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.

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…)

Sunday, January 17
Evening

It’s troubling to me that we’ve confirmed the existence of extraterrestrial life over the barrel of a gun. The existential implications are enormous; the military implications are frightening.

The loss of life…

Bear was a promising soldier, and his performance on this mission was superlative. Wolf and Weasel appear to have been gassed; they should recover, but being sucker-punched like that can’t be good for morale. Losses in combat are expected, but we had them outnumbered and outflanked. We need some new tactical ideas.

And promotions. Beetle, Wolf, Tiger and Eagle all showed excellent combat readiness. Sergeants, all.

These troops need leadership, and those four are going to be leaders, whether they like it or not.

Chimpanzee assigned to transport roster. I have a few ideas about throwing explosive objects at little grey bastards, and Chimpanzee’s got the best arm I’ve seen yet.

Tomorrow I need to review this recovered alien tech. See if we can’t use some of this to our advantage.

—

Monday, January 18
Morning

I’m going ahead with the laser rifle project, though I’m tempted to have the geeks look into the plasma weapons we recovered as well. It’s a shame we didn’t have any of the new laser pistols off the assembly line in time for last night’s op.

And these ship components. Techs tell me the stuff is fascinating at first glance.

And we need to get an autopsy going on these recovered aliens. A lot to do. Those extra scientists can’t get here soon enough. I’d bring in more still, but the budget is almost blown and I won’t get reallocated until the start of the month.

The question remains as to what the craft we secured yesterday represents, exactly. Was this a sole excursion? Part of a group of ships currently on around Earth? A scouting party?

—

Wednesday, January 20th
Morning

New science and engineering bodies arrived today. Putting them to work on existing projects immediately.

—

Saturday, January 23rd
7:42

Another craft on the ground, Wyoming/Colorado border. Aircraft en route.

—

10:25

At the site. Landing party engaging. Combat recorders active.

—

01

Sun won’t be up for a while in Wyoming. Visibility a serious issue. Hopefully they can’t see any better in the dark than we can.

Wooden buildings in the area. Unknown if there are civilians present.

No immediate sign of hostiles. Team fanning out around ship.

…

Hydraulic door noises — incoming fire from the south! No one wounded, no ID of hostile.

—

02

Mouse checking window on structure to the west of the transport. Contact, one grey inside. Taking the shot.

No good, shots went wide, return fire knocked Mouse out. Gorilla on cleanup with an auto-cannon loaded with high explosive, grey is down along with half the building. Mouse possibly caught in the splash. Dammit.

Chimpanzee reports room clear.

Sgt. Wolf taking a strike team south. Weasel on point, no sign of source of enemy fire.

Albatross scouting north: craft sighted. Sending Sgt. Tiger that way with a strike team.

These guys saw us coming and had time to really spread out. Perimeter sweep vital.

…

More fire from south, ship took some superficial damage but no one hurt. Grey spotted this time, ducking out from behind building to the south. Sgt. Eagle took a shot, but no joy.

Big mistake, alien.

—

03

Ox put a few HE rounds into the southern structure. Visual and audio confirmation of grey down. Sgt. Wolf’s strike team will continue sweep to be sure he was alone.

Chimp checking second level of west building, Gorilla backing him up.

Sgt. Tiger’s team closing on ship, Sgt. Eagle flanking.

…

Movement at the ship. Hostile fire, Albatross is down.

—

04

Sweeping. No sign. Taking up positions on alien craft door.

…

Contact at the door, incoming fire, no casualties. Bull gets the takedown with his auto-cannon. Bam.

—

05

West building clear, Chimp on lookout on second story overlooking alien craft. There’s some hedges between westward team and the craft, but a little controlled fire from Falcon takes care of that.

More guns pointed at ship entrance while support teams catch up with Sgt. Tiger et al.

…

Sgt. Beetle reports sound of gunfire but no apparent vector. Sweeping western region with Wolverine.

—

06

Beetle tossing a grenade into nearby field, chance of flushing out or even nixing combatant. Darkness seriously hampering our operation efficiency, blowing things up beginning to look like an appealing strategy in general.

