Battle Report, 5 July - OPERATION STONY PALACE

The Skyranger sets down on rolling scrubland, the sun setting orange behind the Mantaqueira Mountains on the horizon.

Alien contact is made quickly.  The silhouettes of two Mutons among the bluffs; green fire sizzling overhead.  Sprawling behind boulders and dusty hummocks, the squad opens up.

A lucky shot from Voodoo hits one in the shoulder.  To his surprise, the X-ray bursts out of cover, crashing through the brush like a runaway train.  Shocked, the squad focus their fire, but the beast shrugs off their lasts, seeming to gain momentum with each hit.  Bowling through light and shadow, it is a hulk of heavy flesh and muscle, bound up in red armour and a face-hugging mask like some kind of insane luchador.

Hastily I order them to fall back, scatter.  But it's too late, the beast is already upon the nearest rookie, lunging with paws like bowling balls.  I look away, fearing the worst - then a coms specialist whoops beside me.

On screen, the rookie dances aside once again as the beast strikes.  Then, with mad, foolhardy courage, she throws down her gun, brings up the arc thrower at her belt.

There is a blinding magnesium flash.

I blink back coloured lights.  A dark bull-shape digs a furrow in the earth, steaming, unconscious.  The rookie - Rk. Charlotte Garner, according to her head cam - is stunned.  Mission Control rumbles with cheers and applause, which I quickly shout down as the night lights up with plasma fire once more, and Garner dives for cover.

Making a mockery of our instruments, a Cyberdisc and a drone appear as if from nowhere.  Spurred on by Garner's success, another rookie, Woods, leaps up a rock face, unleashes his arc thrower on the drone.

It doesn't do anything.

The 'disc swoops round, unfolding like a deadly flower.  Its cannons rip Woods to shreds.

"Shit," I hiss.  "Take it down!"

Cyclops quickly targets its weapon systems, jamming them with a well placed bolt.  A rocket from Baron wastes the drone and shocks the 'disc back into its protective shell, spinning off into the dusk in search of safety.  Voodoo has his eye on it, however.

Baron moves up to Woods corpse.  There's not much to look at.

More subdued, but keyed up, the squad take up positions around the UFO.  Swirling with alien energies, the X-ray pilot, the so-called Outsider, leaps into one of the doorways.  Baron edges up close under cover of smoke from Voodoo, lobs in a grenade.  The wall of the UFO explodes in a shower of valuable alloys.

Cyclops takes the shot - misses.

Reeling from the explosion, the Outsider scuttles behind a line of wreckage, scores a hit on Baron's flank.

Then, out of nowhere, Garner dashes through the smoke.  Vaulting over the wreckage, she rolls up next to the pilot, arc thrower in hand.  The thing gives an inanimate scream, then devolves in a whirling implosion of energy, resolving into a thin yellow crystal.  Garner catches it onehanded, a little nonplussed.

We've done it.  Two live aliens in the bag.  On their way back to XCOM Knowle.

Cdr. Amyus Bale - Personal log - 4 July

Another UFO shot down over Brazil.  There are three applications for transfer to Brasilia on my desk from Lt. "Skybuck" Moore.

The swirling black maelstroms obscuring Nigeria, Egypt and South Africa on the virtual globe in Mission Control are like a kick to the face.  Without Council infrastructure in Africa, we are essentially blind there.  It's truly the Dark Continent, now, and I've made it that way.  It's a relief to watch the globe turn, as we follow the glowing blip of Skyranger over the Atlantic.

Wallowing isn't a luxury I can afford.  XCOM is reliant on the backing of the Council nations - if five more of them were to withdraw their support, as the African nations have done, that would be the end of us - and the fight against the invasion.  I need to show them some solid progress, a victory.  So we're going for a live alien.

The rookies have been training with arc throwers for weeks now.  Three of them will soon try them out for real, with Cpt. "Cyclops" Gryspeerdt, Lt. "Voodoo" Ash and Sgt. "Baron" Arnold on board to protect them.  I hope we're lucky.

