Mass Effect: Invasion (Mass Effect/Xenonauts crossover)

[Poached_Egg]

April 23, 1958

Deep in the bowels of the Pentagon, a frenzy was in progress. Analysts and experts and advisors of all sorts scurried around and spoke in hushed voices, all in reaction to the incredible event that had occurred earlier that day:

In space, not far beyond the orbit of the moon, an incredibly powerful heat and energy signature had been detected. The military had quickly stepped in, clamping down on civilian observatories that had also discovered it, and military analysts brainstormed theories of what exactly it could be.

At first it was, naturally, thought to be some kind of Soviet device. They had, after all, launched the Sputnik probe not even a year ago. It wasn't inconceivable that it was some kind of non-publicized Soviet project.

Then the device did something impossible: from what America's best physicists could tell, the craft's mass was not...static. When it appeared to activate its engines and move on an intercept course with Earth, it moved faster than any craft ever made by man. The Soviets couldn't possibly have something so advanced. No one on Earth had that kind of technology. So, with the impossible eliminated, the improbable remained: the craft was not of Earth.

Hence, the incredible frenzy sweeping through the Pentagon.

----ooOOoo----​

Lieutenant Commander Ernest Smith led his flight of F-8 Crusaders on their assigned patrol path. The higher-ups had not deigned to disclose what exactly it was he and his men were patrolling for. As such, it came as something of a surprise when a colossal aircraft appeared out of the clouds. The fact that he could still clearly see it despite its obvious distance gave a measure of just how enormous the craft really was.

"Uh...command, this is eight flight. We've got a visual on an unidentified contact, please advise." he said into his radio. Even for a consummate professional like him, concealing the unease in his voice was a challenge.

"Eight flight, command, please describe the contact." came the reply.

"It's...very large. Larger than any aircraft I've ever seen. Profile is not aerodynamic, almost...boxy looking, though there's what looks to be some kind of engine shape in the rear of its profile. Can't see much detail at this range." there was no response for almost a full minute.

"Command, please advise." he said again.

"Eight flight, be advised, contact possible UFO of alien origin. Say again, alien origin. You are to approach at low speed and attempt communication." came the eventual reply.

What?

Aliens? "Attempt communication" how the hell was he supposed to do that? Despite his misgivings, he followed orders, and his flight moved in towards the UFO. When they got to a closer range, Ernest could see the craft in greater detail, including what looked very much like some kind of weapon mounts to Ernest's eyes.

"Command, be advised, UFO appears to be armed. Please advise." he said into the radio.

"Eight flight, you are to broadcast the following message…"

And so, Ernest Smith became the first human to attempt to communicate with an alien intelligence, broadcasting a simple greeting over his plane's radio.

Thirty-seven seconds later, Ernest Smith became one of the first five humans to be killed by an alien intelligence, as the UFO fired on eight flight with a laser array, instantly destroying every plane in the unit, save one. The remaining pilot jerked his plane down into a rapid dive, acting on instinct. The move saved his life, as when the UFO fired again barely a second later it only damaged the plane instead of completely destroying it. The pilot was able to return to base in his half-dead plane, the sole survivor.

----ooOOoo----​

With the rapid mobilization of so many NATO aircraft in the North Atlantic, the Warsaw Pact had begun a mobilization of its own, fearing NATO invasion. It was then that secret talks between the two great powers began. The NATO scientists confirmed what the Soviet ones had already suspected: the contact seen in the skies earlier had been of alien origin.

Even as the two powers discussed their strategic options, the US was about to take a gamble. The UFO was pretty hard to miss on radar, what with it being the size of a guided missile destroyer that had somehow learned to fly. Pinpointing where the craft was going wasn't difficult: it was heading for the north of the US's eastern seaboard. With the destruction of eight flight, a decision was made.

Almost a hundred planes were ordered to converge on the UFO's position. Their mission: to shoot down the alien ship and protect the eastern seaboard, at any cost. The planes gathered together and then made an attack run on the ship.

The UFO's laser defense fired non-stop, and some kind of extremely advanced kinetic weapon now joined the fray, claiming the lives of dozens of pilots in less than a minute. However, some of those pilots were able to get their missiles away, and even against the incredibly advanced alien defenses, some missiles were still able to hit their target.
The damage to the ship was substantial. It was forced on a dramatic trajectory change, heading for what was likely to be a crash landing. It's likely impact spot would be in Iceland.

----ooOOoo----​

Lieutenant John "Jack" Miller led his platoon forward with the rest of their infantry company. It was still something of a shock to know that, barely two miles across from them, a unit of Soviet infantry was likely advancing in the exact same manner. What really floored him was the knowledge that those troops were advancing as allies, not enemies. Like everyone else in the operation, he'd been briefed on what it was they were facing. Nevertheless, it still surprised him how quick the two mortal enemies had been to set aside their differences. The higher-ups must be scared shitless if they're working together like this.

Not that Jack could blame them. He was scared shitless too. He had a duty to his men though, he couldn't let them down. So, when the torso of his point man suddenly exploded, splattering blood over the green Army fatigues of the men behind him, he didn't miss a beat.

"DOWN!" he roared, hitting the dirt even as he shouted.

Bullets whizzed overhead. Alien bullets. Jack looked around and saw his men returning fire, M14s barking as they spat their 7.62 caliber bullets at the enemy. It didn't seem to give the aliens much pause, as all around him men of his own platoon and of the rest of the company died grizzly deaths as the strange alien bullets ripped through them. They were getting ripped apart, even at this range.

"We have to move up! Everyone, on me!" Jack screamed to be heard over the noise of battle.

The other officers had apparently had the same idea, as all around him the troops sprang from their cover and began rapidly advancing forward. The casualties were grievous, but they were rewarded when the humans got close and for the first time saw their enemy in the flesh. Jack didn't stop to think as he fired at the...thing that had been knocked down in front of him. A strange purplish sheen appeared over the alien as Jack fired, which only prompted Jack to fire more. Eventually, the purple thing dissipated, and blood splattered out of the fallen alien.

Only when he was sure it was dead did Jack really look at it. It wasn't an attractive sight. The alien had a sinister appearance. Blood red eyes and a squashed nose hung over a strange mouth filled with razor sharp teeth that it bared even in death. It's body had two arms and two legs like a human, but that was the end of its similarities. It held three claw-like fingers on each hand, with spines on its elbows. It's knees looked more like a dog's or a rabbit's, and it wore no shoes on it's clawed feet. It was clothed only in simple briefs and bandoleers of some sort draped over its shoulders. It did not fit the image of the enlightened alien come to save humanity from itself seen in so many movies these days.

Jack didn't get to look at the alien for long, as the human attack continued, with troops flooding in at breakthroughs in the aliens' defensive positions. Real progress began to be made when tank support, in the form of M48 Pattons, rolled in and began firing on the more fortified alien positions.

Casualties were still horrendous. The dead far outnumbered the wounded, as the incredibly powerful alien guns ripped apart the insides of anyone unlucky enough to be hit in their center of mass. Most of the wounded had been hit in one of their extremities. Not even the tanks were safe, as even the alien small arms seemed to be able to shred through their armor if they concentrated their fire for long enough. Despite this, the advance still continued. Jack led what was left of his platoon through the carnage, stepping over the corpses of a strange, four-eyed alien that seemed to be of an entirely separate species than the ones he had encountered earlier.

When he could see the form of what must be the alien ship in the distance, his platoon came under heavy fire. Jack was hit by a graze in his lower leg. Unfortunately, the nature of the alien weapons meant that even a graze was a serious wound. He was, reluctantly, evacuated to the rear line while his senior NCO took command.

----ooOOoo----​

With his leg wound dressed, Jack had little to do but sit around at the field hospital, his leg propped up, and wonder anxiously about the fate of his men. To occupy the time, he'd found himself chatting with a fellow by the name of Eric, a British Lieutenant who'd taken a grizzly wound to the arm, and seemed to be eager to take his mind off of the injury.

"Well, let's suppose it really is a scout mission, who would they be scouting for?" Jack asked.

"Their equivalent of a nation, presumably. Perhaps they're just the advanced unit of a larger alien fleet, already on its way." Eric said.

"What could they possibly want? What could they get here that they couldn't find on some other planet that isn't occupied by a bunch of angry natives? If they can manage to travel here, they can manage to travel anywhere, right? So why not just move on to the next world?" Jack said.

"Maybe livable worlds like ours are a rare commodity. Could be that there aren't enough of them to go around, so it's worth the cost of invasion. Of course, this is assuming that resources are a motive for them at all. They could have a motive that we wouldn't be able to comprehend. They're not even human, after all." Eric said.

Their conversation was suddenly interrupted by an incredibly loud noise and gust of wind that rattled the cloth of the tent they were in.

"The hell was that?" Jack shouted.

The explosion had been the detonation of the alien vessel. The human troops, who had been steadily closing in, were eviscerated in the blast, along with what few aliens survived, and almost everything else within a little less than a kilometer.

----ooOOoo----​

The "Iceland Incident", as it came to be called, was one of the most closely guarded secrets in human history. Those few who were still alive who had witnessed the course of events and survived were sworn to secrecy, destined to be kept under surveillance for the rest of their lives.

To the rest of the world, the Iceland Incident was a watershed moment in the Cold War, where an attempted Soviet invasion of Iceland was stopped by a rash deployment of a nuclear weapon on the island that scared both sides into a truce. Direct lines of communication were opened, treaties were signed, and both nations weathered the political and diplomatic fallout of their official actions.

To the few hundred people who knew the truth, the Iceland Incident was the single most important event in recorded history. The survivors of the event on both sides were gathered together to found the Xenonauts: a joint Soviet-NATO organization that would meticulously research the incident, and develop weapons and tactics to protect humanity from a now very real alien threat.

At first, the Xenonauts enjoyed a wealth of funding, and were able to set up underground surveillance facilities and radar arrays were set up around the globe.

As time passed, and research of the crash site continued, it became clear that not much of any use could be salvaged from what little remained of the alien crash site. Even evidence that the alien attack had occurred at all was spotty. Only a few grainy photos of the battle had been taken, and every alien corpse had been atomized in the blast.


As the years went by, and the Xenonauts' supporters in both powerblocks died or retired and were replaced by people unaware of the Top Secret event, the leadership of both sides withdrew their support as geopolitical considerations made them suspicious of the joint organization. Eventually, funding dried up so much that it was a struggle just to keep the lights on at the headquarters.

Despite it all, the Xenonauts still clung to life, determined that humanity's greatest asset against the alien threat not be extinguished.

 

[Poached_Egg]

October 1st, 1979

Throughout the Earth's orbit, satellites began to inexplicably go dark. As the governments of humanity scrambled to find an explanation, observatories the world over reported scattered heat signatures and dark shapes all around in the Earth-Luna sphere of space. All over the planet, reports of UFO sightings and disappearances began to happen with ever-increasing frequency. For most of the denizens of the planet, the day marked the beginning of the alien invasion.

For the Xenonauts, it marked the end of a twenty year grace period.

----ooOOoo----​

October 17th, 1979

Lars Holmberg watched from his anti-aircraft post as a pair of Saab 37s dueled with the...thing in the skies. Never before had he been more grateful to be part of the Flygvapnet ground crew instead of being a pilot than when he saw the two jets suddenly torched by some sort of...ray gun or laser beam or God knows what. The burning remains of the jets crashed violently into the Stockholm city-scape below them, and Lars could only hope that they hadn't killed anyone else where they crashed.

The hostile craft suddenly made an impossible turn and shot back out towards the sea, making loud thunder claps as it broke the sound barrier.

As it made its way out to the sea, Lars could see another pair of jets rapidly making their way towards the craft, coming in from the South. As they got closer, Lars could just barely make them out. They looked like F16s to him. Americans operating in Swedish Airspace? Things must be worse than I thought!

The F-16s made an attack run on the craft. Lars expected to see them get fried just like the Saabs from before, but the only thing he saw was a puff of smoke from the fighters, leaving a charred-looking spot where they had presumably been hit by (and survived?!) the ray gun.

The fighters opened up on the craft with their cannons, showering it with lead before shooting over the craft and immediately moving to turn back around for another run. A strange purplish sheen appeared over the craft, and it was at that moment that Lars finally began to believe the rumors of UFOs. He'd thought (or, more accurately, "hoped") it might be Soviets when he first saw the craft, but he highly doubted there were any Soviet planes that could survive a minigun barrage without even getting their paint scratched. And there definitely weren't any Soviet aircraft with a purple energy shield around them.

The F-16s came back around towards the target. The UFO seemed to be wise to their tricks now, and this time it fired on them with some kind of projectile weapon as well as the lasers. One of the F-16s dove to dodge the incoming fire, being lightly peppered by the projectile weapon and scorched by the laser in the process. However, its wingman fired a pair of missiles at the UFO before breaking off. One of the missiles burst into flames short of the target, a victim of the ray gun presumably, but the other struck home.

To Lars's surprise, the UFO was actually damaged by the missile, and it went down in flames, crashing into the Baltic Sea. The F-16s, battered but still flying, made their way back over Stockholm and away to who knows where.

----ooOOoo----​

October 27th, 1979

Commander John "Jack" Miller entered the conference room, and sat at the head of the table. He looked at the five people around him, the heads of the various departments of his organization, and he began speaking.

