I've played ahead a bit - I've got two small-UFO missions in the recording buffer, a terror mission writeup starring the ever-popular-with-chryssalids
Bones, and I've played my first EXALT mission.
Coincidentally, I've gone into the .ini and performed one last tweak. EXALT operatives should
not be as hardy as my troops, let alone a damn Muton. Dat HP is going all the way down.
Regardless, enjoy this last writeup for PFC Andrey Ignatyev's first ever mission!
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Strike Team Alpha:
- LT. Aleksandr "Juggernaut" Novikov (Gunner)
- SGT Terminal "Batman" Boy (Assault)
- CPL Ashley "Chief" Williams (Infantry)
- LCPL Patricia Martinez (Medic)
- SPEC Fiona Morrison (Scout)
- SPEC Hans Mulder (Rocketeer)
- PFC Andrey Ignatyev (Rookie)
Carlton Ranch, 5 mi. northwest of Jetmore, Kansas
Crashed Alien Scoutcraft, 0156 Hours, May 16
The interior of the UFO was ablaze with the glow of lasgun fire streaming from Lieutenant Novikov’s autolaser. Beneath the barrage of ruby beams, the Outsider shifted and squirmed behind an alloy recess, very obviously stunned by the sheer volume of fire.
Terminal Boy was shouting at me, “Andy, go long!” as my boots pounded against the deck. His laspistol was trained and ready, waiting for the Outsider’s move. I shouldered past ‘Chief’ and her heavy lasgun, similarly fixed at a target that wasn’t yet presenting itself.
My nerves were singing something ominous and infused with fear. I felt some terrible compulsion from beyond a veil I’d never even known existed.
Rescue! it screamed, and suddenly I knew as I saw the Outsider flinch from the hail of lasers over its head: It was afraid.
The thought struck me as absurd. Outsiders were energy constructs, Dr. Vahlen’s literature said. There were no neural structures, no electronic logic circuits to guide its thoughts; no sign that it had thoughts at all. Yet here I was, hearing its scream of terror and its call to its crew. These beings of pure energy, devastatingly powerful and resilient creatures who terrify our veterans.
We frighten them.
Distantly, I was watching the entire scene unfold: Lieutenant Novikov pinned the outsider in place.
Terminal Boy and ‘Chief’ were ready and waiting to cut down the creature if it tried to move. Morrison was at our six, checking a direct UAV feed as she covered our flank. Mulder and Martinez were too far away to take part. Where did I fit in?
It came to me as I heard ‘Chief’s voice in my head.
It’s just like your special forces training, Andrey – fire superiority and aggression is key. Aliens look all sorts of freaky to us, but they panic and die just like we do if you pour on the fire and overwhelm them.
I kept going.
Go long! had been
Terminal’s order, and I intended to follow it. In slow motion, the angles of the room changed as I charged forward, screaming at the top of my lungs. I slid into place behind a console with strange talismans flickering on its surface and hauled my lasgun around, where it was dawning on the alien that I had a clean shot at it.
Panic rose in my veins, but it wasn’t mine. A sense of fulfilled dread rolled up my spine and I watched the alien stagger to its feet in barely concealed terror.
It was subsumed in a blaze of fury – dozens of laser bolts smashed into the creature, burning off small craters everywhere. A lance of ruby emerged from
Terminal Boy’s laspistol and snapped the creature’s rifle in half.
‘Chief’ finally put the Outsider out of its misery when she cored its chest with a blast from her heavy lasgun. I blinked away a blinding flash of light and the sound of a thunderclap and the alien was no more. The air shimmered where its very existence had lost coherence and evaporated into thermal energy.
My rifle came to a rest where the Outsider had been standing a half-second ago. It was over.
“It’s not over,” the lieutenant said. “Martinez?”
The medic was sliding into position behind a ruined side panel near the front door. “Yeah, he got off a call.”
Lieutenant Novikov nodded and vented his autolaser again. “Which means the rest of the crew is falling back to the ship now. Zander HQ, this is Strike Six.”
“Strike Six, this is Zander HQ, go ahead.”
“Zander HQ, we’ve secured the UFO…” I tuned out the lieutenant’s chatter and joined Martinez at the panel.
“Martinez,” I said. “Why’d the lieutenant ask you that?”
She answered without turning, “They briefed you about it in training, didn’t they, rookie? Every human hears the Outsider signals at some level, but it’s especially strong for certain people. The eggheads in Research are still trying to figure out why, but whatever the reason, I’m one of them."
"'Rescue'," I muttered.
That got her attention. She turned away from her lasgun sights and eyed me up and down. “You can hear the words?”
“More like feel them,” I said.
She held my gaze for a second, then smiled. “There’s hope for you yet, Andrey.”
“…concur, Strike Six. Make it happen. Zander HQ out,” the commander finished in my left ear. In my right, Lieutenant Novikov came through again.
“Listen up,” he said. “We’ve got ETs coming in from the east. Command says they’ve got shit for cover out there, so Yellow Team minus Mulder will make a stand here and hold the front door. Mulder, you’re with Black Team for firepower.
Terminal, take Black Team back to the barn, then punch east and take the X-Rays from the side. The tractors should give you good position, but use your judgment. Questions?”
Terminal slid a new shell into his shotgun and racked the action in reply. “Yeah boss, want us to leave you any?”
“You know how ornery ‘Chief’ gets when she doesn’t have something to shoot at. It’s your call, ‘Batman’.”
“Decisions, decisions, decisions… Black Team, Mulder, vamanos!”
The farm was alive with sounds in a way it hadn’t been before we entered the UFO. Fences creaked, and the silos across the courtyard groaned in the wind as I padded up against a densely packed bale of hay. A distant chittering floated into our ears like the sound of bickering squirrels. Sectoids.
