Sunday, May 9
21:00
Engaging landed alien craft in Yukon, Canada. By far the largest craft we’ve seen up close.
…
Monster of a ship, directly north of transport landing site. Multiple “feet” visible, support structures for landed craft with larger cohesive structure at second and third floor. No doors visible yet.
Contact with one floater almost immediately, taken care of.
…
Big orange biped on the perimeter. Now just a puddle. Nice shooting, Ox.
…
Central structure between the four ship feet — a square pod holding a large elevator.
…
Sturgeon scouting the second level. Four corridors each terminating on another single lift down — must be access to those landing “feet” outside. Doors off the corridors into additional rooms; main elevator continues up to third floor.
This is a lot of angles to cover. Moving the team up.
Ameoba scouting top floor. Lift ends in small chamber with four doors. Great.
…
Very little movement. Contact with another two robed floaters on the third floor; one down, the other hiding. Fanning out.
Second floor seems deserted. Various utility rooms — they even have their own disco on this ship. Must be used for long-haul missions.
Checked one foot so far — engine room. Perhaps all of them are.
…
Third floor is a hashmark of corridors dividing this level into nine rooms, the lift lobby being the center chamber. A lot of doors to check. A lot of blind corners.
…
Some sort of guided missile device on the third floor just came down a corridor, turned a tight corner, and fragged Sparrow. Dammit. Something else they have that we don’t.
Nixed two floaters, both holding great big goddam guns we haven’t seen before. Probably the launchers that just killed Sparrow.
…
Three rooms yet to breach, third floor of the craft. If anybody’s home, that’s where they’re hanging their hat.
…
Floater out of nowhere, Ox steps on his robe coming around a corner. Jesus. Ox is loaded up with high explosive rounds, can’t take the shot. He backs off while Rhino steps in and opens fire. Floater down.
…
Third floor rooms cleared, still some movement at the site. Dammit, did we miss something? Making another sweep, sending a team down to the ground again to make sure there’s not some goddam alien hiding in the woods outside.
…
Bingo. Floater skulking around outside. Small team puts him down.
Mission complete.
—
Debrief:
Excellent op. Lost Sgt. Sparrow to that guided-missile surprise, but the good news is we’ll probably be able to make use of the launcher itself from what we recovered.
Surprisingly small crew for such a large vehicle. Only ten xenomorphs total, and that’s including one of the great lumbering orange things that I can’t imagine doing much of the flying.
Bringing another one home alive, by luck.
Huge haul of elerium. Nearly as much from this ship as we’ve collected from all previous engagements, the Fiji base included.
]]>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!)
]]>May 1
9:59
Infiltrating alien base on Fiji. I don’t know if we’re ready, but we’re as ready as we can be and this isn’t a chance I’m going to let slip by.
—
Located two ground-level elevator shafts. Split into two teams to make the descent. Don’t like coming down blind like this.
Gazelle is first down to what appears to be ground level of the alien base. Big place, lots of corridors. Same general material as the alien crafts we’ve seen — is this thing a pre-fab structure flown in from wherever the xenomorphs came from, or is this earth-side construction? I’m not sure which answer I’m less eager to hear.
Immediate contact, a grey. Clean take for Gazelle, and proof that these plasma weapons work just as well when we’re the ones firing them.
Hamster nailed coming down the elevator. Dammit. Wolvie gets revenge.
…
Wolverine loses his shit. Drops his gun and streaks across the room. Possible psyche weapon, like I suspected on the Casablanca mission. This could be bad.
…
Ancillary elevator sighted, with a grey moving down to our level. Barracks above? In any case we need to secure that thing pronto. Labrador scratches the grey.
…
Rottweiler almost bumps into a grey in some sort of alien topiary. No time for a clean shot, ducks back behind the corner for the moment, Sgt. Goat covering his tail.
…
Sparrow losing it now, waving his gun around. Wolverine still panicking. These soldiers aren’t cowards; someone is playing dirty pool, and we’re going to put an end to it.
Beagle playing plasma tag with a grey in a northern corridor, took a bad hit. Col. Tiger’s medkit seems to have helped some there, cut the bleeding back a bit, but the wound’s still oozing a lot.
…
Labrador checks that new elevator; upstairs isn’t a barracks but a small…zoo? Specimens of some sort. Human skeleton, it looks like, along with god knows what else.
…
Sparrow still wigging, but Wolvie seems to have his shit together again.