"Alright, people. I've finished the last round of phone calls,and we are in business again. Our Condors' little 'demonstration' has paid off big time. We haven't been idle for twenty years, and we've just proven it to the governments of the world. I've secured funding from both of the major power blocs and every non-aligned government I could get to answer the phone. We've also got leave to use their airspace, meaning we can effectively operate with impunity anywhere we can get our interceptors to. Let's make sure our sponsors' investment pays off. Doctor, " he said, turning to Chief Scientist Doctor Edward Brown, "what's your analysis on our interceptors' performance?"

The Chief Scientist turned to the commander, his trademark sardonically amused expression on his face, "Our F-17s did well. Better than they had any right to, truth be told. I suspect that they weren't facing a proper combatant. Likely some kind of support or reconnaissance craft."

He adjusted his glasses. "The laser-resistant layer of their hull performed admirably, but I wouldn't get our hopes up too much. This UFO was much smaller than the one from 1958, its lasers were likely of significantly reduced power. Though I must say I was pleased with how well Condor-2 handled taking a beating from that projectile weapon of theirs. I doubt it could handle a direct hit, but the results are still promising."

The Chief of the Air Wing, Ted Green, spoke up at that. "I'd say it's a damn sight better than promising. It's downright exciting! It took damn near a hundred planes to bring down the UFO from '58, and that was only at the cost of dozens of pilots' lives. Now we're able to bring one down with a pair of jets, and both of them survive the encounter? It's enough to make me giddy."

Ted knew better than anyone the power of the enemy in the air, as he was the lucky survivor from the disastrous first contact with the '58 UFO. Jack had found a friend in the man, and he couldn't refrain from taking the bait.

"Please refrain from being giddy in the conference room, Chief Green." he said with a completely straight face. Having sated his comedic desires, the Commander went back to business without missing a beat.

"While I'm also pleased by the performance of our planes and pilots, combat is only one half of the problem. We have to be able to actually catch the enemy to fight him, and our Condors' targets outran them in our first two sorties before they snagged the one in the Baltic. We need to start work on a high speed interceptor." he said.

The Chief Scientist spoke again at that. "That may not take as long as you might think. We don't have to design one from scratch. I spied something in the technology-sharing dossiers that caught my eye. The Soviets have been working on an experimental supersonic interceptor, the MiG-31. It's supposed to be a superior version of their MiG-25, which for those of you who aren't aware is one of the fastest fighter jets in the world. It hasn't entered proper production yet, but I think the design will suit our purposes, with some modifications."

Jack grimaced at that. "It was like pulling teeth to get the US to give us F-16 schematics and parts, and that was an in-production plane. It's gonna be a challenge to get Moscow to cough up the designs for their secret experimental interceptor."

The Chief Scientist raised an eyebrow. "I have full confidence in your abilities commander, truly. Get me those schematics, and I can get you a new interceptor design within a week."

Jack sighed and turned to the chief engineer, a burly Russian by the name of Adrian Federov. "I can probably weasel some parts shipments out of the Kremlin, but the plane itself will need to be assembled in-house, I doubt they're going to be willing to part with any of their prototype models. That's a bigger job than anything we've ever done before. Are your people up for it?"

The engineer scratched his chin. "Is no problem. Always need more hands, but we can get job done. We'll need larger workspace if we are going to build more than one or two."

Jack smiled. "Well, with the funding we've secured, I've already ordered a full expansion of the base. Every department is going to get more space and more hands. This is the real deal, people. We're not just going to be sitting around and hypothesizing and experimenting like we've done for the last twenty years, we're going to take the fight to the enemy. The governments and militaries of Earth are going to be too tied up just trying to hold the line and put out all the fires to go on the offensive. We're the only hope of winning this war. We're humanity's sword against this new threat."

A man wearing a beret cleared his throat at that. "And on that note, I think we need to have a discussion about our Xenonauts." It was Eric Wilson, the English officer Jack had met during the Iceland Incident, and another old friend

Jack nodded for him to continue.

He did. "While I have full confidence in their training and skill, I'm concerned about their equipment. They're going to be at a serious disadvantage in combat, and they won't have the advantage of numbers like we did twenty years ago. I think giving them an edge should be a priority for our research."

The Commander turned to the Chief Scientist. "Any news on that front, Doctor?"

"Well, without a sample of their weapons to test it's difficult to say, but from what data we've managed to get from the 1958 incident we think that some of their small arms hit with the same force as a .50 caliber round. We can't realistically protect against that with trauma plates and kevlar, which is why our men's gear is centered around flak protection for the most part. No point adding the extra weight of a plate when it won't even stop the round. We'll need a working example of the aliens' weaponry to devise a method of defending against it." the Chief said.

The Commander turned to the Intelligence Chief, Todd Sterling, next. "Anything to add, Todd?"

The man nodded. "From what I've been able to glean from the intelligence given to us by our partners, the aliens haven't taken any kind of serious offensive action as of yet. Speculation suggests that they're focused primarily on gathering information at the moment, although they have been seen going after targets of opportunity from time to time, usually in the form of any war planes they detect. We don't know what they're looking for, or what they're going to do when they find it, but shooting down their scouts will disrupt their activities at least somewhat. It's the only way we can realistically hit the enemy right now."

He went on. "This is the calm before the storm, we should use this time to learn as much as possible about our enemies and their technology, just as they are doing now. We need to give our men an edge for when the real fighting starts."

The Commander nodded. "We'll need to shoot down one of these scout craft again, overland this time, so we can more easily scavenge it. On that note…" He turned to the Quartermaster.

"How are we for fuel?" he asked.

The Quartermaster, a woman by the name of Denisa Kvasnicka, spoke after a slight nervous hesitation. "We used up most of our pre-invasion fuel reserves in the recent sorties, but fortunately basic supplies like fuel, food, medicine, and munitions won't be a concern anymore with the support of our sponsoring nations. As for personnel, getting our hands on qualified individuals should be much easier now that we have the funds to pay for them."

She looked at the other department heads in the room, and continued. "If any of you have any contacts that could be of use to us, send their information to my office. I'll get in touch with them and handle recruitment."

She received nods in return.

The Commander spoke. "Thank you, Quartermaster. I would also like to discuss locations for future sub-bases. We simply won't have enough coverage with one location...."

The discussion continued on, but all who were present noted the change in the demeanor of their fellows compared to the last 20 years. To say they were happy to have been right would not have been accurate. In truth, they would very much have preferred to have been wrong. Yet, none could deny that the invasion gave them a sense of grim validation. It was energizing, in a way.

While the situation was the culmination of their worst fears, it still felt good to be taking action again, instead of languishing in their base, engaging in the same pointless debates over the same hypotheses they had been discussing for twenty years. Now, was the moment where they could prove that it hadn't been a waste of time.

----ooOOoo----​

XENOPEDIA: ALIEN INVASION

You've probably already noticed we're being invaded, Commander, so I won't state the obvious. The situation is bleak; none of the major powers are able to defend their own airspace, let alone protect the rest of the planet. It seems things are up to us. My team stand ready to help - there may only be a handful of us, but some of the finest minds on the planet are at work in your laboratories (this organisation offers a certain freedom from intrusion that appeals to those of intelligence). The key to beating our enemies is to understand them; we are keen to study any extraterrestrial equipment you can recover from the battlefield.

In the meantime, we have been gathering intelligence on the size and composition of the alien fleet orbiting our planet - mostly images and data obtained from orbital satellites or ground-based observatories. Given the depressingly disjointed response from the rest of the planet, this is probably the most in-depth study of the invasion to date. We have conclusively identified over five-hundred UFOs in the Earth-Luna sphere of space, with several times that amount of additional probable signals. From what we can gather, the largest UFOs are remaining in Lunar orbit at the moment. The smaller contacts are in high orbit over the Earth itself. The craft we see in our skies at the moment are likely some kind of parasite-craft launching from a mother ship. We won't be able to learn more until we get a (relatively) intact sample of one of these parasite-UFOs.


Right now the enemy appears to be operating mainly in an information gathering capacity, with no significant offensive actions being taken as of yet. We need to take advantage of this relatively calm period to learn as much as possible about our enemy, and find ways to adapt against their technology.

In light of this, I have two recommendations: that we consider supplementing our existing F-17 Condor aircraft with a heavier interceptor capable of carrying more powerful weapons, and that we investigate some form of battlefield support vehicle to aid our soldiers when securing crashed alien craft. Both proposals are already on your desk.


XENOPEDIA: F-17 "Condor"

The F-17 Condor is the primary Xenonaut interceptor aircraft, a general purpose dogfighter derived from the F-16 Fighting Falcon. The Condor's Autocannon makes it well-suited to destroying smaller craft, whilst it also carries Sidewinder light missiles to make it a credible threat to medium-size vessels

The Condor has broadly similar performance to its parent aircraft but uses a modified airframe that dramatically increases its operational range and survivability against alien weaponry, at the cost of top speed and payload. The alterations to the airframe have been made based on our studies of the UFO's weapons and tactics used that day. The UFO's laser weapon seemed to fire at all possible targets at once, and then go into some kind of cooldown phase. Based on this, we designed an aircraft capable of surviving the first shot, and then getting its missile or cannon barrage away in the cooldown period before breaking off.

We have dramatically increased the range of the craft compared to the stock F-16, but not without cost. The increased range is believed necessary - we have rather a lot of planet to protect. Doing this has reduced the payload of the Condor, but it is still able to carry two light missiles and a craft cannon. This is a versatile combination; Sidewinder missiles have been proved effective and reliable against human aircraft, but we do not even know if we will be able to get a missile lock on alien vessels. The cannon has a shorter range and fires powerful shells that should be useful in a dogfight. One of the two weapons should hopefully prove effective against an enemy vessel.


XENOPEDIA: BASIC ARMOR

The Basic Xenonaut armor is derived from the experimental US PASGT Armor system. There are some minor modifications to suit our ergonomic needs, along with changing the color scheme to our standard mottled grey-brown color. We tried to design our Xenonauts' uniform colors to blend into as many environments as possible (They'll be fighting all over the planet, after all.) but it may very well have been a waste of effort. We don't even know if the aliens see on the same color spectrum as we do.

Our studies of the Iceland Incident have led us to conclude that the primary small arms of the aliens are some kind of incredibly advanced projectile weapon. If our ballistics models created from recountings of the event are accurate, an alien "rifle" slug hits with the same force as a .50 caliber machine gun round. Even the most state-of-the-art trauma plates and kevlar armor has trouble stopping rounds in the .30 caliber range and often below that, which means that any extra armor given to our troops would just be useless dead weight. As such, the Basic Xenonaut armor has no plating, and instead relies on kevlar and other ballistic materials to protect the user from fragmentations and ricochets, not direct hits.

Until we get our hands on some samples of the aliens' weapons, this is the best we can hope for.

 

[Poached_Egg]

AN: Hey gang! These are just a few non-essential xenopedia entries I've put together for a few miscellaneous items that the Xenonauts have as of this point in the story. These are fun and easy to write, and they help offer some explanation for a few of the things that are different from the games.

XENOPEDIA: BALLISTIC PISTOL
The current service-pistol of our organization is the Beretta 93R, a select-fire machine pistol with a removable stock. This pistol was selected because of our concerns over the enemy's personal energy shields that seemed ubiquitous amongst their forces in the Iceland Incident. There was some concern that a conventional pistol would be effectively useless, as even rifle rounds took multiple hits to bring down an enemy's shields during the Incident. As such, it was determined that our pistol rounds lack of power would be compensated for by sheer volume of fire. Initially we accomplished this through adding extended magazines to our earlier service pistols, but recent developments in Machine Pistol design have led us to seek out a more modern option.

The handgun has two modes: three round burst, and semi-automatic, with a twenty round magazine. It has a retractable foregrip and attachable stock (which likely won't see as much use by us as its designers intended). It will mainly be used to arm base personnel and as a sidearm for our troops in the field, but some specialist units may opt for the hand gun over a heavier weapon. The three round burst is a compromise, intended to offer a greater volume of fire without making the weapon wildly inaccurate from the recoil. It's unclear how effective pistol rounds will be against enemy shields. The weapon shouldn't be expected to carry the day, but it's nevertheless a useful tool in our arsenal.

XENOPEDIA: BALLISTIC ASSAULT RIFLE
The current service-rifle of our organization is the US-made M16A1 5.56mm assault rifle. The 5.56 cartridge was chosen over heavier cartridges such as the 7.62 due to our theory that volume of fire will matter more than raw kinetic energy, and as the 5.56's smaller size enables our troops to carry more ammunition, the decision was made. The rifle itself was chosen not for any particular excellence on its part, but rather due to logistics. The weapon is ubiquitous, and it's easier on our logistics to use NATO weapons and ammunition rather than Warsaw Pact equipment, and a bottleneck in our supply lines is not something we can afford to risk just to use another, marginally different, rifle. Despite rumors to the contrary, the M16 is a reliable and proven design, and it will serve our Xenonauts faithfully, providing the same tactical flexibility in combat with the aliens that it does in combat with our fellow man.

