(Previous entry — first entry)

Saturday, May 1
13:08

Animal Squad are on return vector to HQ from the alien base they’ve just routed in Fiji when our intel guys report a terror attack in Beijing. Christ on a crutch.

Deploying the squad from Bram. The vamps. They’re armed and armored and itching for some action; I hope they don’t get more than they can handle.

—

23:45

Engaging. Morning in Beijing, that much is going for us at least.

…

Something new. Large…snake-like figures. But upright, and vaguely humanoid in overall carriage. And armed.

Lasers seem to work well enough on them. Notch two, Abchanchu. Callicantzaro gets another. Another goes down behind a house.

Someone makes a joke about it being “a regular viper’s nest”. Not particularly funny, but they’re scared and kicking ass and that’s good enough for now.

…

Something else new. Grey, bipdal, humanoid, nasty looking claws. Took it down before we got a good look at it, but it ate a lot of laser blasts before it dropped.

…

More snakes, more claws. Difficulty of laser takedown on the latter confirmed on repeated trials. Bram needs some plasma weapons.

…

Mission complete.

—

Debrief:

Excellent first op by Vamp squad. Only four civilians killed, though one from friendly fire after a high-explosive round went wide and caught the civvie in its blast.

And we’ve got a prisoner: one of those snake men is still twitching. This should be interesting.

—

Sunday, May 2
Morning

Long weekend. Animal Squad got a chance to R&R while Vamp squad handled the terror situation in Beijing. A lot of action for one day.

Promotions. Tiger continues to lead well and is hereby granted Commander status. Eagle to Colonel; Wolverine and Bull to Captain. Sparrow, Porcupine and Labrador to Sergeant.

At Bram, Callicantzaro and Jaracaca to Sergeant.

Both Bull and Sparrow are gambles, considering the psyche-out episodes from the assault on the alien base in Fiji. But I want the men to believe that we are going to have this mind-control issue dealt with, and the science team assures me that whatever happened to Bull and Sparrow left no permanent marks.

Talking with Bull myself, he’s less than comforted by that — we have combat records of him gunning down his fellow soldiers, clear as day — but he recognizes the rational need to stay focused on the mission even in the face of this new mindfuck technology. And hopefully he and sparrow can help the science team understand that tech from a personal perspective.

To that end, I’m diverting almost the entire science team to a study of what they’re saying may be an alien mind-probe device. Hopefully that will start to get us answers. The science team has speculated that we may also want to consider live capture; studying an alien who is still breathing (if that’s what they do) may get us answers that a pure tech analysis can’t.

I’ll need to look at our options for non-lethal subduction. The equipment list my handler provided includes a line-item for a “stun rod”, which may not be much more than a glorified taser. I’d prefer to be able to stick these things from a distance, but until that’s possible I think we’ll have to order some rods and see how they do.

Being able to incapacitate in a non-lethal fashion may be our best answer to possible mind-control issues for the time being, as well. I’ll take one of our men down if I have no other choice, but I’d much rather just put them out cold for a while.

—

Late morning

Transferring that snakeman to HQ for study. We’ve also got corpses of these clawed things to check out. All the troops from Vamp Squad can tell me is they’re ugly as hell and green stuff comes out when you shoot ‘em. Not exactly hard science.

We recovered several plasma weapons from the Beijing op, so the Vamps can use those to diversify their current squad loadout. Hopefully that base can be largely self-sufficient going forward, if the action stays heavy.

—

Wednesday, May 5
17:31

Very small craft detected, destroyed by Bram Interceptor near Kali Yuga.

—

Sunday, May 9
13:00

Large craft sighted. Risking engagement with Avalanche launchers, will have to break off immediately if Interceptor comes under serious fire. I don’t want to lose another bird.

13:59
Another large craft sighted, just south of HQ. Coincidence? Diversion? This is a lot of air traffic all of a sudden.

14:21

Interceptor got some good hits in on the first bogey but took serious damage. Disengaging, returning to HQ. Both alien craft still at large, the second one staying in close vicinity of HQ. Shit.

We need some better weapons for our Interceptors.

14:30

And ANOTHER craft. A small one, Gulf of Mexico. Tempted to divert damaged Interceptor to take it down; the small ones have given us very little trouble. But one bad shot would cost me a plane. Not worth it. Dammit.

16:57

Launched spare Interceptor to track the small bogey; with it’s lighter guns it wouldn’t stand a chance against the large craft in any case. Successful engagement with minimum damage from return fire, craft down in the Northwest Territories.

Question is, do we send the troops out to recover that, or hold off in case one of these big craft lands and gives us a chance to storm their landed craft?

16:59

New, very large craft spotted over the Yukon. Jesus christ, this is bad.

17:11

Very large craft touched down. Scrambling the troops, we’ll see if we can’t catch them with their pants down.

New recruits Bobcat, Sturgeon, Rhino, Orangutan and Amoeba reporting to active duty.

21:00

Engaging very large enemy craft. God help us.

(Move along to Four Feet!)