[X] We've received a message from the Council, offering a reward for looking into strange energy signatures coming in from a trainyard in Mumbai. I think it's a bomb.
Day Five, 11:02, Egypt - Four days after the first Terror Attack.
For all my complaining that I'd been woken up at odd hours, three days was more than enough time to rest up and prepare for the inevitable message passed down the line: your presence is requested in the Situation Room.
They'd caught me in the middle of a test of my Luck abilities. From the initial findings, the Science Team had quantified that, statistically, things tend go my way an average of 25% more than is expected, with several instances of events occurring several deviations away from the norm. As I was promised before I'd arrived, I was lucky. Simple as that.
"For our next test," Dr. Vahlen was saying, "I would like you to see if you can draw a Royal Flush from this newly shuffled deck of cards. Such an event has a statistical likelihood of occuring only zero point zero zero zero one five four percent of the time, or one in 649,739 times. If you can focus your powers at all-"
A soldier rushing into the room, throwing the doors open, cut her off. "Hey, Bossman needs to see you in Mission Control!" the man called out, and I rushed back to my cot to put on my suit.
The back wall opposite the Autopsy chamber had originally been set aside for storage cabinets and experiments needing floor space. It had been repurposed into a simple sleeping quarters with walls made of a heavy hanging curtain. It wasn't quite enough to dampen the sounds of the Lab, but unless they were actively cutting open an alien with a buzz saw, I'd slept through worse. I didn't have much in the way of homey stuff to fill the space with, so just asked for a couple nice pictures of mountains, forests, just reminders of the Earth so I wouldn't always itch to be outside.
What little space I had that wasn't taken up by silent monitoring equipment held my weapons and armor under lock and key, under the excuse that the science team would be taking them all apart sooner or later, probably in collaboration with the Engineering team's best and brightest. That is to say, just Dr. Shen; everybody else was busy expanding the base at the moment.
I had my armored formal wear on in no time, and the exo-suit on over it just as quickly. The laser pistol I moved to my hip, and the Psi-amp was clipped to my chest. In under a minute, I was ready for war.
I took the hallways at a light run, sprinting down the longer straightaways whenever I wasn't competing with other
soldiers or workers for space. My body could handle it for hours, so the distance from the labs to the Situation Room was nothing.
The Situation Room was hidden behind the Commander's Command Center in Mission Control. The stone wall behind his six-screen chair had a locked door that would only open to the Commander's handprint, and through it was a panic room with a second control booth for the man himself to run things within and outside of the base, in the event that we were overrun. Dr. Shen had apparently put it together himself, and it ran parallel-but-separate from the rest of the systems on the base. Under the most dire of circumstances, it could be vacuum sealed during emergencies or fires.
It was also hardwired into a secondary system that I wasn't privy to the details of, and through that system, the secretive Council of Nations funding XCOM could deliver messages to the Commander directly. Along with a large number of other parallels, the Council had a spokesman with a deep voice, who spoke for all of them once they'd reached a consensus or needed a message passed on quickly.
Bradford was standing in the shadowed doorway once I arrived, and he quickly waved me in.
"...sure you will not take this request lightly, whatever you decide. Good luck, Commander."
The smaller room, a miniature mirror of Mission Control's layout, had one wall converted into a screen. The shadowed Council Spokesman's face disappeared, leaving behind initial reports concerning whatever it was the Commander had asked to deal with. There was only one prime seat in the theatre-like set up, and Williams was in it.
He eyed me as I came in, Bradford following after.
"Good to see you up and about, Agent," the Commander rumbled, eyes scanning the files as they flashed on screen, "but you've come to the wrong place. We're taking this mission. Get to the barracks and grab a gun. I'll try to get you more depleted Uranium rounds, just use whatever weapons we have in stock until we can get the materials to make them ourselves."
I tried to read through the mission report, but it was moving faster than I could keep up with and still properly parse for information.
"Go, Agent," the Commander ordered, and I turned and got moving.
I should have known the procedure for an alert like this. If I hadn't spent so much time in the labs, maybe I would have. Another thing to focus on in my spare time.
I followed the signs to the barracks, then swore and turned back toward the armory I'd passed. Inside, seven other soldiers were preparing themselves to fight, Ceathya among them. She was sitting off to the side, going over her weapons, and I almost did a double take seeing her equipment.
She was fiddling with a machine gun's ammo belt, clearly her primary weapon. A pistol I suspected was fully automatic was on her left hip, with a few high capacity magazines within easy reach, while a Colt .45 was on her right. She had a sawn-off double barrel shotgun strapped to the small of her back, and another assault rifle hung over her shoulder. Several grenades were strapped to her heavy XCOM vest, alongside tons of magazines for all her guns.
I only paused for a moment, seeing her fully kitted out, but it was long enough to blurt out, "you're carrying all that into battle?"
Her eyes flashed, and she gave me a nasty grin. "This is coming from you? Didn't you fight in Australia with a heavy machine gun in one hand and a high caliber sniper rifle in the other?"
I considered hooking a few fragmentation grenades to the front of my exo-suit. "This armor doubles or triples my strength. I can pretty much flip a car end over end while wearing it. The extra weight wouldn't slow me down."
I could practically hear the sneer in her voice. "This won't slow me down either, Science Project."