XENOPEDIA: BALLISTIC SHOTGUN
The Xenonauts' acquisition of the Franchi SPAS-12 for our arsenal is a relatively recent development, as the weapon is still brand new. While some would have preferred that we adopt a more proven design, I think that this weapon will prove a valuable asset to our arsenal. The SPAS-12 variant in use by us uses a 8+1 tube magazine, and is capable of firing in either semi-automatic or pump-action mode.

The utility of a shotgun in our war against the aliens is something of a matter for debate amongst our peers. However, I believe that the sheer versatility of the weapon and the wide array of ammunition available to us will prove extremely useful. There are few small arms rounds more powerful than a twelve gauge slug, and the added volume of fire from a buckshot round could be extremely useful against enemy shields. The other, less conventional ammunition (some of which could potentially be developed by us in the future) means that a shotgun can be as much a tool as it is a weapon. The shotgun will be a potent addition to our arsenal, albeit a situational one.

XENOPEDIA: BALLISTIC SNIPER RIFLE
The Xenonauts' use of the SVD-63 "Dragunuv" sniper rifle is somewhat unusual in that it is the only Soviet-made gun in regular use by our organization. The reason for this is actually quite simple: most of the marksmen in the earlier years of our organization happened to be drawn from Soviet and Soviet Satellite states, and those Xenonauts requested they be allowed to use the familiar weapon over a NATO design. The logistical profile of a marksman rifle is smaller than that of an assault rifle, and so the concern of ammunition bottleneck was deemed negligible.

The rifle itself is an excellent design. Nothing particularly remarkable, just a quality, proven design. It will serve our marksmen well on the battlefield.

XENOPEDIA: BALLISTIC MACHINE GUN

The standard machine gun in use by our forces is the FN MAG. While not particularly remarkable, the design is proven and battle-tested. We have modified the design to take both regular belt-fed ammunition, as well as smaller 50 round "clips" that enable it to be more easily used by a single Xenonaut.

We suspect that our machine guns could very well prove the difference between victory and defeat in many of the early battles of this war. Sheer volume of fire will have to make up for our relative lack of kinetic energy in comparison to our alien enemy's weapons, and the machine gun is the most prodigious provider of volume of fire. It is a heavy weapon, unwieldy, suited more for providing supporting fire from a distance than for storming an enemy fortification. Used wisely, this may be the most potent weapon in our arsenal.

XENOPEDIA: ROCKET LAUNCHER

The rocket launcher in use by the Xenonauts (dubbed the XRL-1) has the distinction of being the only homebrewed weapon currently in use by our organization. It is reliable, inexpensive, and highly versatile. The custom design allows us to use many of our own custom-made rockets, making it an incredibly versatile weapon, capable of firing even the most unorthodox warheads we could devise. While the launcher is a potent weapon, I would advise that our troops use it conservatively. Scavenged alien technology and equipment is a lot less useful when it's been blown to pieces by a rocket.

 

[Poached_Egg]

November 4th, 1979

A pair of F-17 Condors cruise along on the path towards their target, a UFO detected a few hours ago. It's moving fast, too fast for them to overtake it. Home base had been about to recall them when the UFO suddenly veered hard to the West, enabling the pair of planes to take on a new intercept trajectory.

Condor-2 spotted the UFO first.

"UFO sighted, preparing to intercept!" she called out to Condor-1, her accent very thick and very Russian.

"I'm with you." came Condor-1's reply, sounding for all the world like an American radio host or TV personality, rather than a fighter jet pilot.

The pair went on their intercept trajectory, and Condor-1 felt his whole body tense up. He had felt the same way in the dog fight in Stockholm a few weeks ago. There was just something unsettling about that laser the aliens used. No chance to dodge, you either went down with the first shot, or you survived it and went in for the kill while their power cycled. It was combat reduced down to simple math.

The math was in the Condors' favor today, and as the UFO unleashed its lasers on the pair of planes, it failed to bring either of them down. Condor-1 was sure he could feel the heat from the weapon when it hit, even if the engineers swore up and down that the cockpit was insulated and he couldn't possibly feel it.

Sporadic projectile weapon fire came at the planes from the UFO, but it was too late to stop the barrage of autocannon fire that buckled the craft's shields and sent it into an uncontrolled descent. The wreck that the Swedes had managed to drag out of the Baltic Sea had been a pile of useless (albeit scientifically interesting) scrap. The missiles, it seemed, were overkill for the tiny scout craft like this. So, the science team had requested that the air team utilize autocannons when tactically permissible, to minimize destruction of useful salvage. The damned energy shields made things difficult, but they could be overcome by holding down the trigger for longer than standard.

The planes followed the UFO for several minutes, before watching it crash into the Greenland Tundra.

Condor-1 spoke over the radio. "Base, this is Condor-1, splash one. Flight 1 returning to base."

"Acknowledged, Flight 1." came the reply.

Condor-2 spoke to Condor-1. "That was easier than last time."

"Yeah. I just still can't shake the feeling that we're shooting down the alien equivalent of a civilian prop-plane. We shouldn't get used to it being this easy."

----ooOOoo----​

November 5th, 1979

Charlie-1 made its way to the UFO crash site, its cargo of Xenonauts huddling together in its hold. Charlie-1 was a Chinook helicopter, heavily modified by the Xenonauts to get as much range as physically possible, and even then it still needed frequent mid-air refueling from any local governments the Xenonauts could get to cooperate.

The modifications had come at a cost, as the generous troop complement of the Chinook had been shrunk down to just eight people. For the chronically personnel-hungry Xenonauts, however, this reduction wasn't too big of a blow.

Their leader, call sign "X-1", got a signal from the pilot on his headset.

"Coming up on the crash site now, X-1. Not a lot of cover down there." the pilot said.

"Can't have everything. How close can you get us?" X-1 asked.

"A lot closer than I'd like, considering we don't know what, if any, anti-aircraft abilities they might still have. There's a hill to the south of the site. I'm going to put her down behind it, that way you can recce the area from an elevated position." the pilot replied.

"Appreciate that." X-1 turned around to face his Xenonauts. "Alright boys, get ready. He's putting us down."

The assembled men, veterans of special forces from both sides of the Iron Curtain, voiced their acknowledgement.

----ooOOoo----​

Charlie-1 set down on the Icey terrain, behind a hill. The Xenonauts exited it with precise, well-drilled movements, making sure every angle was covered. X-1 made a hand signal, and the squad moved up the hill. At its peak, X-1 took a knee, his squad doing the same.

"X-5, set up for overwatch here." X-1 said. The squad marksman complied, going prone in the snow, trusting his thick winter-camo overcoat to keep him dry.

X-1 stood up, and signaled the others to move out. The squad made its way down the other side of the hill, trying their best to make use of what little cover there was as they made their way to the alien ship over 100 meters away. The lack of incoming fire suggested that the aliens (if they were alive) must be huddling in the sealed wreck. Understandable, given the cold. As they approached the entrance, and still no contact came, X-1 ordered his men into ready positions around the craft's entry hatch. X-3, the LMG operator, took up a position in front of the hatch, lying prone. Another Xenonaut set a breaching charge, and, after a brief count, X-1 pressed the detonator.

The explosion was instantly answered with shots from the alien weapons flying wildly out of the entrance. As the smoke cleared, a strange, alien face briefly appeared, before being destroyed as X-5 splattered the contents of its head against the wall.

X-3 laid down suppressive fire, and one of the xenonauts stacking up around the hatch tossed a flashbang into the ship. The alien fire silenced for an instant, and it was all the Xenonauts needed as they rapidly stormed the craft and gunned down the inhabitants. They'd been trained to "double up" on a target, to compensate for the defenses of the alien energy shield. Thus, the aliens were dispatched by at least two xenonauts each, with the human soldiers firing at them on full automatic, rapidly buckling the aliens' shields and perforating their torsos.

A quiet settled over the ship as the brief fire fight ended.

X-2, the second in command, turned to X-1 and spoke. "That was too easy."

X-1 nodded. "I don't think we were facing trained fighters here. I'm guessing that the Doc's theory is right, and this is just a scouting craft. We need to take advantage of things while it's still relatively easy. Learn as much as we can before the hammer drops."

X-2 nodded, and the Xenonauts proceeded to sweep the rest of the small craft.

----ooOOoo----​

XENOPEDIA: ALIEN AUTOPSY-"FROGMAN"

Well, Commander, I have good news and bad news. The good news is that X-3's aim ensured that I had at least one cadaver that hadn't had its insides turned into ground meat, so he has my thanks for that. The bad news is that, based on the evidence available to me, this alien is not the same as the aliens that attacked Iceland 20 years ago. Without any physical remains from the Iceland Incident to examine, it's hard to be certain, but I'm reasonably confident that we can add this as a third, entirely new species. The implications of this are many and varied. Is this new species affiliated with the previous ones, or is it independent? If affiliated, does this suggest that our enemy is some kind of multi-species polity? If independent, does that make them a competitor to our prior foes, or merely a third party? This corpse proposes many such questions, but it offers no answer to our most important question of all: Who is our enemy, and why are they here?

The specimen itself is quite interesting. Indeed, "Frogman", the title bestowed upon it by our troops, is an apt description. It bears strong similarities to Amphibian species here on Earth, even possessing similar reproductive organ structure.

It is incredibly lean. Its entire body seems to be perfectly structured for raw efficiency. Without a live specimen, it is difficult to give exact numbers, but we speculate that its metabolism is many times faster than that of a human. This efficiency appears to come at a cost, however, as we see many signs of what we presume to be aging damage, such as noticeably decayed joints (which, interestingly, have had some kind of advanced medical procedure applied to them). Yet, carbon dating suggests that this specimen is less than 30 years old! It's possible that this specimen is an example of an individual in this species equivalent to the far side of "middle aged", and yet it hasn't even turned thirty. Either this species is much more short lived than our own, or this individual is the victim of a particularly nasty form of degenerative disease. Personally, I find the former more likely.


XENOPEDIA: "ELEMENT ZERO"

Commander, I regret to report that almost every piece of technology recovered from the aliens is unusable. Our foes seem to have a very high standard of information security, as upon the deaths of its occupants, tiny thermal charges detonated in all of the ship's core systems. All of the electronics and other complex systems on the ship have been sabotaged in this way. Even the aliens' small utility items, such as their weapons and their strange wrist-mounted computing devices, have been sabotaged. As such, while we can study and speculate a piece of alien technology's mechanical purpose, we cannot even begin to decipher how it works.

All is not lost, however. While we may not be able to salvage their electronics, we can salvage their materials, and what a material we have found!

At first we thought it must be some kind of alien superconductor, as everywhere we found it, it was rigged up to an electrical wiring framework. It's apparent lack of mass was a curiosity, and led to it being dubbed "Element Zero".

When we ran a current through it to test it, we discovered that it was much more than a conductor. It is instead a material that manipulates mass itself, increasing and decreasing an object's mass depending on what current is running through it.

The implications of this are utterly revolutionary, but what is most interesting to me is how many puzzle pieces fit together about our enemy's technology thanks to this discovery. Everything, from their ship designs to even their weapons is informed by this technology. If we had decades to study it, we would have barely scratched the surface of what can be done with it. Unfortunately, we don't have such luxuries, so I've tried to be more utilitarian in my research suggestions.

The files are on your desk, although I'm loath to put them there, as no doubt once our esteemed engineering department gets wind of this material they'll give it one of their insufferable nicknames. Something dreadful like "EmZo" or "E-Zero" or God knows what else.


XENOPEDIA: ALIEN WEAPONS

While the alien sabotage makes their weapons unusable, the actual mechanical structure and design of the weapons is still left mostly intact thanks to the underpowered nature of the small thermal charges used in the sabotage. Because of this, we can gain insight into our enemy's weapons through studying the remains.

From what we can gather, alien small arms are a magnetic accelerator in miniature. While such technology is hardly incomprehensible to us, we have never been able to make use of it thanks to the limits of our battery technology: no portable battery could ever hope to store enough power to magnetically launch a projectile at velocities fast enough to be lethal.

Oddly enough, it seems our foes have a similar problem. Granted, even just from the remains, we can tell that our enemy's batteries are-unsurprisingly-vastly superior to our own. Despite this, we don't think that the weapon would be able to fire at the rate and power we see from our enemy's weapons with the amount of energy available in their batteries.

This is where the element zero we discovered in the weapons comes in. Using the element zero to decrease the projectile's mass, the mass accelerator can throw the projectile at incredible velocities, easily beating out most of our infantry weapons of similar size and type. Despite this power, the projectile itself is actually incredibly small. The weapon's "ammunition" is actually a small shaving from a "block" of ferrous matter inside the weapon, no bigger than a grain of sand. It is the velocity that gives the bullet its power, not its mass. Another benefit of the tiny projectile is that ammunition is so plentiful as to be effectively a non issue. Just one "block" of ammo can contain potentially thousands of shots, a fact that I'm sure will make our Quartermaster green with logistical envy.

Unfortunately, we're nowhere near replicating a weapon this sophisticated. However, I have a few ideas for stop gap designs we can use until that changes. However, I'm going to need an intact example of an alien weapon to hammer them out. Which means that we'll need to take an enemy alive, to prevent its weapons fail safe from being triggered by its expiration. To that end, I have seen to it that several proposals for non-lethal weapons find their way to your desk. Tell our troops I wish them good hunting.