Chimp takes the roof of the west building. Bingo, target in a field to the northwest, just north of Wolverine’s position.

Falcon has a good line. Controlled burst, enemy down.

…

No movement.

—

07

Gorilla makes contact, rear of the craft. HE burst. Enemy down.

…

No movement.

—

08

Sending Bull to the ship entrance, breaching it shortly. Perimeter sweep nearly complete, need to find out who is inside, and who might be on the far side of, that ship.

…

Hydraulics again. Inside.

—

09

Bull is in. One grey on south branch of the ship lobby. Nixed, notch one Bull, but he’s bleeding. We need to clean this up quick and clear out.

…

No movement.

—

10

Breaching the lobby, guns on both internal doors. Exterior sweep complete. I don’t know if aliens wear pants, but if they do they’re shitting them right now.

If aliens shit.

…

No movement.

—

11

Securing internal doors.

…

Door noise, must be farther inside.

—

12

Peregrine opens north door, grey bastard staring right back at him. Clean rifle kill at point blank. Additional contact in pilot chamber, pulling Peregrine back to cover for now. No time to flank from south entrance.

…

No movement. No door sounds — target is still in the pilot chamber?

—

13

Peregrine back through the door into the pilot chamber. No sign of our friend; P taking up position and holding, Sgt. Tiger and Eagle as backup.

Weasel entering from south antechamber — contact! Rifle burst, two hits but enemy still standing, fires a gas round. Sgt. Wolf confirms both Weasel and hostile apparently unconscious.

…

Area cleared, mission complete.

—

12:54

Debrief:

We could have brought that last fellow home alive, I think — he was still breathing on the trip back, Sgt. Tiger kept a gun on him during the return flight. But then something went south fast.

Looks like those “alien containment” blueprints might be worth ordering construction on after all.

No new surprises; same ship model as last time, slightly larger crew, similar tech recovered.

Losing Mouse was a mistake. Need to up training discipline with high-explosive rounds — I think we’ll get a lot of use out of them if we continue to see combat in uninhabited territory, but these friendly fire incidents need to not happen.

Ox promoted to Sergeant. Tiger is the team’s new Captain; handling of storming the ship was excellent.

Bull is on the injured list, docs say he won’t be back in action for almost a month. A shame, but glad we got him back alive. May need to put some attention on field-medic research.

Gila, Gazelle, and Hamster put on active roster.

(On to entry #5…)

January 17, 1999
19:44

This is it: our first engagement with the aliens. Or whatever they are.

It’s a small craft near Granada, sighted on the ground. Helmet-cam audio/visual monitoring active. Combat log commencing. Operation go.

—

01

Beetle reports immediate contact on opening the transport doors. Short, grey, big head. Twenty yards off.

Clean shot. It’s down. Notch one for Beetle. One small bullet for man…

Weasel clears the transport, IDs the alien craft due south. Looks like an east-facing door, no movement.

Poor cover around landing zone, half the team on the ground near our ship and the other half waiting ready just inside.

…

Report of hydraulic noises from vicinity of craft. Machinery? Doors?

—

02

Four teams; assault squad on the sighted door, rear squad looping around the other end of the craft, hill squad pushing east up local hill to secure the area behind it, recon squad to head north and make sure there aren’t any friends of our corpse waiting in the bushes.

…

No movement.

—

03

Hill taken. No sign of enemies. Closing on ship door. Large, cross-shaped craft, but very flat. Not exactly a saucer, but it’s sure as hell not a conventional aircraft. From here it doesn’t look like an aircraft at all.

…

More hydraulics noise. Whatever is moving around, it’s inside that craft.

—

04

Assault team has front door locked down tight. Anything walks out is dead meat. Hoping something will.

Rest of area clean so far. Still finishing perimeter sweep, but action likely inside the tin can.

…

No movement.

—

05

Rear team has swept far side of craft. No other exits, no grey nasties.

Perimeter sweep complete. We may need to kick open a door.

…

More hydraulics.

—

06

Get ready. Get set.

