Turn 3 - March, 2016
Kara Valmeyjar
SB tourist
- Location
- Fólkvangr
- Pronouns
- They/She
Turn 3
March, 2016
March, 2016
Research
-Project: Aegis
A new spark of progress is made towards the end of the month. After months of spotballing and fiddling around the project lead is happy to report that new developments have reopened the "unobtainium-lite" option. Called tritanium, it is a composite alloy of carbon, uranium, and several rare earth minerals that is generally inferior to pure unobtainium in most respects (ranging from material strength to weight and bulk) save that it can easily be mass produced on Earth without having to rely on alien technology or invent/set up entirely new infrastructure. Until you discover an actual Ethereal Unobtainium fabricator this is the best you can realistically expect of this project.
-Project: Ichor
Project Ichor has less substantial progress to report, unfortunately. There's been some refinement of the elerium colony growth acceleration and increase to the number of colonies that can be sustained in an individual farm, but nothing substantial enough to start building up an elerium stockpile or break even the costs of maintaining an active Firestorm fleet.
-Project: Artemis
Doctor Vahlen and the creme of her research team pour practically every second of March into this project. As a result the project has finished ahead of schedule. The Pioneer-class Corvette is Earth's first true foray into space capital ship technology and is considered fairly decent all things considered.
The Pioneer requires a crew of twenty-four and has a passenger capacity of twelve in addition to being able to carry light cargo. The main body of the craft consists of a flat oval sphere thirty meters across that with a thin saucer surrounding the ship that serves as "Wave Rider" Gravitic Sublight Drive. In the terms of raw fighting capability it is decidedly inferior to the Firestorm, but makes up for that with better armor and complete 360 by 360 weapon coverage by 16 light laser cannons (the only weapon you possess that doesn't require elerium in its construction is power unintensive enough to be mounted en-mass) set in a circular pattern around the central module on gimbal mounts. This makes the Pioneer much more suited as a support vessel in combat instead of a straight dog fighter.
The material price tag that comes with the Pioneer is rather steep. The amount of materials needed to construct just one patrol cutter equals one entire firestorm squadron, with fuel requirements roughly the same. Still, this is a major leap in both the exploration of space and the defense of Earth.
-Fusion Reactor (Project: Helios)
Once the project is handed over to the Advanced Science Ministry the pieces start falling into place. The plans for a prototype Elerium-Fusion Reactor has been drawn up and is ready for real-world testing.
Military
-Reinforce FOBs under duress and threat of bandits.
Additional forces are dispatched and your analysts are starting to get flashbacks from the many wars of the 2010s and post-WW2 20th Century. Despite the additional troops and materials being sent it doesn't seem to be doing much to stop the bandits, who it seems are acting less like thieves and brigands and more like resistance fighters. Sniper & IED attacks on patrols and occasionally the bases themselves keep the Alliance forces on the backfoot, and supply convoys are constantly harassed by RPG & MANPAD attacks on the long road from the Alliance to the bases.
The worst and most disturbing development comes towards the end of the month. It starts with the loss of contact the FOB set up in the ruins of Ramstein AFB. Shortly after Raven interceptors and Skyrangers are launched from Helms Deep and arrive to find the forward operating base has been razed to the ground and most of the inhabitants, both civilian and military, slaughtered, and the rest missing. Interrogation of the few survivors reveals the FOB was bombed by what were presumably stealth aircraft (as there was no air raid alarms or any indication they were under attack till things started exploding) then invaded by a small fleet of VTOL jets that bore a striking resemblance to XCOM's skyrangers except with elongated bodies for increased troop/cargo carrying capabilities.
As soon as the unknown planes set down they disgorged dozens of soldiers and ground drones that looked like oversized gen-1 SHIVs. These troops overran the base in short order and executed everyone they found, occasionally taking Alliance personnel into custody as well as a few of the civilians, and made off with several crates marked with radiological hazards on the sides. Investigation of the base reveals that the retrieved nuclear weapons waiting for transportation back to the Alliance, as well as most of the remaining computer equipment and the armory's stock of weapons and ammunition.
Commander Fitzgerald himself briefs you on what his organization knows of the attackers. According to the him, the enemy was using modernized versions of XCOM's old Gen-1 Skyrangers and Rocket HWP drones. The rest of the enemy equipment was not present in XCOM's archives. Even the old-timers like Dr. Shen are sure that XCOM never developed exo-skeletal enhancement rigs and infantry-grade railguns. Or figured out how to make skyrangers invisible to radar.