 

[Poached_Egg]

Hey all. The next chapter is going to jump forward in time slightly, skipping some of the "early game" of Xenonauts. By the time we seem them next, the Xenonauts will have already had several missions to learn from, and even attempted to take an alien captive. The skip was necessary because I'm planning to diverge pretty significantly from the narrative model of the games in the next chapter, and thus that's where the "meat" of the story will really be. These Xenopedia entries are just a few quick paragraphs to fill in the blanks for a few things. If you haven't been a fan of the Xenopedia aspect of the story fear not, the next chapter will have significantly more non-xenopedia substance to it.

---

XENOPEDIA: ALIEN SCOUT CRAFT

The alien UFOs we have seen so far do not seem to be dedicated military craft, but neither are they dedicated scouting or reconnaissance craft. Indeed, they don't seem to share a uniform design at all. Thus far, we have encountered two distinct "categories" that we can place the various designs into. We call them "dependent" and "independent". Dependent UFOs are craft that are almost certainly operating from some sort of mothership, judging by their on board equipment and accommodations (or lack there of). They have only a small set of mass-effect assisted engines for propulsion, which, while vastly superior to anything we could hope to build, are woefully inadequate for any kind of significant interplanetary travel (nevermind interstellar). We suspect that these UFOs travel from lunar orbit to Earth, perform their mission, and then immediately return to their mothership to refuel.

Independent UFOs, as the name implies, are much more robust and flexible in their mission profile. These craft seem to be essentially a light utility vehicle, ferrying passengers and cargo to any destination necessary. For the handful of direct military actions that the aliens have attempted thus far, all were done using troops ferried in UFOs of this type.

Regardless of category, the tactics utilized by every UFO we've seen have been essentially the same: They travel at extremely high altitudes, well beyond the range of any interceptors, descending only when they are nearing whatever point of interest they are observing. This descent gives a brief interception window, one that we have exploited several times to reasonable success, though their admirably paranoid sense of information security means that every one of the wrecks had its core systems sabotaged.

Unfortunately, the enemy has stopped underestimating our air combat capabilities, and their increased caution has caused the interception window to shrink more and more. Once our new "Foxtrot" design rolls off the assembly line, we will hopefully have the raw speed necessary to grab targets of opportunity more reliably, but until then we're stuck playing it by ear.



XENOPEDIA: ALIEN AUTOPSY-"GEEK"

The unfortunate nickname of this subject is an extrapolation of the previous nickname for the subject's species: "Four-Eyes". This was itself a play on words of the most obvious fact about this species: it has four eyes. While the cadavers your men left for me leave much to be desired in terms of how intact they are, I can still conclude with acceptable confidence that this species is one of the two encountered during the Iceland incident.

Other than its eyes, the species is relatively unremarkable, physically speaking. Indeed, it is almost uncannily similar to a human. If we include the Frogman, these are two species surprisingly similar in basic shape and skeletal arrangement to our own. Hypotheses for convergent evolution among alien species gain more legitimacy with every cadaver we encounter.

The eyes themselves are somewhat hard to decipher. It's unclear what the purpose of the second set of eyes is. An initial hypothesis was that they enabled Geeks to see in some other visual spectrum, such as infrared. However, there doesn't appear to be any significant physical differences between the two sets of eyes that would be indicative of that (other than size, of course). Other hypotheses have been forthcoming (Increased Redundancy? Enhanced Depth Perception? Non-verbal communication?) but evidence for them is difficult to accrue. Were we to capture a live specimen, it would potentially both satisfy my team's curiosity and allow us to develop specialized tactics for fighting this species.


XENOPEDIA: ALIEN CAPTIVE

While I must commend your men on their success in capturing a live specimen for our labs, I fear it was mostly in vain: the subject has expired. We'd scarcely begun to establish rudimentary communication before the subject suddenly fell dead. An autopsy discovered the cause: an incredibly advanced biological machine embedded in the alien's neck had completely overloaded its nervous system. Once we knew what to look for, we were able to find these incredibly tiny "biochips" embedded in every cadaver we've recovered so far. It seems our foe is even more ruthless about information security than we thought.

Most interesting of all was the subject's demeanor prior to its expiration. While its difficult to be certain when it comes to an alien psyche, it did not appear to be alarmed or anticipating the chip in any way. I would hazard a guess that it wasn't even aware that it had the chip in the first place. Of course, it is an alien, possibly with a completely different psychological behavioral model to our own, so it's not impossible that it was aware of the chip, and simply didn't care. Personally, I find this unlikely. Regardless of the answer, one thing is certain: until we can find a way to circumvent the chips, any captives we take will have their brains turned to mush before we can extract any useful information from them.

---

Just a few quick entries, like I said. Next chapter we will diverge from the game's story beats significantly, uncovering the aliens motives, plans, and possibly even their identities within the context of the Mass Effect universe. Until then, thank you for reading!

 

[Poached_Egg]

December 12th, 1979

As the vibration of another explosion shook the base, Vasily fumbled with the fastenings of his equipment. Never in a million years had he expected to see combat guarding a nuclear facility. What could the Americans hope to accomplish in this, other than starting a war that would end the world? The actions of his enemy seemed to defy reason. Which was why, as he donned his helmet and checked the ammo in his rifle, a voice in the back of his mind brought forth an unwelcome thought.

What if it's not the Americans? What if the rumors are true?

Clamping down on such intrusive thoughts, Vasily followed the rest of his squad out, ready for battle. Vasily arrived with them at the section of the facility they were ordered to prevent the enemy from entering at all costs. The troops took up defensive positions. Behind them was one of the several sets of ICBMs contained in the facility. If the attackers got past them, they could sabotage the missiles. Or worse, they could somehow find a way to launch them.

Vasily heard gunfire coming down the hall in front of him. It was gunfire the likes of which he had never heard before. A terrified trooper came running from the direction of the gunfire, before suddenly freezing where he stood. Around the corner came...a woman. Or, at least, it looked like one. She was clad in some kind of armor, form fitting, black as midnight, and made of strange materials. Her helmet covered her face completely, and had some kind of strange protrusion coming out the back of it.

The woman rounded the corner with her arm raised. Then, she waved it to the side, and in that exact moment the frozen trooper went flying to the side, slamming against the wall. The woman lazily waved her arm back and forth, once, twice. The poor trooper was crushed against the wall both times. She dropped her hand, and the trooper crumpled to the floor.

Vasily and his comrades stared at the impossible sight in horror, dumbstruck by the absurdity of it. The sergeant snapped out of it first.

"Shoot her, you idiots!"

The squad snapped out of it at once, and a hail of 7.62 x 39mm rounds was sent towards the nightmare standing before them. A purple screen appeared around the woman, the bullets bouncing harmlessly off of some kind of perimeter around her. In one motion, she sent a mass of purple light at the Soviets, and sidestepped back behind the corner. The ball of purple light was slower than a bullet, slow enough that Vasily could see it for a scant few moments as it sped down the hallway, turning slightly as it homed in on its apparent target. The unfortunate trooper was splattered against the back wall.

"Cease fire!" the sergeant shouted, not wanting his men to waste ammo on a target that wasn't even in sight now.

The troops waited for several heartbeats. Then, the woman returned, this time with two companions following her. The Soviet troops opened fire on the group, but the one in the middle raised her hands and summoned a veil of purple light to rest over the group. The bullets bounced off of the veil, and the other two women opened fire. Vasily had gotten back into cover to reload, and from there he saw all of his comrades gunned down by expertly-placed shots from the invaders.

Vasily abandoned any illusions of him emerging victorious and threw his rifle out over the cover. Ever so slowly, he stood up, hands raised in the air. It was a ridiculous notion. They weren't even human, they could very well have an entirely different gesture of surrender. Hell, they might not even have a concept of surrender at all. That idea nearly made Vasily freeze and crouch back down, but his desire to live overcame that. He slowly raised himself up to his full height, hands in the air.

Before he could get his bearings, he was suddenly unable to move. The sensation that washed over him was something he'd never felt before. It was as if the air itself had been wrapped around him and turned solid. His panicked cries were strangled down by his forcibly-closed mouth.

The right-most woman of the trio had her hand held in front of her, and approached him. The other two followed behind her. The woman approached him, getting right up close for a good look at his face. Vasily stared back (not that he had much choice in the matter), and noticed the pair of Indigo eyes that watched him behind the visor. The color was unnatural, and Vasily couldn't help but be fascinated, despite the horror of his situation. I am looking into the eyes of an alien.

His awe was cut short as she flicked her hand and he was flattened against the wall. He sucked in a ragged breath, the restriction placed around his body making it difficult. It was far from pleasant, but he knew that had the alien wanted to kill him it easily could have. She stood guard over his frozen body, while her two companions went into the room at the end of the hallway. Vasily remembered his mission then. The missiles! They must be after them.

The two aliens worked in tandem to rip the massive door off of its hinges, tossing the pieces aside. They disappeared into the room. When they reappeared, they were each…"carrying" several missiles, the weapons floating in bundles behind them. The pair approached their companion and set their burdens down. She turned to face them, and the trio began to gesticulate. Are they having a conversation? They must have radios in their helmets, it would explain why I can't hear them.

The alien guarding him got more animated, as if the conversation was getting heated. The one closest to her, who Vasily was sure was the very same alien he had seen first, crossed her arms and cocked her head at Vasily's guard. Her head moved slightly as she (presumably) spoke, and then she turned to leave, her point apparently having been made. The pair picked their burdens back up and made their way back down the hallway. The last alien hung her head slightly, then she drew her weapon and pointed it at Vasily. He was a quarter of the way through the Lord's prayer when she pulled the trigger, once, twice. The pain that lanced through him was relieved slightly by the release he felt as the restriction around him vanished. As he crumpled to the floor, his failing lungs sucking down a few last desperate breaths, he watched the alien turn to enter the room and pick up her own burden of missiles. As his vision began to fade and the cold overtook him, a thought struck him.

Had her hands been shaking?

----ooOOoo----​

December 20th, 1979

Commander John "Jack" Miller ran a hand through his hair, sighing in frustration. The daily department heads meeting was well underway, and ideas of all kinds were thrown around. Yet, they still didn't have the faintest idea what the aliens were up to. That didn't mean people didn't have their theories.

Ted Green, Chief of the Air Wing, was sharing his. "They're the most powerful weapons in mankind's arsenal, what possible purpose could the aliens have in targeting them other than to eliminate our ability to retaliate?"

"As I keep telling you, none of our missiles-NATO or Soviet-could have come anywhere close to hitting one of them in orbit. They don't have to eliminate our capacity to retaliate, because we never had it to begin with. There has to be some other purpose, one we don't understand yet." Chief Scientist Edward Brown replied.

"Maybe they just want to study the missiles, or something. Perhaps is…curiosity to them?" The Chief Engineer Adrian Federov speculated.

Doctor Brown rolled his eyes. "I highly doubt that they crossed interstellar distances with an armada of warships just to study…curiosities."

The Intelligence Chief, Todd Sterling, added to that. "I agree. If even half of the reports I'm getting about these…things are accurate…"

Eric Wilson, the commander of the Xenonaut combat teams, gave a shudder at that. He had no idea how he was supposed to train men to fight…well, witches.

"...then they're not the sort of troops you send to secure a minor objective."

"Per-...Perhaps I should point out, gentlemen, that these beings are not human. We cannot guarantee that they operate under the same motives and logic that we do. To us, these soldiers seem like overkill. That does not mean they think the same way." The Quartermaster, Denisa Kvasnicka, interjected.

All heads turned to her in mild surprise, and Denisa looked like she was visibly restraining herself from hiding behind her clipboard at the stares. Jack gave her a small smile at that. Whether because she was just naturally shy, thought her "simple" job made her opinion unwelcome, or because she was almost always the only woman in the room (or all three), Denisa was always hesitant to give her opinion. Jack had tried his best to be as encouraging as possible (it would be very bad if the head of logistics was unwilling to voice their opinion), and he was glad to see it had paid off.

Doctor Brown gave the woman a smirk and a polite nod, the equivalent to a bow of respect from him. He and the Quartermaster had built up a professional rapport, and he seemed to enjoy debating her.

"Your point is fair, but such thoughts are still speculation, in the end. We have no reason to assume that deductive reasoning would not develop in the same way in another equally intelligent-or better-mind. If given the choice between assuming the enemy is rational and assuming the enemy is irrational, I think the former is the more reasonable choice."

Denisa gave a smirk of her own and shrugged.

"If we assume that our enemy is rational, then that begs the question…" Commander Jack said.

:..What the hell are they doing?"

----ooOOoo----​

January 3rd, 1980

Throughout Earth, every government with the technology to observe space was in a frenzy.

The alien fleet was moving.

The Xenonauts were in a scramble of their own, their sub bases standing at full readiness, pilots sitting in their jets waiting for interception orders. Within the main base, buried deep beneath the Earth, the Commander of the Xenonauts was speaking.

"Do we know how many?" he asked.

"At least one hundred, at a minimum. Almost every one of the larger heat signatures, the ones we suspect to be proper warships." Doctor Brown replied.

"You said they weren't going to bomb us, so what the hell are they doing?" the Chief Green asked frustratedly.

