Cdr. Amyus Bale - Personal log - 9 May

One of our birds was almost shot down off the coast of Sao Luis last night.  The sats picked up a massive UFO, bigger than anything we've seen before, and too much for Raven-2.  Repair work will take the best part of a week, leaving our satellites in South America defenceless in the meantime.  We desperately need more fighters, but we're being pulled in umpteen directions already.

We might be able to give our stickjockeys more of a fighting chance, however.  R&D already have something prototyped, an experimental cannon based on alien weapons fragments.  This "Phoenix Cannon" should pack a hell of a punch but will require the pilot to get much closer to the target, a risky business.  Lt. Moore, who was - vociferous and scatological - about the need to "stop nannying the foot soldiers and look after your goddamn pilots", has volunteered to test it in the field.  The refit should take about 24 hours, with Skybuck cooing over her new toy all the while.

Public order in Brazil is already disintegrating again, thanks to numerous reported UFO sightings.  I've sent a shipment of scrapped alien weapons tech to Brasilia, in the hope that they can cobble something together to protect themselves, but that's a sticking plaster at best.

The new laboratory is finished but further construction - including prep for this alien containment facility - has ground to a halt from lack of space.  XCOM Knowle had hardly begun excavations into the hill when the X-rays made their move, and since the invasion Engineering have had their hands full with the satellite program, weapons development, fighter manufacture, you name it.  We'll have to start a rush job now, installing lift shafts as we go.

Sometimes it feels like there's too much, and not enough of us to see it through.  For every leak we plug, every hurdle we cross, we come up against three more.  I live in the shadow of the next attack, the next extraterrestrial terror to leap out of the shadows.