Cdr. Amyus Bale - Personal log - 14 June

Well, it seems we have the X-rays attention then.  Everything we've got - observations in the field, results from xenopathology - suggests that those things the strike team encountered in India were heavy frontline troops - not unlike our own - and that Cyberdisc was something else entirely.  Clearly, we've proved that XCOM isn't something the aliens can just ignore.

I'm certain now that those UFO landings were a trap, an attempt to lure us in and thin our numbers.

Two rookies died in that jungle and I just feel numb.  I hadn't even learned their names yet.

Rks. Minjoon Jang and Cheng Lin.

Will we remember?

Battle report, 13 June - OPERATION LAZY STRANGER

Another unexplained UFO landing, this time in the jungles of southern India.  Twitch and Nix are sent to investigate, taking newly promoted Cpt. "Sentinel" Saxby, Sgt. "Enigma" Lambert and two rookies.

The drop is in the middle of a wide, shallow river, thick with fronds and weed, humid and muggy.  The river is littered with rocks and logs flung down by some seasonal flood, and the hillside to the west is oppressed with jungle foliage, limiting visibility.

Sometimes a rookie's twitchy trigger finger is exactly what you need, as it might be the first warning you get when the enemy's on top of you.  Unfortunately, they tend to miss.

Soon there is blood in the water, both ours and theirs.  As if drawn by it, three hulking brutes crash out of the foliage, taking up good positions along the riverside.  We have not seen their like before.

They are dangerous, brutal bastards.  Sentinel, Nix and Enigma make short work of them out in the open, but the last retreats into the downed UFO.  Wounded, back to a corner, snarling to itself no doubt, it proceeds to tear our rookies apart.

One, water lapping around his thighs, back to a rock just outside the UFO, has his head blown off before we know what's happening.




The other is pressed up against the side of the UFO itself.

Somehow, it knows, it fucking knows he is there and shoots him straight through the wall, as if it wasn't there even there.

Twitch brings the killing to an end, but the bastard's work was done.

Cdr. Amyus Bale - Personal log - 12 June

We're taking long steps.

The thermal generator is built and it's an awe-inspiring thing.  There is such power down here, beneath our feet, in the Earth.  Power we can harness, use to defend ourselves.

The alien containment facility is also complete.  I'm less happy about this.  I look at that gleaming glass wall and I try to imagine an X-ray in there but all I see is the soldiers they'll kill while we try to take them alive.  The troops are already familiarising themselves with R&D's non-lethal arc thrower pistol.

Cdr. Amyus Bale - Personal log - 6 June

The autopsy report on that thing our strike team brought back from Tijuana is troubling.

It reads like the kind of thing I might have envisaged chronicling in SPACE MARINE - speculative theories about "mechanical organisms", "alternative biochemical systems based on the silicon atom".  Even the name they've designated, the "Cyberdisc", is pure sci-fi shtick.

There's little solid to go on.  Like the aliens' hand weapons, the Cyberdisc was rigged to self-destruct after being taken down, so its insides were mostly slag.  The labcoats want a live one, of course.

There is a silver lining, of a sort.  A number of repair drones were brought back along with the 'disc and Engineering things we might be able to repurpose these to aid us in the field.  As long as we can bring one back still functional, of course.

Cdr. Amyus Bale - Personal log - 5 June

The pan's really boiling over now.  Mass hysteria erupting across the globe.  China, South Africa, Australia, Nigeria, as well as India.

We can't be everywhere at once.


Mexico forwarded us some more funding.  I've told Engineering to take whatever they need, do whatever they have to, as long as it gets me satellites in the sky.


They're tired, I know, but their dedicated, they'll keep going.  All of the engineers, the researchers - they sleep less than the troops and work as hard.  I worry about mistakes slipping in, dangerous errors.  It's bad enough having your men and women die on the
ground - industrial accidents and damnfool risks in the lab are something we don't need.

But what choice do we have?

We need to keep pressing forward.  We need to claw back all the support we can.

Battle Report, 5 June - OPERATION FIRST HYDRA

First something, anyway.

Tijuana, Mexico.  Sometimes it feels like we're policing the American's backyard.  There are abductions taking place in Pretoria, Perth and elsewhere... but it's Mexico where I've sent Cpts.. Twitch and Nix, Lts. "Sentinel" Saxby and "Boghead" Borg, Sgt. "Enigma" Lambert, and Sq. James Arnold.

Something darts out from behind a cafeteria, a silver blur.  Boghead's headcam crackles, cuts out.  Then Sentinel's.

"It's doing something to our equipment," says one of the technicians, alarmed, "we can't get a lock on it!"

"Get those cams back online!"

There is an explosion on the coms, a truncated shriek.  Sq. Arnold's cam cuts out, Twitch's.  Nix and Enigma are crouched in cover, nothing to see.

"Dammit," I mutter.  "Strike team, status report!  We're blind up here.  What is that thing?"

Twitch's voice echoes around the room.  "I couldn't rightly tell you, sir.  It's packing explosives, though, and some serious firepower.  Boghead got hit by a 'nade, she's pulled back.  Arnold took a full broadside, thought he was a goner.  Argh, die your purple mother!"

Gunfire, static.

"Sorry sir, Thin Man.  This thing's bearing down on us, what should-"

"Sir, I think I've got it."  I run over to the technician.  He's zoomed in the Skyranger cams, trying to focus on whatever it is took down Arnold and Borg.  A sort of silver disc, with satellites swirling around it, blurred even at this range by whatever it does to our sensors.

"Twitch, pull back, unleash everything you've got at it."

It takes everything we've got too.  But when the dust clears, we've got a hulk of something to haul back on the Skyranger.

XCOM Project Monthly Report - May 2015

Another month scrapes by.

The Council seem to have have swallowed whole the line I sold them about Thorne - that it was kill her or let her fall into alien hands.  If I'm honest with myself, I killed her to keep my soldiers alive - but they don't need to know that.

In the end, they were more concerned about the UFO that got away over Brazil.  So am I.

Work on the alien containment facility can begin at last.  We've also had a stroke of luck, stumbling across a steam vent below the base that could solve our power problems for some time, with a generator in place.

Everyone is restless, fractious.  Research want their containment facility built.  The vets want wounds healed, freedom from the infirmary.  The rookies want action, fools that they are.  And Skybuck is the same, prowling the corridors impatiently, eager for the next bogey on the sats.

As far as I'm concerned, the X-rays can keep us waiting as long as they like.