Spotted multiple greys east of the main squad’s elevator landing — possible the command center is there. Also sighted one of those damn cyberdiscs. Some incoming fire but no one injured.
Porcupine blows the disc to pieces; Cpt. Eagle notches a grey; Sgt. Goat puts several holes in the walls near another.
Tiger finishes patching up Beagle, who goes back and finishes the job on the grey who shot him.
…
Rottweiler appears to have discovered a discotheque.
…
Goat takes it in the face point blank from the grey he missed. Dammit.
More movement, another cyberdisc spotted and at least one other grey on the move. Attempting to flank this possible command center.
Wolvie, looking more like a soldier than ever, grabs a pistol on the run and ices Goat’s shooter.
…
Sparrow completely unresponsive now, possible meltdown. Possibly under direct alien control? Don’t know what to make of this, but may have to pursue a shoot-on-sight policy if behavior doesn’t become less erratic.
Some sort of explosive fire from the north end of the structure we’re currently flanking. Possible the gas weapon we’ve seen before. No one fazed, Beagle takes the shooter down.
Pork aces another disc. Nearby alien gadget goes up in a chain reaction when it explodes. They shall know us by the trail of debris.
Wolvie caps a grey through a window in that command structure. Peaking through, it looks like it’s an outer corridor leading to an inner chamber.
Notch another, Cpt. Eagle. Got it on the run after it took a potshot at her.
Beagle breaching outer corridor of the command center via a hole one of our plasmas put in the wall. Good to know something can tear that stuff down.
…
Sparrow responding to communications again, but only with gibbering. Beagle loses his shit closing in on the presumed command center inner chamber. Not sure how many uglies can be left, but the perimeter of the base is pretty much clear at this point so they’re almost certainly in that room.
Time to end this.
The team with brownpants McBeagle — too much brass, but they’re on the scene, Col. Tiger and Cpts. Eagle and Ox — is setting up outside the inner door; the team at the outer door to the west is pushing in through the south side of the corridor. Lemming catches a grey distracted and lasers him down.
…
Inner chamber full of what looks like utility equipment of some sort, and a very large elevator pad dominating the center of the room. Looks like we need to take a team up.
…
Sgt. Bull just gunned down two scouts and took a shot at Cpt. Eagle as well. God dammit. Fucking mind ray bullshit. This situation is deteriorating rapidly.
…
Sending Eagle up the lift. Three contacts; she guns one down, takes a bad hit from another from behind. Two left standing.
Ox nixes a second, firing from below. These alien lifts don’t get in the way of gunfire. I’ll take it.
Wolverine gets the last grey from the trio, shooting from below again.
Which is probably the last of the aliens. But Sgt. Bull just shot two of our men and I have no idea if this mind control shit can outlast its masters. Assuming that WAS even all of them.
I’m clearing the room; hopefully we can give Bull a minute to prove he’s not completely gone. If not, we’ll have to take him down.
…
Bull reporting in. Ordering him to keep his distance but that’s still good news.
Reports of door sounds elsewhere in the base, though. Looks like our perimeter sweep came up short. There’s a structure we could look more carefully at, east of our current position. Redeploying.
Eagle just lost consciousness. Smoke inhalation and her wound, likely. Ox on med duty, patches up the bleeder on her arm and provides some stims. We’ll see how that works.
…
Sparrow breaches door to suspicious chamber before he remembers he dropped his gun. Staring a grey in the face. Wheels out before the thing can get a shot off. Lucky.
Porcupine pops a couple HE rounds through the door blind. Enemy down.
…
Base is clear.
—
Debrief:
Lost four men. Two to what can only have been mind-controlled friendly fire.
The base is a treasure trove, and having it out of operation is invaluable. It wasn’t big enough or nearly well enough supplied or defended to be their core base of operations, but its a start. In the roughest calculus, this was a big win, I suppose. But.
But we weren’t ready. Physically, we’re solid; our weapons are good, squad training and readiness is excellent. But we weren’t ready for that whatever this mindfuck technology is.
Until we can figure out what’s letting them get in our heads, and how to stop it, every soldier is a potential turncoat. How am I supposed to deal with that?
I want a solution and I want it ASAP. I need to talk to the science team.
(Next up: Vampires!)
]]>Thursday, April 1
Morning
Going ahead with the third-base initiative. I’d like to be able to have a non-combat facility, to focus specifically on research and manufacturing projects.
Pricing things out, we can’t do better than to build in India, and there’s some excellent infrastructure available for our tech needs. We’re setting up a bit west of Hyderabad.