…

Hydraulics. They’re moving, they just aren’t coming out.

—

07

Breaking out the can opener. Wolf approaching the door. Entering. Interior branches left and right, doors in both directions. No sign of enemies. Pulling back, advancing assault squad to entrance.

Rear team double-timing to back assault team up. Hill and recon holding perimeter.

…

No movement.

—

08

Assault team inside, two on each interior door with snipers in the corners backing them up and Gorilla waiting behind cover with an auto-cannon in case something goes really wrong.

…

Hydraulics but no movement. Another door farther in?

—

09

Pushing toward doors. Breaking through on the next push.

…

Movement! Another grey thing coming through the southernmost door. Wolf and Weasel get shots off, both hits, enemy down. No incoming enemy fire yet — are these guys even armed?

—

10

Wolf and Weasel through the south door. Another antechamber, another door. Chamber clear, camping the new door, Tiger watching their six.

Bear through the north door, no antechamber — contact! One grey facing a console of some sort, possible pilot station. Clean three round burst. Enemy down. Still no incoming fire.

…

No movement.

—

11

Weasel on point through the south antechamber. Opens on the same pilot-chamber as previous kill. Central square chamber with a west-facing door, still unbreached. Remaining xenomorphs presumed inside.

Wolf on the door, Weasel and Tiger on her back; north-door team waiting behind cover, not enough to set up opposing position without risking a crossfire.

Here kitty kitty.

…

Contact! Weapons fire incoming! Burst weapon fired from point blank. Weasel, Wolf unconscious. Enemy retreating back into square central chamber.

—

12

Bear to the door. Two greys inside, looks like an engine chamber. Risking a burst to take both out. Bad for Bear if it doesn’t work, but he’s got the jump on them right now.

One down clean in two shots. The other still standing, returns fire.

Bear is iced. God dammit.

Eagle steps over Bear’s body outside the door, more fire incoming but she’s not wounded. Burst from a few meters, enemy down. Notch one, Eagle. Room clear.

…

Mission complete.

(On to entry #4…)

Saturday, January 2
12:02

Guns arrived. Didn’t even have to pay extra for overnight shipping. Possibility exists that X-Com is funded by Amazon.com.

—

Monday, Jan 4
12:00

And here’s those new recruits.

—

16:53

Troop review. Educational. For one thing, my first crop wasn’t a fluke — this is about as good (and bad) as it’ll get, it looks like. Mix of competencies. Mix of physical abilities. Some of these grunts could stare down a grizzly, some of ‘em nearly fell over when I walked past.

Callsigns for the newbies: Turtle, Peregrine, Gila, Gazelle, Ox, Chimpanzee, Albatross, Gorilla, Hamster, Bull, Goat, Porpoise, Marmot, Cheetah, Badger, and Wolverine.

If we keep growing the team I’m going to have to break out an encyclopedia.

I’m assigning Peregrine, Ox, Albatross, Gorilla, Bull and Wolverine to the active team along with the original complement. Troop transport holds 14, no reason not to have a full boat if and when we see any action.

—

Tuesday, Jan 5
13:04

Putting one of our Interceptors through a milk run; I need to see operational range on these things with my own eyes, know how far our reach is. My handler assured me that flight clearance was “taken care of”, which is a nice trick; I’m pointing our pilot at New Dehli, which should cross a lot of airspace.

Here’s hoping we don’t run into anything that hasn’t been taken care of after all. I need to know what we can get away with.

—

13:09

Five minutes from go order to launch. Not bad. Flight deck crew isn’t slouching.

—

17:06

Hit the fuel limit just short of the Indian border. Called him back in. It’s not perfect — even with a straightline flight we’ve got an operational hole the size of the moon on the other side of the planet, at least until we can get another facility established overseas — but it’s not bad.

Need to take the troop transport out for a spin soon as well. Tomorrow, maybe.

—

Wednesday, Jan 6
8:17

Update on the Interceptor test: refuel and turn-around took about eight hours last night. Not great. With two birds we can in theory keep one in the air at all times if it comes to that, but it won’t leave us much flexibility. Let’s hope X-Com doesn’t have to spend too much time chasing foo fighters around.

