Cdr. Amyus Bale - Personal log - 17 April

There having a party inn the bar.A wake.  I can here them singing Fleetwood Mac, crackly on the intercom.  Even the new guy.

There is a half a bottle of fremented Yak;s milk on my desk.  Got to be a t keast a 2 litres of the stuff there.  nOt so much now.

Typing has gone to shit.  That's better.

Promoted Saxby and Borg this morning.  Insists we call her "Boghead".  Some kind of childdhood nickname, I think.

I am going to drink all of this.

Sgt. William "Crater" Hill, KIA.  We will remember.

Battle Report, 16 April - OPERATION PURPLE MOTHER

Too soon.

The battlefield is a petrol station with its own fast food restaurant alongside, some Mexican chain I've not come across before.  Within seconds of stepping warily into the all-too explosive cover of the pumps, more X-rays that we've ever seen before explode out of the restaurant.

Too soon.

All firing at once, they rip the apart the three meter high concrete behind which Sgt. "Crater" Hill was hiding.  Out in the open, he stands, screaming his defiance, as he is gunned down in a storm of plasma.

Too soon.

The rest of the Kiduna team are shocked for a moment, unmoving.  Twitch steps out deliberately from behind a car, jaw clenched, pistol raised.

"Get them."

The remaining squad members let loose a furious fusillade of laser fire.

Aliens fall left and right, surprised by the ferocity of the onslaught.

Even as they fall back, "Sentinel" Saxby fries them from behind.

Alien ichor fountains over the tarmac, against the tacky walls of the fast food joint, 

spattering the wilted petrol station flowers.

Soon, so soon, it's all over.  Gasping and sweating, the survivors of Kaduna have destroyed the enemy.

Too late.

Cdr. Amyus Bale - Personal log - 15 April

Sgt. William "Crater" Hill

The battle to keep Mexico on the Council continues.  I hope the Kiduna team slept on the Skyranger, because I'll be sending them out to Acapulco as soon as they've landed and refueled.  Intel suggests a heavy alien abduction force in the region, so we'll need our most experienced troops to mitigate the risk.

They deserve recognition for their service in Nigeria, so I'll be rushing them through a promotion ceremony.  I'll pin the pips on them myself the moment they touch down.

Sgt. Jordan "Sentinel" Saxby

The Gent brothers have both made Lieutenant, while Hill is to be promoted to Sergeant.  I've heard them calling him "Crater" over the Skyranger mics - we'll see if it sticks.

Saxby will also make Sergeant, and Sq. Borg will be boosted up to Corporal.

These soldiers faced everything out there - clawed horrors, zombies, heavy fire - and they've taken it, and asked for more.

We're hardpressed, though.  The enemy isn't letting up, and isn't likely to.

I hope they can handle it.

Battle Report, 15 April - OPERATION FORGOTTEN GOD

A day to make us forget all our gods.

Kaduna is a warzone.  It seems strange to say that only now, when we've been fighting a war for more than a month.  But at Kaduna the squad is dropped into a hell unlike anything they've seen before.

Survivors are still holding out in a military complex.  It is already alight when the Skyranger arrives, alight with flames and the green iridescent slime of alien landing pods.  Wrecked jeeps and abandoned tanks litter the parade ground, adorned with withered, skeletal bodies.  Visibility is poor, with smoke and dust whipped across their faces by the rising wind.

There are no survivors or X-rays in sight, but the air is filled with gun fire and screams.  I order the team forwards slowly, unwilling to send them running into danger.  Dust billows and swirls, masking and unmasking the chaos around them.  The screams rise with the wind.  X-rays are sighted, lost, brought down.

Eventually, the screams become too much.  Sq. Borg dashes forward, spotting a survivor in the haze.  She squats beside him, calming him over the noise of the battle, sending him running back to the Skyranger.

Suddenly, she spots movement in the murk, an unfamiliar silhouette.  She hesitates, shoots, misses, and the monster charges.

Sgt. "Nix" and Cpl. Hill both sink lead into the thing but it keeps coming.  By the time Borg can bring her laser rifle to bear for a second time, slagging it at point blank range, it is virtually upon her.

More screams, from a hangar up ahead.  Fearlessly, Borg forges forwards, only to be jumped again.  Again, Hill and Nix fill it with bullets, but the tough bastard just keeps coming.  Returned from leading a pair of survivors back to the Skyranger, Twitch flips out his laser pistol and finishes it off at range, allowing Borg to slip past into the hangar.

Meanwhile, Saxby hears noises in a nearby office, sees a man silhouetted against the window.  He creeps forward, eases open the door - and finds something unwelcome.  The man, shambling forward, is grotesque - swollen, green-tinged, stagnant.  The aliens have turned him into some kind of... zombie.  Taking no risks, I order the unknown taken down.  With his customary reflexes, Twitch sprays it with shot, but it is Hill, with better aim, who tears it apart with LMG fire, showering Saxby with putrescent entrails.

Inside, Borg reassures another survivor, sends them sprinting to safety.  Nix, overwatching his comrades, spots another, cowering not far from the landing zone.  Cursing the murk that had hidden her from us, I tell him to start running.  Another claw monster spiders out of the smoke, but falls to crossfire from Saxby and Borg.

Hill watches warily as another zombie shuffles into view.  It stumbles, retches, then explodes: bursting from within, another monster, fully formed.

It skitters rapidly between the tanks, pinning Hill against a line of sandbags.  Nix is out of position, but still has a shot.  Skidding in the dirt, he spins, fires.  The creature shrieks, staggers, and Hill coolly unloads a clip into its face, up close and personal.