I’m calling the new base Kali Yuga. I’m honestly not sure if that’s me being pessimistic or optimistic or fatalistic or what. Three months ago I wouldn’t have believed you if you’d told me this is how I’d be spending April Fool’s Day.
—
Late morning
Staffing up Bram. Ordering a second troop transport, building out the standing troops. They’ll be a secondary force only for now, at least until we can get enough armor fabricated to have them up to snuff for primary assaults. I don’t want to be caught with my pants down, and I have a feeling things are only going to get more hectic.
—
Friday, April 9
11:33
Very small craft sighted. Canadian border, near Washington state. Scrambling Interceptor.
13:56
First test of the new Avalanche launcher a success, certainly: enemy craft not just disabled but destroyed outright.
That could be problematic, however, in the long run. The Avalanche may be a good short term answer to our need to hit their bigger ships hard, but if we can force down the small ships with less firepower we’ll be able to recover supplies. As it is there’s nothing left but a fine mist of alien guts north of Seattle.
I may need to keep one Interceptor armed with less powerful guns, for these smaller encounters.
—
Saturday, April 10
Morning
Research just finished up on those heavy plasma rifles we’ve been salvaging. And man do these things look promising. Twice the firepower of our laser rifles, solid accuracy as well.
We’ve got a small cache of clips for them as well, so once we manage to figure out how THOSE work we’ll be good to go with these in live-fire situations immediately.
Bad news is that in the long run we’ll need to recover more clips from alien craft, or to produce ammunition ourselves which would likely require the use of recovered material in its own right. Whether that will be any kind of obstacle in practice, I don’t know.
—
Sunday, April 18
Morning
Looks like we’ve got the ammo system for those heavy plasma rifles figured out, which means that (a) we can start shooting things with this stuff and (b) we can make more clips if we need them.
Otherwise, a quiet week. Building new facilities at Bram and HQ both, workshops in both cases. Kali Yuga will be our main fab plant but until it has time to get up and running properly I want to be able to build out needed materiel on-site for my active combat bases, and the workshop at HQ in particular doesn’t even have enough room for all my engineers to work at this point.
—
Saturday, April 24
0:38
Small craft sighted near Cuba. Interceptor took it out over the water.
Splashdown leaves us with the same dilemma as vaporizing the things — good news is the threat is neutralized; bad news is we can’t go in for recovery.
The very idea of underwater anti-xenomorph operations is absurd on the face of it, needless to say.
So that’s an interesting tactical question: do I have my pilots try to kite these things along until they’re over land? May not have been an option in this case regardless, as the alien craft was headed out over the Atlantic, but something to consider.
—
Tuesday, April 27
Morning
Interesting news from the lab geeks. I let them take a crack at what we believe to be the engines of the various craft we’ve salvaged. And it looks like these things are pretty amazing — the sort of high-efficiency engine we’ve been dreaming about for decades, and capable of generating goddam gravity fields no less.
And we can build them ourselves, if we need to.
Looks like the only viable power source is this foreign “elerium” mineral we’ve been recovering, though. That needs some researching itself. In any case, that’s an obvious barrier to widespread industrial use, but the techs tell me they’re bullish about us making small-scale use of it for our personal needs at X-Com.
More research to be done. Let’s see if we can’t find out a little more about this elerium stuff. Maybe it can be manufactured as well.
—
May 1
0:16
That was a short budget meeting. Wish that was good news.
China and Japan are cutting funding. No other movement. Losing about 100 grand per month. Funny, we haven’t heard anything about alien activity over eastern Asia.
Maybe time to add another radar array at Bram.
—
0:18
This is news. Looks like we’ve spotted an actual base of operations for the aliens. Viti Levu, Fiji. The big island.
No idea what we’ll find in there, but we’re sure as hell going to find out.
(Next time: All Your Base…)
]]>Friday, March 26
Afternoon
Craft assault on French/Spanish border went well, but that only tempers the loss of the Interceptor trying to take it down in the first place. Will have to order another one for Bram, not a budget outlay I had planned for.
Aliens clearly have significant, if not outright superior, firepower on the larger aircraft. I wonder if I can get the lab guys to take apart their weapon systems on the crafts we’ve recovered.
Wish in one hand, shit in the other, though. Right now I’m ordering an Avalanche missle launcher for Bram’s new Interceptor.
