🚀 go-pugleaf

Hey all,

My under-sexed, over-paid brain has been threatening to do an X-Com fanfic
for some time (about six years, as it happens) and after a hell of a lot of
false starts it's finally happened, hard drive crashes and all.

A bit of background: it's set during Apoc, six weeks into the campaign. I
screwed around with the timeline a bit, but everything in here is drawn from
the game. Comments welcome. I present Day Forty Three.

*Satis
Off the Rails



Day Forty-Three (Wednesday, April 19, 2084)
================================

Harry Shoji, sprawled beneath a tree, was unhappy. His unhappiness was
neither prompted nor arrested by the cigarettes (illegal) in his hip pocket,
nor by the glass of wine (rationed) that was clutched in his right hand.
Possession of such items would be enough to reduce most of Mega-Primus'
citizens to nervous wrecks, fearful of every police siren and flinching at
every blast of gunfire that came from within the city. Harry Shoji, a
citizen for just six weeks, was unconcerned by such things. Harry Shoji was
unhappy because he had a day off.

Most citizens would see a day off as a cause for celebration: an intimate
meal with a loved one, perhaps, or an entire month's liquor-ration blown in
one night at some den or night-club. Most people in this city would
celebrate anything - anything at all - in such a fashion, but that was not
to Harry Shoji's taste. Besides, he had not been intimate with anybody for
months and his liqrat was irrelevant - Harry had already drunk six weeks'
worth today and he could get more in a little less than ten minutes.

In his left hand, closest to his heart, Harry clutched a model aircraft.
Cast in plastic, it was one of millions from the same die, yet to Harry it
was a moment, a memory and a reason for fighting rolled into one. It was
also cheap, banal and artificial and Harry was on the verge of casting it
into a muddy pond when he heard the familiar screaming, grating sound. That
sound (even without the buzz of his pager) meant this day off was over, null
and void and perhaps his last free moment alive. He downed the rest of the
wine, threw the glass into a bush and ran.



* * *


Half a mile away in a basement deep beneath the Senate, there was a large
room filled with desks and computer equipment. A particularly loud printer
screeched and ground into life as the room's sole occupant, a bored female
O/C (operator/controller), dropped the book she was reading and scooted her
office chair down the aisle to the alert printer.

She wasn't even half-way there when more printers crackled into life. A
perverse chain reaction ensued, and from the activity of the printers the
O/C had a rough idea, even before she read the message, of what it would
say.

It was clearly an ECN - what the public liked to call a "UFO sighting." She
listened. The printers and plotters to the right and rear of her desk were
going haywire, so they were coming in through the two gates over the
Government District. This was confirmed by the pattern of the plotters on
the wall in front of her - all the auto-monitor stations (AMS's) that
watched over the plush "GD" area were recording sudden activity. The racket
going on against the far left wall had the ear-splitting volume of four
separate printers - so, four separate contacts.

The O/C reached the printer and tore off the paper. She'd been right on
everything contained in the first half of the message. The second half came
as something of a surprise.


EMERGENCY CONTACT NOTIFICATION

DESIGNATE FOXTROT THREE ALPHA

TYPE: AIRBORNE THREAT
SRC: AMS 6 - NIETZSCHE INSTITUTE
SRC: AMS 21 - WAREHOUSE FIVE
SRC: AMS 1 - SENATE
SRC: AMS 7 - JUDGMENT CENTRAL

POSITIVE IDENT COMPLETE

TOM: 1x T-3    1x T-4
DICK: CLEAR
HARRY: 1x T-3    1x T-4

SUCCESS PROJECTION:
X-COM SUCCESS OBJ ALPHA: <1%
X-COM SUCCESS OBJ BETA: <1%
X-COM SUCCESS OBJ GAMMA: <2%

DO NOT ENGAGE
DO NOT ENGAGE
DO NOT ENGAGE
DO NOT ENGAGE
DO NOT ENGAGE


Objective Alpha was to destroy the alien ships before they could accomplish
their mission. Beta was to shoot down any of the enemy vehicles before they
escaped, and Gamma was simply to come home alive. In all three cases, the
number next to it was the probability of this result being achieved.

She was a government Operator/Controller on liason duty to X-Com. Her name
was Marie Ball and she was just the second person outside Campesino Base to
know the dismal condition of X-Com's air force.



