12:03

Engaging landed medium craft.

—

Floaters. Notch two, Porcupine. Notch one, Sgt. Wolf; dings a second who returns fire for a serious wound. And we don’t have those medi-kits in the field yet.

Eagle finishes the job on Wolf’s shooter.

…

Several floaters down, more in the buildings still. Like killing rats. Craft sighted to the southeast.

Wolf bleeds out.

…

Sgt. Wolverine breaches the east door and trades fire. Caps two floaters but not before one ‘em fires back wild and blows up a tank full of…something. Wolvie chokes and laughs. Just smoke.

This craft wasn’t forced down, so it’s in mint condition. Which means there’s a few more walls than last time. Sending main force up the primary elevator.

…

Movement outside the elevator lobby. We are not alone.

Hamster plugs two floaters point blank in the ancillary elevator chamber, laughs off a plasma round in the process.

—

Debrief:

Lost Sgt. Wolf, a frustrating loss. Medi-kits are standard issue here on out.

Ship in excellent condition, however. Structural layout of this model clearer now; the blast we heard last time must have been the engines going, since we recovered some this time out. Ancillary elevator structure saner, too — when the walls are still standing, it’s not a secondary elevator up, but rather the sole elevator down. Leads to an isolated engine compartment.

Aliens not idiots after all. Should apologize.

—

(Next up: Fun with accounting!)