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"If an injury is to be done to a man, let it be so severe that his vengeance need not be feared."
~Niccolo Machiavelli
Chapter One: Shrouds
"Twenty seconds."
"Stand by." Irina pulled out her bolt cutters, and James covered her from behind, scanning the edge of the woods vigilantly. The third member of the team, a hulking fellow who went only by Obsidian for no real reason anyone could determine, hefted a machinegun and did his best to keep watch as well.
"Ten seconds." Jane Kelly checked her watch. "Power's almost back."
"Stand by," Irina snapped again, before she brought the cutters down with all her strength. Alien alloys were tough, but thin linkage was thin linkage, no matter what the links were made of. And humanity had no skill quite like its ability to break things.
"Five seconds," Jane observed, checking her cap worriedly. She glanced to the fence, wincing as she waited for-
"Done." Irina hauled their access point open, throwing the disconnected remnants aside. Obsidian grunted as the red lights on the fence towers came back to life.
"We're in." Jane ducked through the gap first, rifle up, waiting as James, Obsidian and Irina followed her.
"Right." James breathed out. "You know why we're here. Obsidian's with me, over on the left. Girls, go right. At least one of the two teams should reach the package."
"Got it." Jane advanced, heart pounding as she prayed - prayed - that Advent hadn't noticed the breach.
And no alarms sounded...so maybe, just maybe...
Haze.
It flickered in and out, annoying him to no end. Everything was underwater and ethereal, as if life was nothing but a wild, incandescent dream: the type where he was just lucid enough to suspect what was going on, but not aware enough to break out. The world felt heavy.
"Commander?"
"John?" Commander Edward Gallant turned, and his ever-loyal bulldog of an XO paused for a minute to touch his shoulder.
"Are you-"
"I'm fine, John." Gallant turned said shoulder, trying not to lean on the rail too obviously. He also tried not to clutch his chest, but that was a losing battle at the best of times.
"He needs to sit and take his medicine." Penny Ferguson crossed her arms, giving her fractious charge a stern glare. "Killing yourself won't win this war, Commander."
"I'm here until the finish. The only one who doesn't think I can do this is you." Gallant turned his back on her, which was probably impolite but he didn't really care. He didn't need a nurse, heart condition or no. "What's the fire, Central?"
"Sir." John Bradford might have given Penny a knowing glance, but he wasn't going to jump into this fray, not now. "A perimeter alert just went off at the compound in Ireland."
"Oh. So the X-rays are taking the bait?" Gallant chuckled. "Where's Marazuki?"
"Colonel Ye has him. They're making for Big Sky right now."
"Excellent." Gallant eyed the holomap, and the four red icons that showed the approaching aliens, moving in pairs. "How dangerous?"
"Looks like a few sectoids, sir. Maybe a thin man."
Gallant bared his teeth. "Get me the team."
"Door," Jane pointed out. Irina rolled her eyes.
"Well, I can see that." She took up position beside it, then waved. "Come on, tough gal."
Wham! There was nothing Jane quite enjoyed more than kicking doors off their damn hinges. It made her feel powerful, even if only for fleeting instants.
"Donut!" screamed the Advent soldier inside. Well, it probably wasn't literally "donut", but that was all Jane understood.
"Shut up." And she enforced that decree with a burst of lead. Yellow blood sprayed, and down went the soldier on his face.
"Why's it yellow?" Irina wondered. Jane shrugged.
"Maybe he was about to take a leak."
"Your sick sense of humor..." Irina's accent thickened as she hurried to the cases the soldier had been examining. "Look. Lots of explosives here."
"Take all you can carry," Jane ordered. "I'll cover you on the path back to the woods. Hopefully we can get underground before they can start a sweep."
"Look at you, acting like the boss." But Irina shouldered her rifle, and she picked up a crate the size of a pit bull. "Damn, that's heavy..."
"Come on." Jane led the way out of the storage unit, checking to make sure no enemies lurked in their path. She scanned the piles of supplies, the dormant Advent troop transport... "Clear."
"Good." Irina hurried up in her wake. "Let's go, before-"
Ka-boom!