The cannons we have can do the job on the smaller craft well enough, but the Avalanche has great range according to the specs and I’d love to be able to hit them before they can hit us. Maybe end these firefights decisively before the xenomorph gunners can get a shot off at all.
And with that I’m damn near broke for the month. Time to review our stores, maybe have a little garage sale.
—
Evening
A lot of corpses stacking up. And we’ve got five recovered plasma weapons for every soldier X-Com employs, and we don’t even know how to fire any of them. Especially large surplus of what seem to be rifle-class weapons. And I’m doubtful we’ll want more pistols, of any sort, in the field than we already have, so I’m clearing out most of those as well.
I also don’t see this alien foodstuff or the surgery rooms we’ve recovered proving to have much material usefulness. I’ll keep a sample of each around for the lab guys to take a look at if there’s a lull, but the rest is just taking up space.
Selling all of that off will net nearly five million in ready cash. Looks like I can do some spending after all. Expand Bram some more, and hire up my lab at HQ to capacity, perhaps. And order another Interceptor for HQ, while I’m at it.
—
Evening, later
I’ve just gone over the hiring contracts for X-Com staff. This is bizarre. Any new hire receives a full month pay from date of hire. Period. Which means if I hire more labcoats today, I’m paying them a full month for four or five days work? Yeah, that can wait.
My employers can swing no-notice, no-questions-asked airspace with the entire world, apparently, but they can’t manage to negotiate a hiring contract that pro-rates pay.
—
Saturday, March 27
Morning
Went to bed with money on the brain, woke up with an idea. I checked with the engineers about the profit ratio on the new medi-kits they’re producing.
I like what I heard.
It costs about $23K in materials to build a medi-kit. Handler is offering us $46.5K for ‘em. That’s a clean $23.5K net on each unit.
Takes a bit more than half an engineer’s month worth of time to chuck one out. Which means each fab guy can turn out somewhere on the order of $40K in net medi-kit profit each month.
And the contract says I pay ‘em $25K. So every engineer I have working full-time on medi-kit production is making me $15K a month.
Fifty guys in a lab, churning these out? That’s three quarters of a million dollars in profit. Every month. That’s almost as much as I’m getting from the US government. From one workshop.
Economics are a little more complicated than all that. Maintenance costs, initial outlay to build the workshops, support facilities — lots of details to consider. But the idea is good. The idea is very, very good.
I need to hire an accountant.
—
Promoting new recruits Beagle, Labrador, and Rottweiler to active duty.
—
Tuesday, March 30
First production run of medi-kits done. Enough to keep us supplied on the ground for now; I need to fabricate some spare suits of armor, and then it may be back to medi-kits for revenue purposes.
—
Wednesday, March 31
New general stores warehouse finally completed at HQ. We’ve been over capacity for a while now, things stacked too high and not enough room to even run a forklift in a lot of places.
We pulled some gear out of storage the other day to load on the troop transport; when the guys doing the loading changed their mind about some of it, the warehouse foreman flat-out refused to let them bring it back.
A fire marshal would have had a field day in there. Assuming he wasn’t shot trying breach the premises.
But now we’re in much better shape. HQ is getting pretty crowded, though.
—
Thursday, April 1
Budget meeting. Good news in general, another half million in the budget.
But France? Cutting our funding? Is this a response to the Interceptor we lost back on the 25th? Maybe it dropped some chaff on a diplomat’s house. God knows. Fucking Jerry Lewis fanboys.
Bringing in more scientists. That’ll top off our ability to do research in the current lab facilities at HQ; either I build another lab here or we start looking at a secondary lab, at Bram or possible at a dedicated research-and-engineering base. Which I’m not sure is such a bad idea.
(Next up: Recession…)
]]>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!)
]]>Monday, March 1
Morning
Good feedback again from the funding consortium. No raise from Spain this time out, though. Apparently we didn’t fly over enough.
Lab geeks finished their alloy research. Judging by all the smiles, this is some exciting stuff. And apparently we can make it ourselves, if we need to.
My interests are more practical, and they’ve learned that by now: they’re pitching a new armor design for the troops. Couldn’t have happened sooner. We need something to keep my guys alive.
I’m stationing some new men at Bram, and transferring some of our overstock of laser rifles there to arm them. After the fly-by scare earlier in the month, I’d like to have someone keeping an eye on the facility, even if it’s just a skeleton so far.
I’m also bulking up the science team some. We’ve got too much to research to do and not enough brains to throw at it.
—
Sunday, March 7
Evening
Personal Armor research complete. It’s an improvement. We’ll start manufacturing immediately.