News from the science team: they’re ready to start focusing the laser research into an actual weapon prototype. They’ve asked to start in on researching into a pistol as a proof-of-concept. I’d rather have something beefier, but it’s a start.

—

Sunday, Jan 10
11:42

New general stores complete. Existing warehouse not yet at capacity; considering installing foosball table in the new space for the time being.

—

Monday, Jan 11
2:16

Holy christ, we’ve got a craft sighting, a couple hundred miles south. Scrambling an Interceptor to recon the area while the troop transport lumbers out.

Maybe this isn’t a bullshit op after all. Or maybe some kids are playing with flashlights. I don’t know how good our radar guys are yet.

—

2:56

Unidentified craft twigged and bolted out over the Atlantic when our jet was still fifteen minutes out. God dammit. I want this thing.

—

5:01

Craft is faster than the Interceptor, just barely but enough to keep us from closing. No visual confirmation, could be a Russian jet for all I know. Over mainland Europe now, just crossed the dateline more or less. Troop transport is on its tail in case we get lucky, but I’m worried now that we’re not going to be able to seal the deal.

No communication from local air force or military. Not clear why this is our game alone, but I’ve been instructed not to make any outreach from X-Com, and I’m not sure I want to test that prohibition without a damned good reason.

—

5:08

Lost the craft. Over Switzerland. Possible Nazi-gold angle here? Bad joke. I could hit something.

Directing the Interceptor to keep a flyover going while we’ve got the fuel, maybe we’ll get lucky and pick it up again.

—

9:47

Bingo fuel on the Interceptor. Bringing them both home, the transport isn’t equipped for a fight in any case if it got stuck out there alone.

God dammit.

I want ears in Europe and I want them now. But I can’t afford to start building a new base, not with this one only half-staffed and most of my budget blown.

—

Sunday, Jan 17
Morning

Busy night. New living quarters are complete. And the science team completed research on the laser pistol prototype!

It’s a nice looking weapon; puts out a lot more energy than our standard pistols. Not exactly crack shot stuff, though. Hopefully my guys can locate some broad sides of barns when the shit hits the fan.

I’ve already got the team working on a rifle model. I’d like something a little more reliable to work with, in the long run. And with the new quarters ready, I think I’ll staff up the science team. Clearly we’re getting results.

Manufacturing group estimates 300 man hours to build one pistol, which comes down to a little over a day per unit for my current engineering staff to produce. I might need to staff up there as well, especially if fabbing rifles turns out to be comparatively more time consuming.

—

17:07

Another craft on the ground. Granada. Scrambling.

18:23

Fighter in pattern over craft, sighting confirmed. Let’s not have any bullshit this time.

19:44

Hot damn. Troop transport in position. Giving the landing order. Let’s take a look at these little green bastards.

(On to log entry #3…)

If you’re unfamiliar with X-Com and enjoy video games, I encourage you to go check it out pronto. It’s a classic, and still holds up well fifteen years later. And it’s like five bucks on Steam.)

—

Friday, January 1st, 1999
12:03 hours

Well, here it is at last. We’ve got an alien problem.

And somehow I got stuck with the job of putting that problem to bed. I must have done something pretty bad in a previous life.

Here’s to my directorship of the Xenomorph Defense Command Initiative. A mouthful. X-Com, the staff is calling it.

—

13:17

I don’t know if I’m being intentionally left in the dark or if my handlers just don’t know a goddam thing themselves yet. Neither option comforts me.

What I do know is that I’ve been given surprisingly little information about the alien threat. I have files on our materiel resources and equipment — ships and weapons, base facility blueprints — but it’s not much, barely more than brochures. And there are databanks for alien artifacts and life forms, UFO components, etc, but those files are in Old Mother Hubbard territory.

When I asked about that, my contact just shrugged and said that filling those files is part of X-Com’s job.