"I said I believed they weren't going to bomb us. Why bother with reconnaissance, troop deployment, research missions, if you're just going to bomb it all into dust anyways? There has to be another reason, something we just haven't figured out yet."

"Commander, instruments reporting multiple nuclear detonations!" the terrified voice of one of the detection officers cried out.

Every heart in the room stopped beating for a moment, and then began again at an accelerated pace.

"No, not nukes. Almost certainly kinetics…" Doctor Brown mused.

The Commander ignored him. "Can the satellites confirm the targets? Scratch that, just send them to the display board as the reports come in."

The glowing map of the world turned on, and one by one locations began blinking red.

"My God. So damn many…" the Chief Green whispered.

The Commander narrowed his eyes as he watched. "Almost exclusively military targets. They're trying to eliminate our capacity to resist"

Doctor Brown nodded, but looked perplexed. "I don't understand why they wouldn't just do this immediately. It's not like those bases have any realistic chance of doing them harm, so why all the prepwork? And I still don't understand what they wanted with those-"

"Sir, nuclear launch detected!" the beleaguered detection officer shouted.

Chief Green swore loudly. Doctor Brown's eyebrows rose in genuine astonishment. The Commander's head snapped to the officer.

"Who's launching?"

"Everyone, sir. Soviets, Americans, British, French, Chinese."

"Display it." Blinking dots depicting the speculative locations of the missiles and bombers in the air appeared on the board.

"That's…significantly fewer than I thought. Most of the missiles are sub-based, judging by their trajectory. And with the airbases destroyed, I'd bet those bombers are just the ones that were already in the air. They really did a number on our arsenal, didn't they?" Chief Green said.
He grimaced. "Not that it'll matter much."

The Commander scrutinized the board. "There's no way they can hit them. Not in space. Those trajectories… idiots. They're not launching against the aliens, they're launching against each other!"

Chief Green gave another, even more colorful swear. Doctor Brown, who had been scrutinizing the map up to that point, suddenly shouted.

"Of course!"

All eyes turned to look at him, and the Doctor explained with the energy he always got when he finally solved a particularly annoying problem.

"The raids, they weren't for protecting themselves, they were for protecting us. They anticipated us nuking ourselves in a panic when they started their bombardment. Whatever their motives, they must involve us, humanity. It's not the planet they're interested in, it's the people on it."

The missiles and bombers were tracked by the incredibly advanced and extensive (to the point it would have been panic-inducing had the sponsoring governments known of it) hidden Xenonaut radar network. On this network, the weapons began to go dark, one by one.

"What the hell is happening? They were way too short of any meaningful target. No way those were the detonations." the Commander thought out loud.

"Maybe the powers that be all grew some brain cells and self-detonated." Chief Green snorted.

"Isn't it obvious? The enemy is shooting them down." Doctor Brown said.

Before the hour was over, every nuclear weapon in the sky had vanished.

"They must have been concerned about their ability to eliminate every warhead from play. Hence the raids on our land-based silos." The Doctor continued.

Chief Green turned grim. "Presumably they'll be broadcasting demands for our surrender soon. They'll probably get it, too. Every military in the world just got crippled. No way our sponsors will keep the fight going now."

The Commander's face took a hard expression. "We'll hold out here. They haven't hit any of our bases, which means that our efforts to conceal our main base and construction efforts have been successful. We'll be the knife up mankind's sleeve. We can't fight the aliens without support, but we can at least keep them honest. If they prove to be…ungracious rulers, at least we'll have something we can hit back with."

A light began blinking on the display board. Gasps and strangled cries went out throughout the command center at the sight. The blinking light was Washington D.C.

One by one, more lights blinked. Moscow. London. Paris. New Delhi. Tokyo. More and more lights appeared, some hitting lesser cities, others hitting vital infrastructure.

"Why? Why? Why go to all the trouble, if you're just going to bomb us into ruins anyway? If they're trying to get us to surrender, why are they destroying our seats of government. Who the hell do they expect to get a surrender order from if not them? It makes no sense." Doctor Brown was utterly distraught, looking like a man who was completely at a loss.

"Those sons of bitches! I'll make them pay, if I have to go up there and shoot them all down myself, I swear by God those bastards will-" Chief Green's tirade continued on.

The Commander stared at the board, rage burning like a furnace in his chest. That furnace instantly went ice cold when it abruptly stopped. The alien ships broke off, just as suddenly as they had engaged. The bombings had lasted for barely five minutes, but human civilization would spend decades recovering from it. Yet, perplexingly, it hadn't been completely destroyed.

"Why leave the job half-finished? What was the point of all that, if they're just going to up and leave without finishing us off?" the Commander's voice was deadly calm.

"It's…nonsensical. What could their objective possibly be? Even if they're complete lunatics sating their bloodthirst, why stop at all? It's absurd." Doctor Brown had recomposed himself, but his voice was still shaky.

Chief Green added nothing, he just stared at the board, his breathing still heavy.

The board changed to a crude display of the base computer's approximation of the situation in orbit. It gathered together all of the observation data and made a simple graphical illustration. A good third of the ships in orbit were accelerating away from the main fleet.

"Where the hell are they going?" Chief Green finally spoke.

The small detachment continued on its burn, reaching the moon in a distressingly short amount of time. Then, just as suddenly, they stopped accelerating. They drifted for a few more seconds, and then began decelerating, burning their way back to the main fleet.

"...I don't get it." the Commander said, the cold steel that had been in his voice had gone out, replaced with only a dejected confusion.

The alien fleet reformed, and then burned as one unit back toward Luna, parking in her orbit.
With that, the most devastating ( and perplexing) three hours in human history came to a close.

---

I can't express how much I appreciate everyone who has been kind enough to read, enjoy, and engage with both this story as well as my other work. As always, thank you all for reading, and please share your thoughts in the comments.

 

[Poached_Egg]

January 22nd, 1980

"Madame President." Commander Miller greeted the new leader of the free world (or what was left of it) over the phone.

"Commander Miller. What's left of the CIA gave me quite the briefing about you and your little clubhouse. I don't know what you think you'll get from me."

Harriett Jones, the very recently ascended President of the United States, sounded like she hadn't had a proper night's sleep in weeks. Mainly because she hadn't.

Jack sighed. "Ma'am, that fleet is still up there-"

"And we're still down here, Commander. You want to delude yourself into thinking you can fight them, you're welcome to it, but I have actual work to do."

She gave an exhausted sigh.

"Do you know what I was before I got dumped into this bunker? The Secretary of Transportation. I've rubbed shoulders with enough logistics weenies in my time in that Department to be uniquely qualified to understand just how royally fucked we are."

"This country spans an entire continent, and it was all held together by one of the largest and most complex logistical networks in history. And now someone's thrown it through a woodchipper. I've got entire cities completely cut off from the rest of the country because all of the highways and railroads have been bombed to hell and back, and I can't repair them because two thirds of our qualified personnel were sitting in our major cities, which are now piles of rubble.

I've got mountains of food sitting in warehouses while my allies starve to death overseas. Because the ships that could carry the food were all blown to hell with the ports they were docked in, and the ships that weren't in port have nowhere to dock. We're the richest country in human history, we could feed the whole goddamn planet if we had to, but even our own people starve because we can't get the goddamned food to them!"

She gave a bitter laugh. "So, you might understand how I'm just a little too busy to go play spacemen with you."


Jack took a moment to absorb it all. "Ma'am, even if you work miracles and magically fix everything, the aliens can still just fly in and bomb it all into ruin again. We have to have some way to defend ourselves."

The caustic tone faded slightly from the President's voice. In its place was something with much more raw emotion.

"How? The military's heavy equipment and weapons were destroyed with the bases that carried them, along with most of its professional personnel. What do you want me to do? Have the National guard tear gas them?"

"We will do the fighting, ma'am. We just need your support. Even if it's just keeping your previous commitments: Access to bases and airspace, logistical support, and funding. That'll at least be something."


The President laughed. "We don't have any more bases worth the name, we don't have enough planes left to keep you out of our airspace even if we wanted to, we can't support ourselves logistically, nevermind you, and money became worthless the first hour after the bombing."

Jack sighed. It's not like she was wrong. "Just...lend us your support. We have a plan. If you back us up in any way you can, then it just might work."

"...Alright then, Jack. You're a hell of a lot more confident than my chiefs of staff, if nothing else. What does this plan of yours need from me?"

"At the moment? Nothing that isn't already being covered in the supply shipments. Not yet, anyway. However, there is one thing I'll want from you in the near future. Can I ask you…what's the Navy's status?..."


---


Premier Volkov took off his glasses to rub his eyes as he spoke on the phone.

"Commander, I've got damn near the entire population living through the Russian winter without heat or electricity. Millions are going to freeze or starve by the end of the year. I can't even feed my people, what the fuck do you think I can do for you?"

Well, this is some déjà vu. Jack cleared his throat. His Russian was accented, but otherwise fluent. "Premier Volkov, I'm not asking you for food, I'm asking you to maintain your previous commitment."

"You want to fly your magic jets through Soviet airspace, go ahead! I couldn't keep you out even if I wanted to. Why are you bothering me with this?"

"Premier, I know that things are bad right now, but we'll never be safe again while that fleet sits up there. We have to defend ourselves. My organization has a plan, I'm just asking that you-"

"Plan? What the hell kind of "plan" could you possibly have? Your whole organization's founding was complete lunacy to begin with, why should I trust you to defend us over our own military?"

"Because our only hope is in pooling our resources, now more than ever. Millions might starve and freeze now, but billions more will die if we don't stop the alien threat."

The Premier sighed. "...Forgive me. I went to bed as a mid level bureaucrat, and I awoke as the leader of the Soviet Union. It's been a little...disorienting. My government will keep our past commitments. You'll have Soviet resources. Is there anything I can do for you?"

"Well, yes actually. There's an experimental plane I've been trying to get my hands on. The previous government was dragging their feet on it, despite the technology sharing agreements. I doubt the prototype survived the bombing, but any documents you can-"

The Premier burst out laughing. "A plane? I can give you a plane! I'll give you ten planes, haha! Just don't ask for any food or coal, I have none to give. I'll get whatever's left of the Air Forces to give you what they have on it."

"That would be very helpful, but it's not the only thing I need. You might recall me mentioning a 'plan' earlier. May I ask, where's the Red Navy these days?..."


—


Chief Scientist Doctor Edward Brown looked over the assembled department heads of the Xenonauts and gave a proud smile.

"I give you, the Hou Yi class SLBM upgrade package."

The projection he gestured to showed a diagram depicting a submarine launched ballistic missile with significant alterations made to it. The projectionist switched to the next image, a diagram depicting the missile being launched from a sub and into orbit, where it strikes a simplistic silhouette of an alien ship.

"With mass effect technology, the difficulties of achieving orbit are dramatically nullified, even for our comparatively primitive chemical propulsion systems. Because of this, even smaller launch platforms like SLBMs can conceivably be used to strike targets in orbit. With the Hou-Yi package installed, any SLBM can be turned into a surface-to-orbit missile."

There were more than a few skeptical faces among the department heads. Jack decided to step in and back Edward up.

"It doesn't seem like much. Not after what they did to us. But it's the first step on the road to bigger and better things. Any effort at expansion or development is completely crippled by the fact that our enemy can carpet bomb us with impunity. Our first and most critical mission is securing our low orbit. Everything else must come after that."

Edward nodded. "I won't pretend to have a clue about the enemy's goals or motivations, but, whatever their purpose may be, I'm still confident that they want this planet largely intact. The simple fact is that they can end this war at any time by de-orbiting a few large asteroids on us. But they haven't. They might want us dead, but they want Earth to be intact afterwards, and while they're able to execute precision bombardment upon us with impunity they'll have a very good chance of achieving that goal."

The gathering of Xenonaut leaders digested that information. Air Chief Ted Green was the first to voice his thoughts.

"Why subs instead of siloes?" he asked.

Edward nodded and answered. "The short version is that sub-based missiles are the only ones we have left in any significant number. The long version is that static installations like siloes are completely compromised if the enemy manages to locate them, whereas submarines can potentially reposition if the enemy manages to find them. Other mobile methods like trucks or planes could potentially be used, but they don't benefit from the incredible concealment of the ocean or the logistical longevity of a nuclear reactor."

Ted nodded his understanding.

Quartermaster Denisa Kvasnicka was the next to speak. "Where are we going to get the materials for this? Our supplies of alien resources are already stretched to their limit."

Ted voiced his agreement. "And it's unlikely we'll be getting any more anytime soon. We had an entire month without a single UFO sighting while they took their little vacation in Lunar orbit. Even after they started back up, they don't send anything down here without a sizable escort now. What few victories we've had have come from us committing our entire air wing to one target."

Eric Wilson, commander of the Xenonaut combat teams, added to Ted's point.

"And even with that victory, our actual material gain was minimal, since the aliens bombard the crash site of every UFO we manage to take down. Our troops haven't seen real combat since before the bombings."

Edward thought for a moment before answering. "Well, fortunately, the materials requirements are not that substantial for this package. It's essentially just a crude imitation of an alien mass effect field generator using human technology. It's not even close to being as powerful or effective as the alien version, but this has benefits. While there are many potential improvements that could be made using other alien materials, we've designed the base model in such a way that the only thing it needs that we can't produce ourselves is element zero, and element zero is one of the few materials we can still harvest from bombarded alien wrecks. It's doable, it will just take longer than we'd like."