Cdr. Amyus Bale - Personal log - 2 June

We held the service for Cpl. Calum Mitchell today.

Just a simple ceremony, as always - simpler even.  There was no body to inter, no ashes to scatter.  The latter might have spread alien contaminants for miles across the countryside, while the former couldn't be trusted not to crawl out of the grave.

But the turnout was astounding.  Not only vets and rookies, but engineers and research scientists, pilots and greasemonkeys from the hangar floor, medical orderlies from the Cauldron and coms specialists from Mission Control.  Seems Mitchell knew everybody, and everybody knew him.

Apparently there are regular amateur folk sessions at XCOM Knowle.  Two labcoats, the quartermaster and an engineer played a lurching, mournful rendition of Sloe Gin as they lowered Mitchell's fiddle into the empty coffin.

Someone else let fall a tatty script, scrawled with notes, saying that the show wouldn't be the same without him.  Another dropped a sheaf of sketches and skits, with a valiant attempt at cracking a joke.  Projects put on hold by the invasion.

I gave a speech, raising my voice above the white noise of the wind turbines all around.  Pinned medals for valour, service and sacrifice to a velvet square, lowered them in.  There was something else in my hand too.  A postcard forwarded to me by the Council - a rare kindness on their part.  The front bears some scene from provincial France, the back a message of thanks for Cpl. Mitchell (l'homme à la grande barbe) from two women, a man and a child.

I'd meant to bury it with his medals, but somehow it was still in my hand when I sat down here, at my desk.

Cpl. Calum Mitchell, KIA.  We will remember.

XCOM Project Monthly Report - June 2015

Despite the grade, there was an air of smugness about the Council's representative, smugness tinged with relief, the sense of a precipice avoided.  The patronising tone you reserve for a willing, gullible fall guy.

I made the difficult decision for them.  Turned my back for the greater good.  To avoid overstretch.  To preserve our resources.  To cut losses and fight where we're strong.

This was worse than racism and more dangerous than bigotry.  This was the sly, subconscious act of a white, middleclass male given power - once again - to impose himself on the rest of humanity.  The unthinking contempt of the developed world for what we deem the "undeveloped".

Why would Nigeria, South Africa and Egypt continue their support of XCOM, when we've done so little to deserve it?

Where are our satellites and birds?  How often has the Skyranger flown for Montreal or Toronto, Manchester or Tijuana or Tokyo while people were kidnapped and killed in Pretoria, Cairo and Lagos?  How many died at Kaduna, despite us?

Cdr. Amyus Bale - Personal log - 29 June

I launched satellites over China, Australia and the USA.  It's one of the most despicable things I've ever done.

It doesn't matter how I justified it, what arguments I made, debated.

A whole continent abandoned to the enemy, condemned to an unknown fate.

Cdr. Amyus Bale - Personal log - 28 June

Acceptable losses.  A concept I am coming to terms with, must come to terms with.  At least Mitchell died a hero, saving people, and with a clean conscience, I hope.

Sgt. James "Baron" Arnold

We lose soldiers, and brave souls step up to replace them.  James Arnold handled himself well in Marseilles and will get his Sergeant's stripes.  Anja Meinhardt has what it takes - she's not a rookie anymore.


I'm also promoting "Enigma" Lambert and "Cyclops" Gryspeerdt to Captain, not before time.

Sq. Anja Meinhardt

There's a lot of excitement in the labs.  They've been researching the alien energy sources we've recovered, specifically the fuel, a substance they've dubbed Elerium.  Apparently it's revolutionary, the kind of thing that could solve all our energy problems - the whole planet's energy problems - if we can only learn to duplicate and exploit it.

That's a dream for another day, however.  One I don't have time to be excited about.

