Commander Wong settled into his chair as the platoon attached to Skynerfed filed into the briefing room. His eyes scanned the newly promoted sergeants, their rank chevrons apparent on their gray uniforms. the NCOs seemed a bit out of place, surprised to have been promoted so quickly, but Wong recognized talent, or at least competence. After the near-debacle that followed storming the UFO a week previously, he was reconsidering his troops' tendencies to dual-wild assault rifles and stun prods.
Half the platoon was not present; they were already on board the Skyranger and en route to the target area. However, it was prudent to brief the rest of the men as well, especially if the deployed team suffered an acute case of death.
The men picked out their chairs, with the cadre of MJ12s taking up one wall of seats. Once everyone was in the room, Wong nodded, tapping a control on his desk, and the lights dimmed. This briefing would be transmitted to the men on the Skyranger as well.
"This briefing will be quick," he said. "As you have noted, we just went on alert ten minutes ago. Our Skyranger and first squad in en route to the target area." The screen behind him lit up, to show a map of eastern Russia. A single blip, an urban center, was highlighted.
"This is the city of Novosibirsk, in the middle of Siberia. It is medium-sized and utterly unremarkable except that it is very cold and it is currently being razed by alien forces."
Wong waited for the surprised rumblings among the troops to die down.
"The aliens are targeting civilians in particular. We believe they are trying to incite panic and fear in both the civilian populace and in the government, probably to sabotage our efforts. Fortunately, their targeted area is small and they appear to be attacking the ass end of nowhere. This should be easy to contain. We are currently liaising with the Russian military to cordon off the affected area."
He tapped a couple more keys.
"Russian air defense detected a vessel of roughly this size and configuration approaching the area. It buzzed the city and then took off."
"We believe the aliens launching this operation intended for this to be a suicide run, killing as many civilians as possible before their raiding units were wiped out, either by us or the local military and police. We will oblige them. And first squad? Remember our basic rule of engagement."
Code: Select all
Alien Terror Mission
Squadron: Rhoenix, White Haven, MJ12-1, Decue, Guppyshark, Ohma, Weemadando, Heavy Zablorg, Vendetta, Karza
HWP Rocket: Piloted by Hawkwings
This was our first deployment with laser weaponry standard across the squad. Ohma, GuppyShark, Rhoenix, and Weemadando all carried the new laser rifles, and everyone else packed laser pistols. Let's see how they stack up.
The squad landed in a clear lot on one end of the area the aliens were operating in. Hawkwings took the lead....
And met a weird floaty alien we hadn't encountered yet.
Weird floaty aliens die all the same.
As the squad disembarked, a second floaty alien was spotted in a shed to the north.
Events transpired as expected.
Another alien was spotted by Sergeant Zablorg as s/he cut across a gas station. Once more our crack marksmanship pulled through as we valiantly missed about twenty shots at the big, stupid floating thing. However, we did give the gas pumps, the asphalt, and at least two civilians a good seeing to. Finally, White Haven got it with a rocket. And by "got it" I mean "hit the fuel pump it was standing beside and lit up the entire gas station."
Meanwhile....
Ohma tagged another one in the middle of the street with a beautiful aimed headshot. Hawkwings tried to hit it before, and missed with his rocket, probably killing a dozen or so Russian troops cordoning off the area when it careened off into nowhere. Oops.
The squad fanned out to secure the area.
While scouting, Hawkwings spotted this thing. It was big, it was mean, it was hungry...
....but faced with our awesome skull-shaped explosions, it was meat.
Decue, meanwhile, unloaded down a side alley, nailing both another of the big bipedal eating machines and another floater.
Weemadando (now promoted to sergeant) picked off another that the flying clouds of agonizing shrapnel missed.
Karza moved up to flank the area while clouds of high explosive death were being whipped about, and jumped a third floater, distracted by the high-velocity gibbing of its buddies.
THIS! IS! X-COM!
Meanwhile, MJ12-1 and Vendetta cleared a nearby convenience store and jumped another floater. MJ12-1 used his laser pistol to blow a hole that allowed Vendetta to hit the floater with his/her own.
Meanwhile, Hawkwings, Weemadando, Decue, White Haven, Guppyshark, and the most beautiful Zablorg blew the everloving shit out of this other convenience store to get at the floater hiding behind it. It was a psychotic orgy of high explosives, grenades, autocannon shells, and laser death that practically leveled the building. After two rounds of unloading like crazy on this store, we finally got the bastard.
Then, Hawkwings' tank got flanked and blown to hell. RAGE!
It isn't shown here, but that bunch of wrecked terrain and smoke in the middle? That was another of those bipedal eaty things. Decue wrecked its shit so hard s/he vaporized the body. That floater in the building was hit by splash damage after Ohma and Guppyshark blew out the wall.
And with that, mission complete. There was some collateral damage, but that's to be expected. We only leveled half the city, anyway.
PROMOTIONS!
X-COM High Command has decided to reward White Haven's expertise at reducing everything around him to a smooth glassy texture by promoting him to captain. Karza also gets a boost and about two inches of beard for taking down a floater with a stun prod, though the bugger had to be put down permanently as we didn't have a containment facility built.
Post mission analysis: Hawkwings once gain rocked the house, though we're taking away his booze as it apparently cost us a whole friggin' tank. Apparently, the floater that killed it was just using a plasma pistol too. What the hell. In other news, the convenience stores and gas stations of the world tremble at our awesome firepower. Pretty much everyone got a kill, or at least managed to inflict copious amounts of property damage, which is all good. Decue gets a special commendation for ripping shit up with his/her autocannon. Two reapers and a floater, plus about 35% of that convenience store fell to his/her high explosive death.
The shocking lack of casualties (aside from that fuckall expensive tank) was likely due to a combination of the fact that most of the combat occurred at long range and we plastered every alien we saw with massive amounts of high explosive. Most of the floaters were carrying pistols, and the reapers were useless at any range other than melee, which gave us a massive range advantage.
Next update, we finish January, get a fresh injection of funds, and hopefully no one else dies.