* * *


The first outsider to know was called different things by different people.
To his boss, he was called Byron. To his wife, he was either Honey or J or,
more often these days, You Bastard. To his work buddies, he was known,
simply enough, as Red. And to the gang members he constantly hunted down and
killed or imprisoned, he was badge 8187063, Off. Byron, J.T.

Badge 8187063, Off. Byron, J.T. had, seven seconds earlier, been patrolling
the airspace around the Senate. He didn't like the task, and had more reason
than anyone else for such a dislike. But he knew he was in the running for a
Sergeant's stripe and the improvement in pay and lodging that position would
bring. It might shut the bloody wife up, too. Sergeants didn't shirk from
distasteful tasks, not even stomach-tightening, bowel-voidingly distasteful
tasks, so he had returned to work the very next morning and gone straight
back into the field.

Tired of watching nothing happen in the quiet streets below, he had dropped
the hovercar's power and turned it round to get a good look at the source of
his fear. It hovered in the sky just before him: a sinister, rotating,
reddish pyramid four or five storeys tall, surrounded by a halo of blue
sparks where air molecules were being drawn in and annihilated. He wondered
about the radiation they must be giving off. His superiors had assured him
that there was no danger from such a level of radiation, but. could it be fr
ying his testicles even now?

He gave his groin a speculative look. There were no clouds of smoke, nor
cries for help from oven-roasted spermatozoa. What would he do if he was a
sperm? Abandon ship, probably, using the nearest available exit. he smiled
at that thought as an idea struck him. Byron fished in the glove compartment
for his Corp-issue radiation counter. In doing so, he completely missed the
sight of a dimension gate opening up.

Recalling the incident later, Jeff Byron would think it quite ironic that
concern for his nuts had saved his life. What happened was this. Three and
one-quarter seconds before Marie Ball's first printer burst to life, Jeff
Byron was glancing down to get a look in the glove compartment. At that
moment, the pyramid had disintegrated in an intense flash of light as an
alien craft burst from inside it. This light, which should have instantly
made him blind, simply alerted him to the presence of a massive alien craft.

Danger!

Instinct and training took over. His hands came up to the control stick, the
left one restoring the engines to full power on the way up. His right thumb
pressed a small button on the control column and the car entered combat
mode. The weapons (mounted behind the headlights) sprang out from the
bodywork. Armoured shutters closed over the windows. From now on he would
use cameras, their image projected onto the covered windows, to fly the car.
He saw the alien craft appear and move away from the pyramid, which seemed
to grow once again from the air behind it. Once again it began to rotate,
but his attention was not there: he was watching the first craft, a lopsided
purple disc.

The lopsided purple disc fired at him. He nudged the car upwards, turned
slightly to the left and returned fire with a 40mm cannon. The aliens' shot
passed through empty space, feet beneath his car. As his first shots struck
home he watched the 1ż" rounds raking the side of the alien ship, sending up
gobbets of fleshy material wherever they struck. He dodged the aliens'
second shot - by an even smaller margin than the first - and carried on
shooting, pouring round after round into the alien ship, all the time
jinking desperately.

The guns stopped. Oh shit. Panic, which had built up like water behind a
dam, burst forth. He was going to die. A disruptor beam was heading right
for him. He was dead. Fuck. He didn't want to die.

The guns coughed back into life. It was just an automatic magazine change.
Fine, he thought as the panic disintegrated. JINK!

He jinked downwards - simply jerking the stick forwards for a moment - and
actually felt the heat through the body of the car. OK, he could do this.
Pulling the stick back up and to the left, he strafed around the target,
raking bullets across it once again. It had to go down soon - he was going
to win. He was going to win and be a sergeant and he'd conquered his fear
and the aliens were going to die screaming in the wreck and it was all down
to him! He was going to win!

The second flash startled him even more than the first. His eyes flicked,
just for a second, to the left-hand window. One look told him what he needed
to know - that it was time to run and hide. The new arrival - his target's
escort -had sent an enormous disruptor beam directly at his left-hand side.
He ceased fire, pushed the stick right forward and took the car into the
basement vehicle bay of a Marsec office complex. Disruptor beams followed
him all the way down, carving great holes in the road and buildings around
him.