There are three satellites down in Engineering and we finally have the uplink capacity to run all of them - but where do we launch?  We've bought a little breathing space in Europe but I'm facing mass hysteria across the rest of the globe.  The Council Nations are in uproar, squabbling amongst themselves.  Australia and China sending joint demands for more coverage over Asia; then going behind each others' backs, fishing for the first satellite with a mixture of incentive and intimidation.  Canada still bitching, the USA stridently shouting down the concerted pleas of Nigeria, Egypt and South Africa.  A dirty little message from Mexico, full of veiled references to secrets from las Grutas de Cacahuamilpa and dark threats of blackmail if Mexico isn't given priority.

There's talk of sanctions, trade embargos, even police actions.  The charts and reports scattered across my desk are giving me a headache already.

It's going to be a long night.

Battle Report, June 27 - OPERATION VENGEFUL SENTINEL

The Skyranger spins on a dime, touching down outside a fashionable cafe in France's second city.  Flames erupt from the tiled roofs.  The streets are chaotic with screaming civilians and the swift, flesh-crawling forms of Chrysalids.

The strike team are firing even as they skid down the ramp of the Skyranger, but it's not enough.  A Chrysalid leaps upon one of the fleeing Marseillais, piercing him with hollow spines.  Viscera splatters against windows of the cafe.  The man's body bulges grotesquely, ballooned with the Chrysalid's gestating larvae.  The monster flexes, turns, begins clicking towards two women paralysed with shock.

Cpl. Calum Mitchell is the first to react.  Head down for speed, he dashes across the forecourt.  Grabbing a cowering man by the shoulders, he throws him into a stumbling run towards the evac zone, then brings his shotgun to bear on the menacing Chrysalid.  It falls with a skithering shriek.

Mitchell ushers the women towards the Skyranger, keeping a weather eye on the bulging body, which already begins to twitch and stir.


Suddenly it leaps for him, but he is already slipping away into the cafe's portico.  Boghead and Rk. Meinhardt make short work of the zombie.

Their is a screech of metal, an electronic squeal.  The viewscreens buzz and static in protest.

"Cyberdisc!"


We get a good look at it this time.  Clawed, winged, a surgical terror that contrasts sharply with the organic horrors of the Chrysalid.  It advances smoothly, eerily.

Fearlessly, Mitchell sprays it with scatterlasers, which zap and zing off its platinum skin.  It shakes itself, strangely dog-like, then slips forwards again, closing on the Corporal's position.

A shocking jerk, like the alarming dart of a spider.  A grenade bounces at Mitchell's feet.  He throws himself to one side, the blast catching him and catapulting him out into the road.  All around, more Chrysalids scramble over the rubble, leaping out of broken windows.

Desperately, Enigma and Cyclops fire at the Cyberdisc, scoring its silver hide.  I bark an order to Cpl. Arnold.  Steadying the launcher on a car door, he lets our a whoop as the rocket roars across the forecourt, crashing the 'disc against a smoldering bookcase to lie, inoperable, among the charring pages.

There are cries from above.  Using the grappling hook built into his prototype body armour, Cyclops slingshots himself onto the roof of the cafe, sending quaint parasols and white metal chairs clattering as he lands.  A Floater soars above, taking potshots at the men and women hiding beneath tables and awnings.  A grim smile, a trigger pulled, and it careens into a nearby building.

The Chrysalids are everywhere.  Cpl. Arnold sweeps his LMG across the street, flooring one after another.  But there are always more.

Wounded, Mitchel drags himself into an alley, a wide trail of blood scraped along the floor behind him. It leads the Chrysalids right to him.  Cornered, battered and bleeding, he can barely scream.  A dark splash obscures his headcam.



"Dammit."  My head is in my hands.  "Strike team!  Mitchell is KIA, repeat KIA.  Expect a zombie at 10 o'clock, any minute now."

A sliver of brickwork, a blue awning, a faint star, are visible in the corner of Mitchell's splattered cam.  Then the view shivers, jerks.  A lurch into an upright position.  Shuffling forwards.  Moving figures, shooting.  A flash of red fire.  Then only static.

*

The Skyranger is packed on the return journey.  Fourteen survivors to be dropped off in safe rural areas in the French interior.

They have Cpl. Mitchell to thank for that.