Throwing the labcoats at a medi-kit project they’d proposed back at the start of the year, despite their protests — they’re as curious about all this alien gear as I am, but they aren’t in charge of keeping people alive, and I need everything I can get to help out on the field.
—
Monday, March 8
Morning
Engineers say it’ll take a little over three weeks to fab out a full complement of armor for the active squad. I may need more bodies here as well.
Not cheap, either. And we’ll be using up most of the alien alloy we’ve scavenged so far; worst case, we’ll start making it ourselves.
—
Sunday, March 14
2:32
Craft in the air, southwest-bound, currently over Halifax. Scrambling Interceptor. Holding transport until we can get a resolution; maybe the engineers can finish up the current personal armor suit on the fab table.
3:24
Lost it over Colorado. Patrolling.
14:11
No joy. Returning to base. Where are these things going?
—
Evening
That field-med research is looking good. Prototype medikit may be a godsend, especially if this new armor can keep my guys alive under hostile fire long enough to use ‘em.
Changing research tacks, under the counsel of one V. Lombardi. We’ve recovered a lot of what are apparently plasma weapons from combat sites. Things certainly seem to pack a punch, I want to know how they work.
—
Friday, March 19
0:11
Craft spotted on the ground in Iceland, near…well, it’s Iceland. Near not a whole hell of a lot. About 80 miles northeast of Reykjavik.
Scrambling an Interceptor to try and hold it in position while the transport heads out.
We’ve got eight suits of armor good to go. Command staff and some of our proven squaddies dressed to the nines. Hope this helps.
New recruits Sparrow, Porcupine, and Lemming on active duty.
—
0:59
Craft lifted off a few minutes ago, headed east. Just lost tracking.
—
3:56
Picked it up again, on patrol over Europe.
—
4:21
Alien craft down, western Russia. Not without a fight, though, Interceptor took some serious hits. Good thing we have a spare, that one will probably be grounded for a bit.
Pilot visually confirms what radar guys suspected — this is bigger than anything we’ve seen so far. Let’s go have a look.
—
7:12
Ground engagement, near Lychkovo. Sun is up, at least. Combat log excerpts follow.
—
Lemming notches a purple robed bastard.
Sgt. Ox trades fire with another one, who takes a hit but keeps moving.
Scratch that — keeps floating. Floating? Good god. That’s not good news. Porpoise catches the floater behind a nearby structure, puts more three more laser blasts into him before he goes down.
Craft sighted SE of touchdown point. Big goddam thing, three stories tall. What kind of crew complement are we dealing with? We saw six floaters in one tiny can, this thing is twenty times the size.
Lemming notches another floater. Sgt. Eagles takes one as well.
…
Sweeping toward the alien craft in a line. Hydraulics noises, but no visual contact.
Goat ices a floater on the roof of a building west of alien craft. We’re definitely learning to look up.
…
Two hostiles sighted, one in south buildings, the other near the south face of the ship. Still no eyes on ship entrance, likely near that point.
Goat takes out some walls and spots that south floater, plus a buddy. Takes one down. Hamster gets the other.
Cpt. Tiger and Sgt. Eagle put fire on that ship-side floater, Tiger gets the take-down. Lemming tosses a grenade toward the suspected ship entrance, just in case.
…
Fire from the south. Another of those floater bastards. They must be having a convention in that barn. Hamster takes a round to the chest, but he’s fine. I like this armor.
Hamster gets the take. We razed most of the building that floater was hiding in in the process.
Two entrances on this ship, facing south and eest. Organizing teams at both.
…
Some sort of explosion inside the ship. Please tell me these things don’t self-destruct.
…
Marmot breaching south door. Inside is a wreck. Contact on one floater. Marmot gets the kill, backs out.
Porpoise breaches east door. No new contact, but she gets a good view of a mutilated cow. Interesting. Bull and Wolvie follow, Bull takes down a floater in a nook near the center of the first level of the ship.
No stairs in sight, but there are what appear to be elevators of some sort at a couple places. Time to earn that hazard pay, troops.
…
Hearing sounds of distress from upper levels of the ship. Do aliens lose their shit?
…
Marmot volunteers to test the elevators. Doesn’t explode. Lifts move pretty slow, that’s a vulnerability.
Second floor opens into small room with three exits. Hard to get bodies through to cover all that quickly.
…
Marmot cuts down a floater who walked in the door and decided to walk right back out again. Have to give him credit for trying, I guess.