“Stay close,”
Terminal said. “Mulder, cover from here. Everyone else, follow me.”
A gout of red light to our left announced contact. I couldn’t see what they were shooting at, but more ruby beams lanced out into the darkness and no flashes of green came back their way. I could only take that as a good sign.
Halt,
Terminal signaled as we rounded a corner. I scanned to our left into the darkness. There! A small, grey alien with what looked like a toy strapped to its wrist scampered into view, ducking beneath a blast of lasers. Fire from what was clearly Novikov’s autolaser drove another Sectoid back off into the darkness. The first alien was still in sight though – the Sectoid lifted his arm, and I plucked a grenade from my belt, ready to throw.
Something moved again in the corner of my eye. I flicked my attention to the right as I heard the
snap-whoosh of Mulder’s rocket launcher. The dying scream of a Sectoid echoed in time with the rocket’s explosion as I focused on the movement that had caught my eye.
A third and fourth Sectoid were watching us from the tractors directly ahead.
“Black team, charge, kill ‘em all!”
Terminal yelled as he pounded forward, shotgun cradled in his hands. He sprinted past the near tractor and dove behind a second one further east. His shotgun roared, and I could see yellow blood spray out from behind the farming equipment.
Just behind him, Fiona pulled her trigger, and an all-too-bright flash erupted from her lasgun. “Shit! Shit, shit, shit!” Fiona was cursing a storm as her gun hissed and vented coolant from a crack in its barrel.
The grenade left my hand. It clanked off the far tractor and fell out of sight.
A wet
thump sprayed fragments everywhere but up, sparking off the sides of the tractors, and a pregnant pause followed, even as Fiona smacked her lasgun with her hands. “Fucking fragile piece of shit!” she muttered.
I moved over to her and patted her shoulder as I scanned to our left. “Fiona, grab the laspistol off my belt. Better than your ballistic, and I know it works.”
“Thanks, rookie,” she said. I felt the weight leave my holster.
A ruby lasgun beam shot out from the door of the UFO, ending in an eruption of superheated steam and ichor. In the field, the Sectoid who’d fled Lieutenant Novikov’s fire collapsed into the dirt.
“Andy,”
Terminal was saying. “Look at this, you landed the grenade right under the poor bastard.”
He was right. The Sectoid’s corpse was utterly shredded, the pieces almost unrecognizable. “You told us to kill them all. I felt it was appropriate.”
“Shit, you can be my grenadier any day!” he said.
“Strike Six, this is Zander HQ, come in.”
“Zander HQ, Strike Six. Go ahead.”
“UAV recon shows negative enemy contact, good job Strike Team Alpha.”
Terminal fist-bumped Fiona as the commander continued. “Establish a perimeter and keep the crash site secure. Salvage teams are spooling up now, ETA 2 hours.”
Carlton Ranch, 5 mi. northwest of Jetmore, Kansas
LZ Orel, 0347 Hours, May 16
We were finally off duty. The first Osprey had been loaded with a squad of X-Com security personnel in skyblue fatigues. Their ballistic weapons were useless against the aliens we faced now, but they were sufficient to take over site security from us. You didn’t need a lasgun to warn off curious civilians, after all.
More Ospreys and a whole convoy of flatbed trucks followed. American National Guard troops. One of Dr. Shen’s senior advisors set up a command post for the salvage operation in the nearby house where Martinez and I had found the farm’s owners. Dead. Our kevlar and X-SAPI plates were hardly much armor against plasma fire, but it was very obviously better than civilian clothes.
Big Sky lifted off ten minutes later. I watched out the porthole as engineers swarmed over the UFO, cutting torches slicing huge chunks of alloy off the spacecraft and cranes lifting them onto flatbed trucks for transport back to base. The ride was smooth, and some eight times faster than those lumbering Ospreys had been. I closed my eyes.
X-Com "Zander" HQ - Cheyanne Mountain, Colorado
Hanger Prime, 0403 hours, May 16
We arrived back at base to our turn in quarantine. A tent was set up from the back of the skyranger to the isolation door. Biohazard suits went into the skyranger with heavy duty alkaloid solutions after we left.
Isolation started with an equipment room. We disrobed, our lasguns, armor, equipment, everything placed in disinfectant hoods.
The shower was functional – no curtains that would have to be decontaminated, just bare showerheads and a drain in the center of the room. We didn’t mind. The man or woman skinning by you now was the soldier you trusted to keep you alive two hours ago. You can’t ever be more naked than you are in battle.
A conference room of metal tables and metal chairs was our next stop. Central Officer Bradford appeared on the screen at one end of the room and began a remote interview from somewhere else in base. More faces on the screen showed almost all the observers. I noticed the commander wasn’t on the screen – not that it meant he or she wasn’t watching.
The after-action report started our five days in quarantine. As with the Strike Teams ahead of us, none of us ever came down with alien measles.
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X-Com Procedures: Recruiting Requirements
To be selected for the X-Com initiative, a potential soldier must meet many requirements, some overt, and some not. Raw combat-oriented skill and ability is just the bare minimum. Once the minimum cut of ability is passed, recruits are then screened for a variety of other factors, including, but not limited to: high technical aptitude, prior scientific training, battlefield adaptability, lack of national loyalty, high political objectivity, psychological hardiness and a moderate to high level of sociopathy. Some of these requirements would create public and private furor if revealed, but they are very necessary. An X-Com soldier must be more loyal to humanity as a whole than their home country, hometown and even their own family. As proven during the recent attack on Hong Kong, an X-Com soldier who hesitates in shooting a biologically compromised civilian or comrade may very well doom the mission. The extra-terrestrial threat demands nothing but the best of humanity in all aspects. Our fifty-odd troopers must be the best and brightest, for they are the souls who stand between mankind and total extinction.
~ Ferrard