Jack chimed in as well. "Keep in mind, we're fast-tracking our heavy interceptor design as we speak. We can more reliably engage these larger groups of craft they've been sending in once we have that in the skies. I've read the specs for this upgrade, and it's doable. We've finalized the talks with the nuclear-armed states, so we'll have access to the submarines when we need them. Once we have those missiles deployed, we'll have a way of deterring precision bombardment. Our first priority has to be securing our orbit. We just can't fight this war when the enemy can bomb us at will."

—

March 28th, 1980

Captain Franklin Williams leaned against some railing, watching as Xenonauts workers labored to get the first submarine in the Xenonauts fleet armed and ready for battle. In the early years of the Xenonauts, when funding had been plentiful, many resources had been poured into the main base of the organization. Ludicrously expensive and obscenely elaborate facilities had been constructed, from missile tubes, to underground hangers, and even a small submarine hangar. As the years passed and funding evaporated, unnecessary facilities such as those had been decommissioned to save on personnel and maintenance costs.

However, now that the organization effectively had a blank check from every major government in the world, the Xenonauts could afford to start restoring their home to its former glory. The base was located in Iceland (which had seemed like the obvious choice to the organization's founders, given the proximity to the initial invasion site). The entire facility was built into the side of a remote cliff along the coast, dug deep underground to minimize the chance of detection.

The first facility to be restored had, naturally, been the compact underground hangars, which were what had allowed the organization to launch its aircraft in secret. However, given the current plans, the new focus of the restoration effort was on the submarine hangar.

To Franklin, the cramped little hangar he currently stood in seemed more like something a particularly campy Bond Villain would construct than a supposedly professional organization like the Xenonauts. It led to an underwater tunnel, dug into the side of the cliff. Supposedly, the idea was for the submarine to dive and enter the tunnel, then make its way up the very long and incredibly cramped shaft that led to the actual facility.

The base had been designed with the comparatively scrawny American George Washington and Soviet Project 629 submarines in mind, and even for them it had been a tight fit. For the much larger submarine in front of him, it had been quite the challenge to get the boat up safely. Franklin was not looking forward to getting the thing back out when he took command.

The submarine was PCU Ohio, intended as the first of a brand-spanking-new class of submarines the United States had been planning. It had only been launched less than a year ago, and it hadn't even been properly commissioned yet. Things being what they are, it seemed likely that it would also be the last of its class. Still, it was arguably the most modern submarine currently in existence. It was the perfect choice for the first sub to be equipped with these shiny new Xenonaut missiles. President Jones had forked it over easily enough. The US Navy officer in him made Franklin feel a little prickly about that, but the man who had watched his homeland bombed into ruin by aliens won out in the end. It's not like we were using it for anything, anyway.

The thought of his new President made Franklin amused. He was still a good distance away from the mantle of "elderly", but he was no spring chicken either. If someone had told him in his youth that he'd live to see a woman in the (metaphorical) White House, he'd have thought they were crazy. Of course, on the list titled "things Franklin Williams never thought would happen", she was at the absolute bottom, given the times he lived in. And besides, she'd done about as well as anyone could ask of her, all things considered. She was the one who'd dragged his sorry ass out of retirement and sent him to join the freak show that was the Xenonauts, but he didn't hold it against her.

He was quite convinced that everyone in this circus act he'd been press ganged into was completely delusional. The fact that they honestly seemed to believe that they could win was all the proof Franklin needed of that. Any man who'd seen the alien bombs fall ought to know that mankind was on its way out the door. Still, he was a recently un-retired US Navy Officer, and his president had ordered him transferred to the Xenonauts, and Franklin was far too set in his ways to disobey a direct order from the President, even a lady President.

And, well, if the Xenonauts were right and these fancy bombs could knock one or two of the bastards who had murdered his entire family out of the sky, that was more than good enough for Franklin. Even if he still thought it was all for nothing.

—

Jack looked at the map with the most recent intelligence reports with Intelligence Chief Todd Sterling and the Chief Scientist. He grimaced and looked at Todd.

"A new one, relatively close to the Aluetians. That's at least five confirmed bases in the northern hemisphere now, and a dozen total."

Edward nodded. "I wouldn't be surprised if there were more. The bases are a net-positive for us, though."

Jack looked at him expectantly, waiting for the explanation.

Edward provided it. "Well, it will solve our resource bottleneck, won't it? We've already completely exhausted our trickle of Element Zero equipping the Ohio, and even that trickle is effectively cut off, since the aliens have tightened security even more. Raiding one of these bases is our only realistic chance of getting our hands on a usable amount of resources any time soon."

"We don't know that for sure." Jack said.

Edward shrugged. "Fair enough, but in my opinion these bases and the tightened security can mean only one thing: the aliens are digging in their heels. If they're allowed to operate with impunity they will, eventually, find us. And if they find us it's game over. There's just no way anyone else besides us can effectively fight back, especially since the bombings."

Todd nodded. "I agree with the Doctor. These aren't little supply or research outposts, they're the foundation of a proper long-term military base. I'd bet all of the worthless money in my wallet that they're going to start ramping up offensive operations soon. What that might look like, I haven't the faintest idea, but those bases are where they're going to project power from. We need more of their resources, their tech, and any intel we can get our hands on, and those bases are where we're going to get it."

Jack steepled his fingers, closing his eyes for a moment, then opening them. "Alright, let's say we do it. What happens when they notice? They'll just bomb the base if we actually manage to take it."

Edward smiled. "Which is where the Hou Yi missiles come in. This will be the perfect opportunity to demonstrate our surface-to-orbit capabilities. The whole point of it is to deter precision orbital bombardment, not to shoot down every single ship in orbit. As far as I'm concerned, the sooner we reveal that we have the weapon, the better"

Jack rubbed the bridge of his nose. "So, we attack one of these bases that we know nothing about, steal everything that isn't nailed down -assuming our troops don't get massacred- provide cover with the Ohio, and then hope we get the opportunity to shoot an enemy ship down."

"Yeah, that's pretty much the gist of it. Although you forgot the part where we also have to hope that the enemy backs off when they see our new weapon, rather than just…you know, bombing what's left of our civilization into ruin again." Edward said.

Todd shrugged. 'Seems like business as usual to me. As far as I'm concerned, if Hou Yi doesn't work, we're finished anyway. Might as well get it out of the way now."

Jack stopped rubbing his nose. "You know what? Sure. What the hell, I kind of like it. We'll get the department heads together and draw up a plan. However…"

"Something the matter?" Edward asked.

"Which one do we attack?" Jack said.

"The base by the Aluetians is our best target, in my opinion." Todd said.

"Oh? How'd you come to that conclusion?" Edward said.

Todd grinned. "Well, for starters…it's on an island."

—

On a little scrap of turf in the far north which barely qualifies as an island, a small alien outpost sits. From the murky depths surrounding it, divers climb out of the water, leaving their small submersibles behind. They quickly checked each others equipment, and then went on to business.

"2, take 5, 3, and 8 up that hill for overwatch. Eyes peeled, if they have any brains there will be sentries up there." X-1 commanded, gesturing to the rocky hill he was referring to.

"On it." X-2 said, moving to hike up the hill with the other three men spoken of.

X-1 moved off as well, the rest of the Xenonauts following him. X-1 wasn't fond of this terrain. Barren, totally devoid of any brush or other ground coverings. He and his men would have to go prone to get any kind of concealment. The fire team of Xenonauts crunched their way off of the stony beach and around the hill that the other half of the squad was setting up on.

X-2's voice came over the coms. "This is Overwatch, we're set up here. No sentries. Outpost doesn't look like much, just some pre-fab buildings, maybe half a dozen. We see a few Geeks and Froggies milling around, there's a handful of other individuals, don't recognize the species. Jesus, these ones are ugly. …No sign of any Witches."

The squad breathed a collective sigh of relief at that. No one was looking forward to fighting one of those nightmares.

"I count about twenty foot-mobile Xenos in total. At least half of them are armed. Mostly the Geeks and these new guys." X-2 finished his report.

As they came around the hill, it was not long before the alien outpost was in view for the assault team as well. X-1 was once again baffled as he observed his foes. They were just…loitering. Between this current idleness and the fact that they didn't have anyone watching the very obvious vantage point over their base, X-1 once again found himself…unimpressed.

These clowns leveled the whole god damned world?

It was hard to reconcile the rank amateurs he seemed to encounter on his missions with the conniving evil masterminds who had slaughtered hundreds of millions of people.

He observed his enemy some more, however this time he wasn't looking for answers. He was looking for targets. A big chunk of them were grouped up nicely, playing some sort of game. Space dice? It didn't matter. All that mattered was that they were huddled around it, nice and tightly.

"8 and 2, send them some presents. 3, you start spraying at the same time and don't stop until everything stops moving. 5, drop anyone who's armed and looks something resembling alert while the grenades are flying. Everyone else, drop the runners and outliers. Clear?"

A chorus of affirmative responses were sent back to him.

"Wonderful. 2, 8? Whenever you're ready."

He got into a firing position with the rest of his fireteam. It wasn't long before a thump was heard. A barrage of several 40mm grenades went sailing into the assembled group. They detonated, and chaos erupted. The gun of every Xenonaut began spitting out bullets. Another volley of grenades went out, this time spread out evenly among the scattered remaining aliens. By now, some of the aliens had gathered their wits, and began shooting back.

Reinforcements came for the aliens as more of them came running out of the barracks. They began hastily throwing on shield belts and other gear. Shields began to flare around them, and the human bullets became noticeably less effective. The aliens started to rally, advancing and focusing their fire on X-1's fire team, who made a fighting retreat behind the hill. However this advancement caused the aliens to group up again, and another volley of grenades struck, killing and maiming many.

More importantly, it shattered what little cohesion they had managed to obtain, and their return fire became wild and disorganized. Barriers flared and broke as X-5 began picking his targets. Bombarded by rifle shots, withering machine gun fire, and lethally accurate sniper fire, the aliens broke and ran. However, they were quickly rallied by a large figure which had emerged from the main outpost building.

"Rally" may have been the wrong word. "Frightened" was much more accurate. The figure casually murdered two of the routing aliens, and the others seemed to get the message, gathering around the figure. The huge creature began firing some sort of alien shotgun, and the pellets it spewed out forced the overwatch team to take cover.
The creature spotted the assault team and began charging toward them at an alarming speed. The assault team opened fire, and the beast's shields flared a strange color, and seemed to be impenetrable. Undeterred by the gunfire, the beast's body flared purple, and a wave of power sent the assault team flying.

X-1 stumbled to his feet and saw X-7 unloading his shotgun into the oncoming creature, to seemingly no effect besides making its shields shine. The creature's fist flared purple, and then it slammed it into X-7's chest. The man was sent flying back with a sickening crunch. X-4 and X-6 regained their footing and unloaded what was left of their ammunition into the alien. It swiveled and fired its shotgun into the pair, sending them to the ground as the pellets shredded their flesh.

Before it could swivel back around, the alien's shields flared again as X-1 emptied his rifle into it, dropped it, and then pulled out his side arm and emptied that as well. It roared, wheeling around to open fire…only for its shields to buckle as X-5 placed a tight grouping of shots into its back.

The big alien fired wildly from its shotgun, spasming and coughing up blood before it finally collapsed to the ground, orange blood pooling around it. X-1 took a moment to put another magazine into his handgun before talking into his headset.

"7, 6, 4, sound off! Who's still sucking down air?"

Before anyone could reply, the alien lurched to its feet, roaring.

"What the fuck!" X-1 shouted, rapidly emptying his pistol into the alien, who simply ignored the bullets tearing through his flesh, charging madly.

It tackled X-1, and began savagely beating him. X-1, in between brutal alien punches in the face, managed to get his fingers on his knife. His brain was rattled from the punches, but he still had enough presence of mind to stab the huge alien in the throat. The alien gurgled, pawing at its exposed airway. With great effort, X-1 managed to roll the big bastard off of him. With another painful effort, he drove the point of his knife into the alien's eye. He didn't stop pushing until the alien went still.

When it finally did, he rolled back over, collapsing onto his back.

"1? Boss, are you alive?" X-2's voice came out of X-1's headset and managed to navigate its way into his swimming head.

"...Yeah." He managed to croak out.

"Good to hear. 5 and 3 are popping the stragglers. 8 and I are coming down there. I'm calling in the recovery guys."

"Sounds…great." X-1 said, with difficulty. Then he passed out.

—

A flight of helicopters swooped in, and the Xenonaut recovery teams came flooding out. They gathered up everything and everyone. Alien cadavers, the self-sabotaged remains of their weapons, and the dragon's hoard of alien materials and supplies in the outpost's warehouse. Normally, they'd strip the base clean (and probably even take the base itself for the material), but the aliens' orbital domination meant that they were on a time crunch.

The Air Wing had its AWACS birds running an improvised communications jamming OP, but there was no guarantee that it would actually work. And even if it did, all it took was one wayward telescope on any ship in the alien fleet deciding to look at the base for the Xenonauts' cover to be blown.

A pair of recovery techs were rummaging through a room in the outpost's main building.