—

13:58

What little I have been shown about the alien threat itself took the form of a brief “orientation video”. I don’t know whether to laugh or spit. Bad actors dressed in face masks and green suits chewing on scenery, dramatic music, a corny little plotted battle. This is supposed to help me? Cheeseball propaganda?

—

15:04

We’re based in Pennsylvania, on a prefab slice of government concrete outside of Harrisburg, which is I suppose as good place as any to repel an alien invasion. I’m told that expanding operations over time to additional facilities is an option, and given that we have no particular reason to expect the aliens to subscribe to any theory of US exceptionalism it makes sense that we’d need X-Com to diversify its bases globally, but right now I’m looking at a limited budget, no information on the nature of the threat, and a skeleton crew of soldiers and lab goons.

And three planes. A troop transport and two fighters. That I’m pouring a third of my monthly budget into rental fees for, right out of the gate. And I’ve been told not to expect significant military intervention outside of X-Com’s own resources.

God help us if the aliens decided to bring more than one ship. Though maybe they’ll give me a better lease rate.

If they even exist. This feels like a farce. I could be golfing.

—

16:10

Just checked out our armaments. Enough rifles and pistols to put a gun in everyone’s hands, but that’s about it. Two spare pistols. Two spare rifles. Two heavy cannon, one auto-cannon, and one rocket launcher. Enough ammo for maybe two or three firefights.

I barely have enough guns for the soldiers I have, and that’s assuming nothing breaks down. And I’ve only got eight soldiers. Who approved this loadout?

It’s a good thing I’ve been given full discretion on spending. We’re gonna need a bigger budget.

—

18:33

Troop review. They’re in good spirits, but then they’re getting 20K a month to sit on their asses. I’d be cheerful too.

Nothing special, nothing terrible. A couple of them look like they’ve never pointed a gun at a breathing target before, which troubles me, but hopefully we can do something about that soon.

Igor Scharov, he’s a bear, though. I wouldn’t put him on recon, he seems a little slow on the draw, but as a squad leader he might just have the balls to make a team work.

Bear. Hmm. If I’m going to be stuck with this assignment, I might as well have some fun with it. Time to work up some callsigns.

—

21:12

I’ve requisitioned another sixteen troops, another dozen rifles and eight more auto-cannons, plus ammo to spare. Hopefully that’ll give me enough bodies and gear to staff multiple shifts, when and if anything actually happens.

I’ve also ordered construction of an additional barracks and more storage space; if we do need to staff up quickly for any reason, I want to be ready. And there’s a new, larger radar array going in; I’d like to have enough ears to know if something’s happening farther away than Poughkeepsie.

There’s a facilities diagram in the files for an “alien containment” unit, but I’m not going to spend money and real estate on that until I see evidence that there’s aliens to shoot in the first place, let alone survivors to cage up.

It’ll be nearly February by the time that’s all built. I have a feeling I’m going to make excellent progress on my thumb-twiddling in the mean time.

—

22:48

My science team has a few projects they’d like to work on, and I’m happy to let them; aside from the construction crew building the facilities, they’re probably the only folks in this whole base who will be getting something useful done.

I’ve put them on track for the laser weapons research initiative; alien invasion or no, there’s got to be some manufacturing money there.

Speaking of, I’ve been thoughtfully provided with ten production engineers with nothing to produce. I guess they can play frisbee with Animal Squad until the laser weapons can go into prototyping and beta-testing.

Animal Squad. Bear and Tiger and Wolf look like real front-line combatant material. Falcon and Eagle can hit a target though I’m not sure I want them leading any charges. Beetle, Weasel, Mouse: maybe they’ll surprise me. I hope so.

—

23:57

Long day. A third of my budget for the month was spent before I walked through the door, just on salaries and equipment rental and facilities maintenance. I’ve spent another third this evening. Let’s hope the rest of the month doesn’t have any surprises in store. If I have to pay to have this place re-roofed I may kill my realtor.

(On to Entry #2!)

Go check out Inchoatery!

I’ve also written up a bit about the challenges of pretending to be a whole rock band as a solo musician, in a blog post over on the music site titled The Lonely Iterator.

Check ‘em out!