Two elevators on the main floor are in adjoining rooms; only second-level exit from the easternmost elevator is into the main elevator area. Odd layout. From there, two exits to the same corridor. This is a bit of a bottleneck. Embarrassing for the alien architects; uncomfortable for my team, against a holed-up enemy.
We haven’t seen the third level of this thing yet, either. Must be more elevators around.
…
Found another elevator, NW corner of ship. Marmot (who deserves a goddam medal) breaches third floor — one door on elevator chamber, which opens on a what looks like a large pilot chamber, based on our best guesses about the previous ships.
Contact. Two shots, clean kill for Marmot.
That’s the last of them.
—
Debrief:
Excellent op. 13 kills, no losses.
Recovered some new alien tech as well: what might be xenomorph food stores, and some home cow-dissection kits.
(On to entry #9…)
]]>Monday, February 15
20:56
Gila promoted to Sgt.
—
Saturday, February 20
8:00
Laser rifle production run complete. Re-upping.
One option I haven’t explored yet: remote-piloted heavy weapon platforms. As a potential solution to our troops’ vulnerability out of the transport, it’s an attractive idea — lead the way with a small tank — but the cost is considerable, nearly half a million bucks for one platform. Given that I don’t know how well these things would work in this unusual situation, that’s a lot of my budget to gamble.
Maybe next month.
—
Friday, February 26
Morning
The hanger facility at Bram is complete. One step closer to operations there.
—
15:47
Small craft sighted, mid-air, just off the coast of Nova Scotia. Pursuing.
Bull is back on active duty, no worse for wear; Turtle is joining him on the active roster.
—
16:57
Tracking lost. Damn. Putting Interceptor on flyover duty. Let’s see if we get lucky.
21:28
Looks like we picked the bogey back up; same signature. Back near Iceland. C’mon, fella, let’s say hello.
22:29
Lost it again a half hour ago, just off the coast of Ireland; picked him up once again just now, over Wales. Radar problems, or do these guys have counter-measures?
22:58
Interceptor took it down over eastern France. Hot damn. Troop transport still refueling. Hopefully we can get airborne in time to clean up the wreckage, but this is a serious resource problem. We need another transport, and another team for it. I might want to build out Bram faster than expected.
—
Saturday, February 27
1:49
Troop transport finished refuel cycle and was en route to the alien crash site when the news came in of another terrorist strike, this time in Casablanca. I hate to leave the crash site behind, but that takes priority.
I need redundancy.
Diverting to Casablanca, maybe we can clean up the crash after the fact if everything goes well.
—
5:49
Engaging terror forces at Casablanca. Just before dawn. Wonderful.
Here’s lookin’ at you, kid.
—
Notes:
Two greys north, right out the front door. Sgt. Wolf scratches both, return fire takes someone down.
Cpt. Tiger plugs a disc; disc goes up with a boom and takes down the gas station it was in.
Exchange of fire with another grey, we lose another man and the alien shrugs off a solid hit.
…
Chimp notches a grey, south of the ship.
…
Another man down. Fire from the north and the east. Civvies wandering through it all.
Goat reports feeling suddenly disoriented.
Wolvie nails the northern grey and then trips across a disc; fire exchanged, no hits. Goat cleans it up.
…
Wolverine reporting disorientation now, too. This can’t be coincidence. We may be dealing with some sort of mind ray.
I can’t believe I just said that.
But these civilians are behaving like zombies, too, walking into the line of fire. Some sort of generalized psyche field? I’d say gas, but the science team hasn’t turned up anything in the soldiers’ bloodwork after the previous missions, and it seems to be affecting my team on too specific a basis.
…
Peregrine iced. Wolverine gets the disc. Eagle notches a couple greys from serious distance.
…
Chimp iced, point blank.
…
Mission complete.
—
Debrief:
Lost five men. A slaughter. Got most of the civilians out alive, however, and took a lot of xenomorphs down in the process.
Nixing the mopup job in France. It’ll have to wait, I need to get these people home and rested.
—
Saturday, February 27
Morning
15 men left. Barely enough to fill a transport. Putting in a requisition for five more soldiers, but I can’t afford much more than that. Need that March disbursement.
Crash in France disappeared. Local gov’t? Alien cleanup? Hard to say, but sounds like there’s nothing for us to go back for. We’ll need to act quick on these things, it looks like.
(On to entry #8…)
]]>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)
]]>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…)
]]>