Jeffrey Thaddeus Byron, an ambitious man, set the car down and noted the way
his hands were shaking. He noted his heartbeat, he noted the curious way his
mouth seemed to have dried out in a matter of seconds and he noted the
clammy sweat pouring down the side of his rigcage. He noted all these things
and after a moment's thought made the considered decision to fuck the
Sergeantcy, fuck the police force and fuck taking on fucking great alien
spaceships with a weapon put together while his fucking grandfather was
still at school.


                                                                           *
*  *

Shoji, drifting down a people tube, had watched the whole thing through the
glass roof. As the cop car disappeared, he saw the purple Transporter hover
above the Nietzsche Institute and unfurl a grey pipe beneath itself. A wave
passed down the pipe, a kind of peristalsis that somehow - no-one had any
idea how the mechanism worked - placed an alien infiltration squad inside
the building. He cursed to himself.


                                                                           *
*  *


Nine minutes later a massive Wolfhound APC screamed down the road. The
twelve X-Com agents inside were feverishly putting on armour, exchanging
equipment and charging up their medikits. As soon as the two alien
transports had made a drop - deposited their cargo inside the City's
buildings - the agents had set out to the one considered most vital -
Nietzsche Institute, headquarters of the quasi-socialist Technocrat Party
and already "crawling with the bastards" as one senior officer had put it.
The agents were evenly split on whether he referred to aliens or
Technocrats.

Captain John Peplow, in command of this mission, finished his equipment
drill and stood to look through the vision grille at the top of the crew
compartment.

"Thirty seconds, everybody. Remember, we do a rapid approach by two light
squads to close on the main doors. Then a disarming simultaneous assault
through the main doors. Mob, you infiltrate the top floor and sweep it up to
the top of the elevator.

There were three squads, each of four agents. Two squads were so-called
"light infantry" - agents armed with the sublime M4000 machine gun, a stun
grapple and an assortment of grenades. One of these was commanded by Squad
Leader Marcel Bissaux, a relatively new recruit, but one of the best
fighters in the city.

The other squad, the "mob" or mobility section, were the elite soldiers of
X-Com. All had been with the organisation since the first or second week and
all had demonstrated superb weapon skills. Their usual armament, the police
sniper rifle, had today been discarded in favour of auto-cannons - the very
best weapons to have in a close range fight.

The mob was commanded by Sergeant Pierre d'Acrille - the only human out of
the four agents in his squad. The other three were mutes, excellent snipers
but by nature in poor physical shape. His fellow human on the mob squad,
Squad Leader Ivan Shadrin, used this fact as the basis for an entire set of
prejudices

"Listen up people, we've all been here before, we know the ground. We know
each other, and we know the enemy. This is as close to routine as it ever
gets. What's our number one rule?"

"DON'T GET HURT!" the platoon chorused as their armoured car pulled into a
J-turn in the grounds of the huge office block. The rear doors, unlocked at
exactly the right moment, crashed open as the vehicle's rear came to a halt.


                                                                        * *
*


Peplow had learned to hate Nietzsche Institute's entrance. The stairs
climbed some six metres to a set of doors at the top. It was an appalling
tactical situation, but unfortunately the only way to deal with the
infestation quickly and silently.

The eight light infantry sprinted towards the stairs and took up position at
the bottom. Eight M4000s were trained on the doors at their summit as the
Mob squad floated to the top floor.

"In position. Clear," said d'Acrille over the radio. With that, Peplow's
squad moved up the stairs to take their places against the automatic doors.
Twenty feet up, d'Acrille carved a neat hole in the window with his plasma
sword and passed through into the boardroom.

It was empty. The mob squad spread out - two to this door, one here, one
over there. They were well trained and practised and they moved through the
rooms efficiently, finding each to be thoroughly empty.

Downstairs, Peplow had his squad bunched up against the doors. It was
technically bad practice, but X-Com had soon found that traditional tactics
had no place against these aliens. What counted was firepower, and plenty of
it.

The automatic doors slid open as the eight agents approached. Eight M4000s
swept the room, sixteen eyes acquired targets and within a couple of seconds
thirty-two rounds were spinning across the huge lobby.

The aliens were caught totally unawares. Aware of a disturbance on the top
floor, they had mostly been heading towards the gravlift at the back of the
room.

"CONTACT!" screamed Peplow as he fired a short burst at a blue Anthropod in
the centre of the room.

