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.
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