The screaming has stopped, and our satellites detect more UFOs on their way - it's time to get out of there.  Only five civilians huddle in the Skyranger as it lifts off.  Five people saved, when intel suggested there was five times that number in Kaduna still alive when we arrived.

Cdr. Amyus Bale - Personal Log - 14 April

The world is darkening quickly.

Adrienne dead, sure to the be the first of many.  Pip laid up in the infirmary, the corpse pallor of his face another of reminder of the consequences of my orders.

And now the enemy has changed its tactics.  No longer just the random abductions, the tentative cat and mouse between our birds and their UFOs.  The aliens have unleashed aerial bombardments against major cities worldwide, terrorising the civilian population.  It is a show of force beyond our worst imagining.  One we cannot hope to combat in the air.

Moscow, Paris, Tokyo, Mumbai, Washington DC... the list goes on.  All struck before we could react.

I've put our best guns on a Skyranger: Twitch, new Sergeant "Nix" Gent, Cpls. Hill and Saxby, and Sq. Borg.  They're headed for Kaduna, Nigeria, where there's still some hope that lives can be saved.

Good hunting.

Cdr. Amyus Bale - Personal log - 13 April

Damn.

Damn.  Damn.

There's a lot to do.  Progress updates from R&D.  Specs for the new generator being built down in engineering to supplement to the wind turbines; construction schedules for the two additional satellites being paid for with Canadian dollars from Vancouver.

Promotions to sign off.  Cpl. Gent's kill count after "Cursed Palace" speaks for itself - I'm promoting him to Sergeant.  We could dub him Nix, for those shots in the dark.

I can't concentrate, though.  I've killed my first soldier, as sure as if I'd held the gun myself.

I liked Sq. Joy - Adrienne.  We'd had long, loud conversations before the invasion: about Doctor Who, the absurdity of our gender conventions - railing at the Forces' idea of equal opportunities.  Blowing off steam after boring watches and days full of paperwork.  Flicking through her file, I discovered she'd been finding time to write a blog, even between operations.  It's very good.

My desk is cramped with several large cardboard boxes.  Joy's things, ready to be returned to her family.  I had them brought up here, hoping they might help me somehow with the letter to her parents.  The other thing I have to do.  There is always the official letter, of course, but that has never sat right with me.

There's not much there.  Some clothes, a stuffed toy of a flying bison.  The barracks has taken its share already, honouring informal promises made in the anticipation of death.  Not strictly regulation, but customary.  She always said I could have those boots... I wanted something to remember her by... Something to throw in the X-rays faces when we're out there...  The teas went quickly.

I sift through, hand lighting on a model of a blue police telephone box.  I place it on my desk - my share, to remind me that you cannot turn back time.  That we must live with the past, and ourselves.

I sit down and force myself to write.  That's what I came here for, after all.

The troops have put together a memorial board in the bar.  Sq. Adrienne Joy, KIA.  We will remember.

Battle Report, 12 April - OPERATION CURSED PALACE

Cursed indeed.

The crashing UFO has scored a writhing, heaving rent across the forest, lit red with brush fires and burning trees.  Cinders are rising into the air, and lightning flashes throw themselves across the night at irregular intervals.  There is no thunder, however, only the crackle of flames - and the uncanny bellows of the enemy in the darkness.

Cpl. Hill stations Gent, his sniper, on a rise near the LZ, then leads the rest of his squad in a wide circuit around the UFO, wary of survivors.

Two Thin Men slither into view.  With no more than barks on the radio and movement in the black to go on, Cpl. Gent whips up his sniper rifle and shoots - one X-ray down.  Wielding our lone laser rifle, Cpl. Ash reveals its potential, steadily burning away the stump behind which the enemy is hiding, clearing the way for Gent's second shot.

The noise brings a pair of Floaters swooping through the pines.  

Luring one in, Cpl. Saxby ducks around it and shoots it down at close range, while Gent brings his own rifle to bear on the other from his elevated position.

Before the squad has time to reposition, three more Thin Men are all over them.  A snap shot from Ash takes one out of the equation, but his luck doesn't hold: as he sprints for the nearest tree, he takes two shots to the chest, rolling and tumbling up against the trunk.  Suppressive fire brings twigs and leaves down around his ears.  Bleeding heavily and seriously burned, he tears the tab off a medikit with his teeth and applies swift-congealing gel to his wounds. Meanwhile, another Thin Man oils its way into a flanking position.

Saxby tosses a smoke grenade over the wounded soldier, but Ash's situation is bad.  Concerned for his safety, I send Sq. Joy sprinting round the back in a flanking manoeuvre of my own.  A lucky shot from Gent sends one snake sprawling.  Splashing through a brook, Joy thumps into cover above the other Thin Man's position, takes aim - and the creature twists inhumanly, wrists backwards, and shoots her in the head.

Hill curses under his breath, chucks a grenade into the gully.  Advancing through a cloud of shredded leaves, Saxby guns down the killer on the spot.  But it's too late.

Tense, angry, the remaining soldiers sweep the area, but find nothing.  For the first time, they enter the UFO itself.  Nothing but empty corridors, flickering erratically.  With all the exits covered, Hill coolly dispatches the alien pilot and takes possession of the vessel.

Cpl. Ash is medivacced with all speed.  Engineers swarm over the prize, while the squad, weary, traipses back to the Skyranger.

But there's one left behind.