"This looks like someone's private quarters. Probably whoever was in charge of this shit show." One said.

The other grunted, too focused on his task to give a real answer.

"What have you got there?" The first one asked.

The recovery tech pulled out a big…case? It appeared to be made of some kind of leather or synthetic-leather material. It didn't have some sort of fancy electronic lock or other technology on it, just a simple metal latch that kept it closed. The second tech, his curiosity overriding protocol, flipped the latch and opened the case. He turned to the first tech and grinned.

"Oh, I'll tell you what I've got. The motherfucking jackpot."

He stepped out of the way, revealing what looked to be an alien magnetic accelerator gun sitting in the case, pristine and, if appearances were to be believed, functioning.

The first tech gave a grin of his own. "Dr. Brown is gonna dance a god damned jig when he sees this."

The second laughed. "Hell, if this is the genuine article, I'm gonna dance a jig."

They both chuckled, only to be stopped short by a message in their headsets.

"All recovery teams are ordered to recall immediately, possible retaliation bombardment incoming. Repeat, all recovery teams recall immediately-"

"Well, shit. Grab anything that isn't nailed down and then let's get the hell out of here!" The first tech said. They rushed to do just that.

—

Aboard the Ohio, Captain Franklin Williams did his best to keep a cool head as the orders were read to him. The orders to fire. Every functioning space-observing station in the hemisphere was locked onto the incoming UFO, feeding targeting data to the Ohio. It was now or never. Either this would work, or the war was already lost and everything else was a formality. Frank cleared his throat, and nodded to his XO.

They both readied their keys and prepared to launch.

—

Above the atmosphere, the UFO arrived in low orbit and maneuvered itself into a firing position. Before it could even start, a missile broke every atmospheric speed record, reaching orbit breathtakingly fast. The missile was a complete surprise, which was why it worked perfectly. The distance from surface to orbit was tiny compared to the distances more typically traveled in space. By the time the UFO's automated systems detected the incoming weapon and switched the point defense array on, it was already detonating.

The nuclear explosion fried the relatively small UFO's hull and the force sent it flying off, its wreck taking on a new orbit that would send it careening into the north pole. Power grids on the planet below were fried, light radiation made its way into the atmosphere, and the Xenonauts had spent one of their incredibly scarce missiles. Yet it was still a small price to pay.

Because now humanity could shoot back.

—

XENOPEDIA: MiG-32 "Foxtrot"
The MiG-32 "Foxtrot" is a derivation of the experimental Soviet MiG-31 "Foxhound" interceptor. Originally designed to intercept supersonic NATO bombers, the Foxhound has the immense speed and climb rate we will need to catch fast UFOs and the additional firepower required to deal with heavier alien craft.

Naturally, we will be modifying the Foxhound to make it more effective against extraterrestrial craft (hence the updated "Foxtrot" designation). The airframe can be reinforced with the same laser-resistant coating that has made our Condors better survivability against alien point defenses, whilst the fuel tanks will be enlarged to increase the range of the interceptor. We only have three of prototype models at our disposal right now, and due to the crippling of Soviet (and global) heavy industry by the bombings we're not going to be receiving much in the way of replacements. After the initial three, we'll have to put together any new ones by hand in our workshops. As you can imagine, this process will be neither fast or cheap.

Nevertheless, once successfully converted, the Foxtrot will be a formidable tool in our battle against the aliens. It can carry either six Sidewinder missiles, or two of the heavy air-to-air Avalanche "torpedoes" we've cooked up as a way of damaging the larger alien craft. Unfortunately, the Foxtrot does not possess anything in the way of a gun, and its agility in combat leaves something to be desired. Its only real tactic will be to close with the enemy, expend their munitions, and then retreat from the combat zone. It would be wise to have these planes be escorted by Condors when possible, but given the dramatic difference in both speed and range it is unlikely that they'll be able to accompany them as often as we'd like.

We can begin conversion of the Foxtrot in our workshops immediately. I would avoid spending too long down there, though - I feel like my IQ drops a dozen points every time I visit our resident ogres.

—

XENOPEDIA: HOU-YI Class Experimental Surface-to-Orbit Missile

Just like it's mythical namesake, the Hou-Yi is built to shoot the stars right out of the sky. The Hou-Yi is less a testament to our engineering talent and more a testament to just how potent a force the Mass Effect can be. Even with our comparatively primitive propulsion technology, the ability to increase or decrease an object's mass means that previously impossible speeds can now be achieved with minimal effort.

While humanity's submarine launched nuclear missiles were never intended to actually enter orbit, the massive increase in acceleration that the mass effect means that it only takes a pittance of fuel (relatively speaking) to achieve orbit, so SLBMs suit our purposes well enough. However, a purpose-built surface-to-orbit missile is still of course a desirable near-future goal. With the influx of new resources coming in, who knows what will be soon be possible?

—

XENOPEDIA: Alien Autopsy - "Goblin"

Well Commander, I think we've found our second alien from the Iceland incident. It certainly fits the description. Which is to say, it is a ghastly looking thing. Appropriately, our troops have dubbed it the "Goblin".

At first glance, nothing seems particularly out of the ordinary about Goblins, but when looking at the cellular level it rapidly becomes clear that this is far and away the most truly alien creature to be put under my scalpel. Its countless clusters of non-differentiated cells give it a level of regenerative ability that gives it more in common with a Planarian worm than a terrestrial animal. Indeed, even in death these cells still continue on in fruitless regeneration efforts. Without a live specimen it is difficult to say how far these abilities can go, but I'm reasonably confident in saying it likely surpasses anything on Earth.

Fortunately, despite its abilities, these aliens are as mortal as anyone else, If our troops put a bullet in its brain it will be no less dead than a human.

—

XENOPEDIA: Alien Autopsy - "Rhino"

Of all the nicknames our troops give to our foes, I think this one fits the best. It is an apt comparison, as this alien is effectively a living battle tank (Though admittedly Rhinos don't typically come with telekinetic powers).

This alien is so difficult to kill that I almost suspect genetic engineering is at play. Multiple sets of redundant organs, bones that rival steel in their strength, and to top it all off you have to kill it twice for it to stay dead. Indeed, this alien has a redundant nervous system, as our unfortunate troops discovered. Fortunately, this creature is still perfectly capable of dying, it's just a question of how many Xenonauts it will manage to kill before it goes down. For combat, the best advice I can give is don't. Hit it with a rocket. Or perhaps an airstrike.

Just make sure you do it twice.

—

XENOPEDIA: Alien Weapon (Intact)

It seems Lady Luck has finally woken up from her coma, because we've caught a break, for once. We have recovered a fully-functional example of an alien magnetic accelerator. Why it wasn't sabotaged like all the others, I can only speculate. My best guess is that this was some kind of heirloom or sporting weapon or otherwise "civilian" model. The handmade case and the fact that it is almost completely lacking in all but the bare minimum in terms of electronics is what guides that suspicion.

Whatever the reason, this has been a boon for our research. For starters, we finally have a tool we can use to test armor and other protective measures with something resembling accuracy. Now that we have a working example to experiment with, it's quickly becoming clear that our lab-made test accelerators were woefully inaccurate in terms of providing an accurate ballistic model of our enemy's weapons. No mass accelerator we can currently build can come close to simulating this one.

Which leads me to a more discouraging point: I fear that developing weapons comparable to our enemies is much further away than even our most pessimistic estimates. Everything, from the impossibly-efficient batteries to the precision laser used to make the slug to the mass accelerator itself is many orders of magnitude more advanced than our closest equivalent technology. Having a working example has only made this gap even clearer This weapon is the product of an entire manufacturing base, one which we simply do not possess.

It is not all doom and gloom, fortunately. While I can't build weapons like the ones the aliens use (or at least not yet), I can build new weapons with our existing technology using what we've learned from studying this one and a generous application of the Mass Effect. Already my team is spewing out more ideas than we can fit on the chalkboard. I'm confident that we will have substantially more potent weapons and more protective armor for our troops in the very near future, we just need a bit of imagination

 

[Poached_Egg]

Hey all, there's going to be a minor time skip between the last mainline chapter and the next one. This is essentially simulating "playing the game", as it were. Our protagonists are running the game at x5 speed and waiting for their research to finish. This mini-chapter is the first of several little bites that will fill in the blanks and explain some of the tech we're going to be seeing next chapter. This one primarily focuses on the benefits of alien alloys. There will be more.


XENOPEDIA: Alien Material Manipulation

Lighter than aluminum, stronger than steel, and cheaper than iron. These are all descriptions that can fit just a few of the various alloys and constructs used by our enemies. While there is an incredible amount of variation in terms of properties and ingredients, all of the materials have one thing in common: They exist because of the Mass Effect. Without any examples, we can only speculate as to the manufacturing techniques behind these materials, but we don't have to guess at it's potential usefulness. Unfortunately, we've had no way of utilizing the pile of scrap we've been hoarding since the first UFO was shot down. Melting them down produces nothing but a pile of scientifically curious but practically useless slag, trying to roll or press it with heat treating has just produced charred hunks of brittle space pig iron, and every exotic cold-forging technique we could conjure up just produce very ugly constructs that crumple to pieces under a stiff breeze from the legions of microfissures the processes create.

Like most things relating to our foes, the solution was the Mass Effect. We had, of course, tried manipulating the materials' mass to produce some sort of reaction, but we were just throwing experiments at the wall to see if something would stick. The breakthrough came from, of all things, the functioning alien weapon we recovered. What is the weapon, if not a Mass Effect engine? It may seem strange, but consider our own technology: what is a gun if not a heat engine? What is a steel sword if not a work of chemical engineering? While it hasn't taught us much about the machines our foes would actually use to make their wondermaterials, it has given us a much more concrete baseline of knowledge about what can and cannot be done with the mass effect.

We've devised a method I have dubbed "Element Zero Forging", which my less intellectually gifted colleagues insist on calling "Eezo Forging". It is, essentially, a metal press that uses mass effect fields instead of hydraulics and sheer mass. Unlike conventional metalworking, there is virtually no heat involved in our forge. I can't speak for whether or not heat treating of some form is used in the initial fabrication of these materials, but when working with the scrap we have, we've found that heat is actively detrimental. With this press, we can bend and roll our material into any shape we may like. The various chemical and physical properties these materials exhibit open up more possibilities than we could ever hope to explore in the horrific time crunch we are forever trapped in, but I've put a few of the more achievable ones on your desk

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XENOPEDIA: "KNIGHT" CLASS COMBAT ARMOR

With our new-found ability to shape and reuse alien materials, we suddenly find ourselves on the cusp of the greatest revolution in body armor since the invention of kevlar. There are numerous materials of wildly varying specifications that we can scavenge from our alien foes, which can provide many, many times the protective strength of steel or ceramic at a fraction of the weight. However, as surprising as it may seem, their technology will only take us so far on this front: After all, it's not as if they would have experience designing armor for the human body.

So, ironically enough, our greatest source of ideas has been our own past. As the name of this armor implies, our primary source of inspiration has been the Medieval European knight, arguably the most well-protected warriors of their time. While the materials and manufacturing process are completely different, overall the two combat suits are actually quite similar:

They're both custom-made for the wearer rather than being mass-produced, they both utilize a system of interlocking plates to maximize protection with minimal loss of mobility, and they even share essentially the same weak points: the groin, joints, and upper thighs.

There are obviously differences between the two armors. For starters, one is made of steel, and the other is made of alloys scavenged from an alien starship. There are also differences in design philosophy. The shoulders, neck, throat, and face in our armor are significantly less protected, and conversely the legs are more protected than a knight's might have been. Obviously, our troops are marksmen, not heavy cavalrymen, so they need freedom of movement in their neck and room to shoulder their rifles, and of course they also require their full range of vision to fight effectively. It is also unlikely that they'll need to mount a horse any time soon, so the rear of their legs is more substantially armored than many knight's might have been.

In tests, the armor leaves the wearer nigh-impervious to shrapnel hitting plated areas, and even the joints are still very resistant. When tested with our captured alien mass accelerator, the primary chest plate and helmet can take a direct hit, though a hit to the head will leave the wearer with a very severe concussion, and a hit to the body can still potentially rupture organs in the worst cases. It is still a dramatic improvement, and is just the first step in this new generation of protective combat equipment.

Obviously, this armor is not intended for mass production, as it is custom-built to the specifications of each Xenonauts body, requires materials we currently cannot manufacture ourselves, and is incredibly expensive in terms of money and man-hours. However, given that our troops are always outnumbered, outgunned, and up against technology millenia ahead of our own, I'd argue that any measures that keep them alive and in the fight for longer are worth every penny.

 

[Poached_Egg]

Hey all, this one is focusing on aircraft. Last one for tonight.


XENOPEDIA: Icarus Upgrade Package

The idea of using the Mass Effect to enhance our aircraft has been on the chalkboard almost since we first discovered Element Zero. At first glance it might seem almost idiotically simple: lower the aircrafts mass, and its acceleration will produce more thrust. The hard part isn't getting the aircraft to go faster, it's getting it to go faster without exploding, having its wings fly off, or turning the pilot into paste. Any aircraft we built to go that fast would have to be designed from the ground up for it, which would take far more time than we currently have. With our newfound ability to manipulate alien materials, we have found a way around this problem.