Holy shit, but there were enough of them in here and they were all threats.
Fortunately, X-Com had all the technology of the twenty-first century to
help them. His gun at his shoulder, he trained it on a particularly
threatening target and pressed a small button with his thumb before he
fired.

Bissaux, and the rest of the two squads, were wearing modified Megapol
helmets that had all kinds of information projected onto the visors. They
saw the target-designation indicator appear round Peplow's target, swung
their weapons round, and fired as soon as they could bring the guns round.

Peplow had an idea of the overall composition of the alien force now. The
Anthropods, half a dozen of them, were mostly in the centre of the room
while a few Spitters had been over to the right. Peplow concentrated on the
Anthropods, concentrating his squad's fire first on one, then the next.

The aliens were getting it together now. The Anthropods were starting to
move and the weapons were being levelled. This was the tricky moment. in a
moment, the squad would have a lot more targets to concentrate on.

"Sucker watch!" he called. Brainsuckers were a nightmare, the most effective
weapon the aliens had. The squad would treat them as priority targets,
taking out any that hatched.

Two Anthropods fired - launched? - at the same time. A pair of good shots -
the pods hit the ground less than six feet in front of the squads. As they
struck the ground, they cracked and peeled apart, and two of the small brown
horrors appeared and scuttled across the carpet towards the agents. Both
were blown apart within moments, and the agents' focus returned to the
creatures that had fired them.

Another pod came from the left, straight towards Bissaux. Dropping his gun,
he caught it like a gravball and stuffed into his pack. As long as they didn
't hit the floor, the squad had found out, a brainsucker pod would stay
forever dormant.

Bissaux picked up his gun again and blasted a hole in the chest of a
particularly annoying Spitter, before returning his attention to the
Anthropods by the lift. Peplow had the situation well in hand now. Just two
Anthropods were left and most of the aliens were accounted for. The guards
were all but dealt with and the lower life forms - eggs, chrysalises and
worms - would surely turn up soon.

As the last Spitter crumpled to the floor, Peplow took a deep breath. Blind
spots. there, the sunken floor of the elevator. Approach or not? No, he
decided, not with the doors on either side of the lobby. Not yet.

D'Acrille was disappointed with the lack of action. It was to be expected.
Nietzsche infestations nearly always turned up on the bottom floor. The
squad approached the elevator.

"CONTACT!"

Guns came up again, trained on a multiworm that was leaving the sunken base
of the gravlift. Machine gun rounds spat towards it.

Multiworms are not intelligent creatures. They do little except feed
voraciously to support the foetuses they carry within them and they respond
to danger in a very predictable way. They did that now, picking targets at
random and crawling towards them.

D'Acrille's squad had reached the elevator room. A moment to catch their
breath, then they burst through the doors. Clear. Ground floor? Look down.

The worms are incredibly tough creatures, able to take several hits before
they expire. Still, with eight weapons trained on them the five creatures
expired within seconds. But Multiworms are merely incubators for the next
stage.

Their spawn were much the same. Smaller, about a foot long, and faster, a
score of Hyperworms burst from the bodies of their parents and moved across
the floor of the elevator cavity towards Peplow's squad. Hyperworms behave
like psychotic piranha fish - with powerful jaws, sharp teeth and no
instinct except to eat as much, and as quickly, as possible. Peplow had once
seen one chew its way up a man's leg as far as the knee in the time it had
taken him to draw a lawpistol and blast the thing to alien heaven and back.

The weapons spat again, but the range was long and all they achieved was
further damage to the Technocrats' expensive carpet.

"AMMO!"
"AMMO!"
"OUT OF AMMO!"
"BLOCKAGE!"
"NO AMMO!"

Oh shit. Somebody was going home with a limp. Peplow, and two others, took
aim as their comrades fumbled with their weapons.

The mob squad had seen the multiworms but held fire while they swapped
magazines. Now, with a mass of targets before them, they sent round after
high-explosive round into the dense pack.

For Bissaux, who had been frantically trying to un-jam his weapon, it was
the best firework display he'd ever seen. The worms were obliterated, bits
of flesh flying everywhere and their horrid green blood smothering what
remained of the carpet.

The rest of the building was swept, but there was no more trouble to be
found. A few eggs - the precursors to the multiworms - were found and shot,
but aside from that the mission was over. As the government restoration team
arrived, Peplow and his squad climbed into the Wolfhound and set off home to
Campesino.