"That's enough," Central Officer Bradford's voice cut across the room, and everyone jumped to attention. "Keep gearing up," he ordered, and the room jumped to comply. He looked between me and Ceathya. "Whatever is going on between you two, it stops the moment you get on the Skyranger," his voice brooked no room for argument. "Is that clear?"
"Crystal," I replied. "I'm good."
He noted my choice of weapons. "Good. Get to the hanger. You'll be briefed en-route."
Everyone else, having been here sooner, had finished before me. We got moving and I took a mental tally of my gear:
(You may select any number of weapons that you believe Jon can reasonably carry and put to use. He is already wearing his Psi-amp, laser pistol, and exo-suit. The exo-suit has a micro rocket launcher on the left arm, and a grapnel hook on the right.)
[ ] A heavy machine gun, with three backup box magazines.
[ ] An assault rifle, with eight backup magazines.
[ ] A sniper rifle, with five large backup magazines.
[ ] A shotgun, with dozens of spare shells.
[ ] A sawn-off shotgun, with a handful of extra rounds.
[ ] Several fragmentation grenades. (How many?)
[ ] Several flash-bang grenades. (How many?)
[ ] A basic trauma kit.
[ ] A heavy length of chain with padlocks, apparently rated to slow down stunned Mutons.
[ ] Write In (Make/Model, any extra ammo Smith should have for any above weapons or equipment, etc. Anything reasonable a soldier might want.)
Day Five, 15:31, India - Four days after the first Terror Attack.
Operation Glass Hymn
I leaned back in my seat in the Skyranger, just behind the pilot. Fan Zhou was apparently standing in for Big Sky, and her callsign was Mujina. I didn't know the story behind it at the time, only that quietly whispering it to myself made it sound vaguely like "racoon dog." In front of me, Ceathya was going over her own equipment, her helmet on the ground held in place by a foot. Everyone else, myself included, had our own headgear already on.
To our immediate right were the two Australian special forces soldiers who had breached the UFO and come to XCOM with me and the Commander. I noted their gear:
(You may Write In these soldiers' sorties instead, or pick 2 from the list below. You may double up on any sortie. All options include 1-2 fragmentation grenades and a pistol, unless otherwise noted.)
[ ] The soldier had a shotgun, large caliber pistol, and a shield just like the one I'd seen a chryssalid tear almost in half. The shield looked thicker than I might have expected.
[ ] The soldier had an automatic shotgun and several circular magazines. There had to be something more to it, because other than their pistol, that was all they seemed to be carrying.
[ ] The soldier had a sniper rifle and machine pistol, with plenty of ammo besides. The scope looked like it was rated for short to medium distances.
[ ] The soldier had a rocket launcher strapped to their back with several rockets along with their grenades. They had an assault rifle, too, but this soldier was clearly geared for bringing down walls.
[ ] The soldier had a red cross on their arm, and medical supplies took up more space than their munitions. I wasn't sure if they'd been a doctor or what, but I suspected we could count on them to keep any injured soldiers from bleeding out.
[ ] The soldier had a heavy armored suit on, with fragmentation grenades, flash-bangs, and a couple grenades I didn't recognize strapped to it. Their rifle was standard. They had other pockets with more gear I couldn't see.
All the other soldiers on the Skyranger were using the basic XCOM sortie, what I recalled being "rookie" gear in the games: Assault rifles, a pistol sidearm, a couple grenades, and not much else. I hoped they'd be able to put them to good use.
As far as I could tell, half of the team hadn't fought the aliens before. I had to believe that they were ready for what was coming, whether it was true or not.
Something static sounded in my ear, and Central's voice came through my helmet's speakers a moment later.
"Strike Team Alpha," he began, "We're going to be dropping you into a trainyard in Mumbai, India for this operation, codename Glass Hymn. According to Dr. Shen, there is a strange pulsing energy signature there that is slowly increasing in intensity. We want to know what it is, and what the aliens plan to do with it. Your orders are to stay together, evacuate any remaining civilians in the AO, and if possible, shut down and recover whatever device the invaders have left behind. As we only have the one Skyranger at this time, don't expect any reinforcements from XCOM during this mission. The Council has let us know that they can send the military in after us, so if things start to go south, don't hesitate to pull back to a more secure position while we regroup.
"Any questions?"
...I didn't want to ask. I really, really didn't.
"...when you say strange, pulsing energy signatures…" I asked slowly, "what're the chances that any civilians who fled the area might have seen the aliens fiddling with a glowing green device as large as a man and pulsing with light periodically?"
"Speak plainly, Strike Two," he responded over the team's coms while the rest of the crew's eyes focused on me. "Whether you're right or not, any intel you might have can help us decide how to better approach this situation."
I swallowed. "I think it's a bomb. I've never seen one blown up, so I can't tell you what the effective range might be."
There was a pregnant pause as the team considered what I'd said.
"...If that's the case, then we need to find it as quickly as possible," Bradford finally said. "The mission stands. Dr. Shen will monitor the readings as closely as he can using the satellite networks we've been patched into and any other equipment we can beg, borrow or steal. In the event that we believe that the bomb has been armed, and you still haven't found it, be ready to evac as quickly as possible."
An image flickered in my HUD, and a minor feeling of dread started crawling into my gut. I gripped my gun a little tighter.
"This is a picture taken last night of the area the energy signature is coming from," Central informed us.
"Mother of God," a voice breathed out in my ear, and a volume symbol appeared in my hud next to the name 'Strike 7.'
Yeah. That seemed about right.