The Icarus Upgrade Package (the name is a contribution from our pilots, as they're still fully convinced it will blow their planes out from under them, the ungrateful sods). is a set of modifications that can be applied to an existing human aircraft to give it a performance far in excess of even the most optimistic of pre-invasion speculative aviation designs. The actual modifications are almost comically simple: the crafts airframe as given structural reinforcement from alien materials, and then a human-designed mass effect field generator provides a mass-decreasing field at a fixed setting. The fixed setting is necessary because our planes simply weren't designed to go from being two tons to two hundred kilograms and then back again at supersonic speeds the way alien craft seem to be able to.

The main advantages the upgrade provides are strategic rather than tactical: Like I've said before, we have rather a lot of planet to cover, and now our planes can go further and get their faster when attempting to intercept UFOs. In more practical terms, the craft is still very much an airplane, and still has to fly and maneuver like one, meaning the combat advantages are not quite as enormous as one might hope.

Or, to put it more poetically: Make sure our pilots don't fly too close to the sun.

With this technology, we now have several upgraded models of our existing aircraft (indicated by the "-I" suffix). In addition, I have a proposal for a new dedicated attack helicopter design. I have placed all of these files on your desk for review.

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XENOPEDIA: CH-48-I "CHARLIE"

While not quite as glamorous as our other upgrades, I'd argue that the improvements to our primary transport helicopter are the most important by far. No longer will our troops and pilots have to spend hours waiting while our pilots beg the local authorities for a refueling bird, and no longer will our troops be expected to win a battle against a ship full of aliens with only eight men.

The upgrade is substantial, to say the least. In terms of fuel range, the question is no longer "which country?" but rather "which hemisphere?" In terms of capacity, we have effectively restored our helicopter to the standard Chinook's carrying capacity of 30 men, give or take. A full platoon against the aliens, instead of one understrength squad. I don't have to tell you how substantial of a difference that will make.

The most unforeseen but welcome change is the restoration of the helicopter's ability to mount crew served weapons, a feature that was removed in the initial modification, to avoid unnecessary weight effecting our extremely tight fuel budget. With fuel barely being an issue anymore, our transport craft could potentially loiter on the ground or in low altitude on standby for close air support. Combine this with the vastly improved survivability that the alien material reinforcement gives, and we having the makings for a serious heavy assault transport.

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XENOPEDIA: F-17-I "CONDOR" INTERCEPTOR

In terms of raw combat power, the F-17 has probably benefited the most from Icarus. The radical shift in fuel economy means that it has gone from carrying a single pair of sidewinder missiles to being able to carry the fully weapons loadout of a base-model F-16, plus any extra toys we might cook up in the future. Strategically, the impact of this is huge. We can now take full advantage of the multirole design of the stock F-16, rather than being limited to the interceptor role. Anything from light bombing runs to close air support to air superiority is now in the cards.

With a top speed well in excess of an unmodified Foxtrot, a vastly superior munitions loadout, and a roughly equal flight range, the Condor has comfortably supplanted the MiG-32 as our primary high-speed interceptor plane.

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XENOPEDIA: MiG-32-I "FOXTROT" GLOBAL DEFENSE PLANE

Of all of our aircraft, the Foxtrot has seen the most dramatic change from Icarus. What was once the fastest interceptor on the planet has now become the fastest airplane ever built by humans. Its already very generous range has been increased to the point where it effectively doesn't have one, it's only limitation is time to target.

It is uniquely qualified to engage foes attacking from orbit, being able to rapidly deploy anywhere in the globe in less than ten hours, engage a target, and then return. No longer are we merely reacting in the air, with planes this fast we actively pursue and hunt down UFOs. No other airplane designed by humans has ever fit this job description. To this end, we've decided that this is no longer an interceptor, it is an entirely new form of war plane, which we have christened as the "Global Defense Plane".

While its impact is substantial, its performance comes at a cost: there are no improvements to its armament. While it can reach any target on the planet in a matter of hours, it still relies on the same tactics it did before: launch its missiles, and either get a kill or beat a hasty retreat. Fortunately, given its vastly increased speed, retreat will be decidedly more hasty.

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XENOPEDIA: AH-2 "WYRM" ATTACK HELICOPTER

While utilizing humanity's vast (before the majority of it got K-bombed into slag) arsenal of military aircraft against our foes might seem like a tempting prospect, the reality was that our planes were built to fight other humans, not aliens. While bombers had some limited utility in the form of neutralizing crash sites we lacked the time or resources to secure, most other conventional aircraft fell short in the face of our enemy. This was more true for attack helicopters than any other form of aircraft. When every enemy has a small arm that hits like a heavy machine gun, helicopters don't seem quite as invincible. And that's leaving aside the fact that their range and speed are so low they couldn't hope to even get to the battlefield in time to be shot down.

With the mass effect and alien materials in our toolbelt, things have changed.

The AH-2 "Wyrm" Attack Helicopter is a Xenonauts upgrade of the Bell AH-1 SuperCobra. With a mass effect field generator, the Wyrm is more than capable of escorting one of our Charlies to battle, and with it's heavy armor of alien materials, it is also capable of living long enough to be useful once it gets there. It's more heavily armored than any of our aircraft, which decreases its range substantially. It may be advisable to spread them strategically around our bases, so that they can rapidly provide air support to a ground operation. Of course, given how politically expensive I know it must be to get our hands on the precious few military aircraft that survived the bombing, that may just not be possible.

Regardless of how many we can manage to get our hands on, even a single Wyrm can change the tide of an entire battle.

 

[Poached_Egg]

Oh yeah, it's gun time baby.

XENOPEDIA: MAF GUNS

As the enemy begins to dig its heels deeper into our soil, it has become increasingly clear that our conventional firearms simply won't cut it anymore. Many of our more recently encountered foes are so well shielded that our troops can empty entire magazines into them before they buckle. We're still quite far away from getting man-portable mass accelerators of our own, but there's no law that says we cannot apply the same principles our enemy uses to enhance magnetic accelerator guns to the chemical propulsion guns we are more familiar with.

The Mass-Assisted Firearm, or MAF, is effectively a crude imitation of our enemy's weapons using our own technology. Like an alien gun, a MAF uses the mass effect to decrease the mass of its projectile, which consequently gives it dramatically increased kinetic energy and muzzle velocity. The man difference is that rather than using a tiny piece of metal shaved off with a precision laser, a MAF just uses a conventional bullet.

The weapons themselves are custom-built, but the ammunition remains the same. While we could theoretically get better performance from a purpose-built cartridge, we've elected to design our weapons around already-existing bullets instead. Using existing calibers means we get to take advantage of humanity's enormous existing ammunition stockpiles, and the benefit of a custom-built bullet just wasn't worth the huge addition in required man-hours it brought to the project.

Ironically enough, the biggest difficulty in this project didn't come from the guns themselves. With what we've learned from studying our captured alien gun, applying its design principles to our own technology was fairly straightforward. No, the hard part was getting a battery that could power the accursed thing. While a mass effect field generator uses a surprisingly small amount of power considering its reality-shattering effects, it still consumes far more power than most of our conveniently-sized batteries could hope to provide.

So, we've had to use inconveniently-sized batteries instead. Every MAF is powered by what is essentially an incredibly advanced car battery, which we have built into a much more ergonomic shape that can be made into a backpack. Each of these power packs contains the same amount of charge, but the MAFs consume it at different rates depending on the model. Fortunately, even the most power-hungry of models can still get almost a full day's worth of charge out of a single power pack, though that can change with exceptionally heavy use.

Fortunately, we can get away with a lot more in terms of energy-economy and ergonomics when equipping Xenonauts compared to regular infantrymen. An infantryman can deploy to combat for weeks or months at a time, but a xenonaut mission rarely lasts more than a day at the most, and our troops aren't expected to lug around their equipment on extended patrols either, so the added weight is more of an inconvenience than a major ergonomic problem. The unfortunate reality is that, unless they want to go back to the proverbial pea shooters they've been stuck with, our Xenonauts will simply have to bear the burden.

And it is a burden that is very much worth bearing. The increased effectiveness against shields and to a lesser extent armor is desperately needed in the field. I've left files for all of the models we've designed on your desk, the information inside should help us in deciding how best to equip our troops with these weapons.

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XENOPEDIA: MAF ASSAULT CARBINE

Of all of our MAF weapons, this is likely the most tame and straightforward. The assault carbine fires 9mm ammunition, but with kinetic energy comparable to a 5.56 round with a particularly potent powder load. As this implies, the assault carbine is intended to replace the M16 as our primary service rifle. The primary advantage that it has over the M16 is ammunition capacity. A 9mm round is obviously significantly smaller than a 5.56 round, so our troops can carry dramatically more ammunition on them without any reduction in power. It loads with a one hundred and twenty round drum magazine. So, while it doesn't actually hit that much harder than its predecessor, it can put four times as many rounds down range before having to reload. So, more kinetic energy is applied to an enemy barrier through increased volume rather than increased power.

As a side note: when we first put this one on the drawing board, I don't think anyone on my team would have expected designing the magazine to be the most difficult part of this project, but that's exactly what happened. As it turns out, designing a high-capacity magazine that can actually manage to get through it's entire ammunition load without jamming is incredibly difficult. I must say, I have a newfound respect for gunsmiths after this project. I suspect I have lost some hair. Our magazine design ended up being an over-engineered and convoluted abomination that would have been thrown out by any military armaments procurement board worth their inflated paychecks for being ludicrously expensive. Fortunately, we're equipping a clandestine organization, not an army, so the cost is less ruinous for us.

Hopefully someday we'll be able to discard magazines entirely from our weapon designs, the way our enemies have.

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XENOPEDIA: MAF HIGH CALIBER LIGHT MACHINE GUN

Before the mass effect, the idea of someone lugging around an automatic weapon loaded with .50 BMG ammunition and shooting it as if it were a light machine gun would have been almost comical, but that is exactly what this weapon is. Unlike most of our other MAF designs, the primary usage of the mass effect here is not in enhancing the power of the cartridge (.50 BMG is no slouch, after all), but rather in making the weapon useable by a normal human. The main things preventing a normal human from doing this are the substantial weight of the weapon and the punishing recoil it would deliver into the user's shoulder. So, in this model the mass effect is used primarily as a weight-reduction tool and to compensate for the recoil.

The weapon itself is effectively just a copycat of the M2 Browning heavy machine gun with its ergonomics heavily modified to allow one person to carry it comfortably. Its main disadvantages are that it is something of a powerhog compared to the other designs. The mass effect field generator has to be constantly charged at all times to power the weight compensation effect, rather than only needing to be turned on when the weapon is fired. While most of the field generator's output is focused on the the weight and recoil compensation, it does still enhance the power of the round, albeit to a lesser degree than other designs. The enhancement is still noticeable. It's effectively converted from a reasonably effective anti-material round to a very light cannon round. This extra power helps to compensate for the fact that the heavier ammunition load means that the gunner carries fewer overall rounds.


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XENOPEDIA: MAF SELF-LOADING SHOTGUN

The self-loading shotgun is a select fire weapon that fires 20 gauge shells from a twenty round box magazine. The two settings differ in more than just rate of fire. On semi-automatic, the muzzle velocity is enhanced to the point where it hits with kinetic energy comparable to a 10 gauge shell. On automatic, the muzzle velocity enhancement is dropped and recoil compensation is powered up instead.

The shotgun proved to have surprising utility against the aliens. No other weapon in our arsenal was as effective at quickly bringing down shields as several blasts from a shotgun in quick succession. The main drawback it had was the very same one it had on human battlefields before the invasion: it's heavily nullified by body armor. This was already a significant problem against human armor, so as you can imagine it proved to be even worse against the aliens.

This design counters that problem somewhat. While it's no more effective at piercing armor, it hits substantially harder. Even if the armor remains in tact, the sheer concussive force can kill the enemy, especially at the close ranges our shotgun wielding troops typically fight at. With the select-fire, our shotgunners can quickly bring down an enemy's shields with a spray on the automatic setting, and then beat them to death through their armor on the semiautomatic setting. It takes only a very easy flip of a switch to change settings, to facilitate rapid changes in fire.

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XENOPEDIA: MAF PRECISION CANNON

Mechanically speaking, this is the most simple MAF design. It is effectively just a bolt action rifle with a two round internal magazine and a modern optic mounting rail. The main thing that sticks out is that it is loaded with 30mm cannon shells, not rifle rounds. As you can probably imagine, this is intended as a replacement for our sniper rifle. The main frustration our snipers have had is that even when they make a perfect shot, it will still just bounce off of the kinetic barrier half the time. This alleviates that problem. All but the most heavily shielded of personnel will be very dead if they find themselves on the wrong end of this, and even the heavily shielded ones will likely get knocked to the ground. Well placed shots will also very likely disable any vehicles our troops may encounter. Compared to its predecessor, the decreased magazine size might seem like a disadvantage, but for our marksmen it's likely a non-issue. If it takes more than two shots from this gun to kill, we would probably be better served shooting at it with a rocket launcher. Or a tank.

As you can imagine, the recoil compensation required for our snipers to not dislocate their shoulders when they fire is substantial. Even at the maximum possible setting for our field generators, it still kicks like a mule. This weapon is not for the faint of heart or soft of shoulder.