-Continue WMD retrieval missions. Attempt to trade with those entrenched at sites if outright recovery is not feasible. Food, water, and clothing for information, safe passage, and anything thing else they are willing to part with.
critical success - Your carrot approach seems to have been the right choice, as many of the residents are willing to let you have access to the sites and the nukes for supplies or even safe passage to the Alliance. The latter seems most popular among the transients due to their abysmal situation, though many still seem to prefer independence. Useful information is sparse, though more than a few in both North America and Western Europe report spotting unknown military aircraft operating in their areas, several of which match the profiles of the unknowns that attacked Ramstein.
An interesting development in this endeavor comes during the negotiations with the many nuclear submarines that remain of the US navy. After months of talking the submarine captains have decided to join the Earth Alliance, though not directly due to the perceived large power bases of the Russians and the Chinese. Instead they join the remaining Commonwealth nations present in the Alliance. A small number decided to "stay with General O'Malley" or with the other successor governments.
General O'Malley, according to one of the sub captains, is currently the acting political and military leader of what's left of the legitimate american government, and also currently in control the vast majority of the US's remaining nuclear arsenal. While your diplomats were trying to get them to join the Earth Alliance, O'Malley's people were trying to do the same. As were at least three other groups claiming to be the legitimate successor to the US. This particular sub captain drops you a line to contact O'Malley's men, and wishes you the best of luck.
-Continue alien interrogations and root out the alien Remnants wherever they're hiding.
Further interrogations reveals no information of where the remaining Ethereal forces. Not unexpected, really, considering they've spent the last month in an XCOM holding cell after being shot down.
Diplomacy
-Attempt to establish relations with Switzerland and Israel. Primary objective is to gain information and safe passage. Secondary objective is to ask them to consider joining the Earth Alliance.
Both nations seem reciprocate your overtures for the most part. They're willing to reopen lines of trade and communication, and are also willing to help deal with the refugee crisis in Europe. However they are unwilling to outright join the Alliance, seeing as the precursor organization (the Council of Funding Nations) and XCOM were perfectly willing to ignore both nations' calls for aid during the height of the Ethereal War. Switzerland in particular is requesting joint-control of the XCOM base in the Alps as well as access to the technologies developed by XCOM during the war, reasoning that Helms Deep is a foreign military base inside their borders with access to extremely powerful non-nuclear weapons that could devastate the Swiss Armed Forces before they could even realize they're under attack.
Civilian
-Continue Reconstruction efforts in EA nations. Wherever possible, divert some prefabricated structures to the refuge camps for the displaced at the borders and around the better defended FOBs. Look into providing basic equipment to allow refuges to grow food, build supplies, or provide services. This is to reduce the strain on EA resources and because idle hands make mischief.
The Alliance's contribution to the reconstruction efforts continue to boost the project well ahead of schedule. New projections for project completion is set for late October of this year.
Intel
- Identify the unknown Op For that has been acquiring WMDs as well as major bandit groups to target for destruction.
The nascent Earth Alliance Office of Secret Actions gets to work digging up whose been doing your job for you, and hit pay dirt when they pick up a former GRU agent who claims to be a former member of an Exalt cell stationed in the Russian Federation to monitor the government's dealings with XCOM and the Council of Funding Nations, and claims to have knowledge of the group that attacked Ramstein AFB and has been stealing nukes before you could get to them. After being granted asylum and protecting, he spills everything he knows.
The former spy says that the Ramstein base attack was perpetrated by Shadow Company: an Exalt black-site tasked with providing Exalt cells with their equipment and digging up information about extraterrestrial activity on Earth dating back to "the Outsider War of the 1950s" and events even before that. With the loss of Exalt HQ and the destruction of the Ethereal Temple Ship, Shadow Company was the last remaining major control nucleus of the organization and has set its sites on world domination via more "conventional" methods.
Unfortunately that's all the spy knows, as he claims that information on Shadow Company is heavily compartmentalized and he was only middle management for a now defunct cell. He has no idea where the Company got access to XCOM's hand-me-downs or why they decided to attack the Alliance in such a brazenly open manner for an organization formerly focused on infiltration and subversion.
Items of Note For the Month
The destruction of the Ramstein FOB has sent shockwaves throughout the Alliance. In addition to questioning of the how and why this attack happened and the Alliance government's inability to prevent it, a powerful coalition of politicians from the UK, Canada, China, and Brazil are calling on you to release all alien-derived technologies to the member state governments, claiming they entitled to the technology considering funding for XCOM and the Alliance comes from the treasuries of the member states, and so that they can properly defend themselves from this new human group as well as other potential alien threats waiting out in the void.
This movement is rapidly gaining strength in the other member governments, and arguments in the Alliance Parliament are clearly mixed on whether they should give up such a powerful advantage to nations that might very well decide to leave the Alliance and use said technology against it and its interests.
Sorry this took so long.