"Holy shit!" Jane ducked, covering her head as shrapnel flew. An instant after the blast, gunfire erupted from the left.
"Contact!" James' voice screamed. "Multiple Advent!"
"Hang on!" Jane grabbed for her rifle. She jumped on the nearest crate, scrambling for the top of the stack. "Irina, come on!"
She popped over the top, and in an instant had her gun trained on the nearest enemy, a soldier ducking for cover behind what looked like a forklift. James lay prone behind a box of his own, while Obsidian let loose a volley of machinegun fire that tore up the ground in great streaks, lighting up the dark and stinging Jane's ears.
"Hey!" She let loose, and her own bullets joined the fray. Recoil drove the butt of her gun into her shoulder, and Jane grit her teeth, watching Advent soldiers duck for cover under her barrage. "Over here!"
"What are you doing?" James demanded, popping up as Obsidian had to reload. "Get the explosives-"
"Not without you!" Jane only let up when she ran out of ammunition, and she ducked low, swapping magazines as quickly as she could.
"Go!" James ordered, waving Obsidian away. He bent double, and then the big man was running for safety, zig-zagging to avoid hostile fire. James covered him, and Jane too as she could.
"Damn it!" Jane ducked as magnetic weapons-fire ripped through the air, red bolts shining angrily in the dark. She had to dive for a new position, too, as it shredded her previous box. Jane slid down the pile, cursing inventively as each thump gave her a new bruise. "Don't they care about their stuff?"
The roaring of a machinegun picked up again. Jane scrambled to her hands and knees, sliding down from the pile as best she could and grabbing her gun where it lay. She looked around, but there was no sign of Irina, so she could only bend double and sprint back toward the fence, homing in on the sound of Obsidian's fire.
"There you are!" Irina and the crate were at the hole in the fence, and the big machingunner laid down suppressive fire as a few Advent soldiers tried to pick James off. The alien-lovers ducked, and then James was on his feet. He turned for the group, waving.
"Come on!" he cried. "We need to go!"
"Waiting on you, slowpoke!" Jane called. She took aim, and her fire joined Obsidian's. "Pick up the pace!"
He didn't. In fact, he paused, and Jane frowned. She cursed, too, and took a step his way.
"Come on!" she cried. "You call yourself the commander, and you can't even run away from the enemy-"
"Jane!" he cried. "Watch-"
Bang!
Red tore through his chest, and scarlet blood blew out in a geyser of agony. The bolts shredded skin, muscle and bone, and James barely had time to choke on his own blood before the last shot of the volley blew through his head, just left of his nose. Gray matter joined red, and he tumbled in a heap.
Jane stared. For a moment, it wasn't...it didn't make sense. James was...her commander was...
Then, three seconds too late, her brain realized the magnetic weapons fire hadn't come from behind James.
She spun. Jane spun, and Jane screamed, but she was far too late. There were two of them, one in red and one in black, and she stared down the barrel of their cold, unforgiving weapons at point-blank range.
"Donut!" the officer ordered, and for once, Jane didn't find it funny at all. Up came his gun-
"No!" Jane shrieked, as Obsidian lunged between her and danger. He shook as the shots eviscerated him, ripping through his body like paper and drenching Jane in his blood. She dropped, rolling to avoid projectiles that still had lethal force even after going through a human body, and by the time she came up, Obsidian had tumbled to his knees.
But he had a grenade, and he grinned as he bit off the ring and threw.
"Damn it!" Edward Gallant slammed his fist down on the railing. "Of course he spits poison! He has to spite us somehow as he dies."
"I hate thin men," Bradford agreed. "Still, we took down one of them, and he won't last more than a few seconds. That leaves two, and they've got nowhere to run thanks to your pincer movement."
"Basic tactics. Worked in Iraq." Gallant shrugged. "Remember, we want one of them alive. A present for Doctor Vahlen."
"You and the Doctor..." Bradford might have been amused. "I'm sure she'll swoon."
"One can only hope." Gallant ignored the chuckling that ran around the command center. He leaned on the railing and his cane, eyeing the firefight and the flying plasma from the alien weapons very intently. "Finish them, Strike-one."
"No...no!" Jane let loose a volley, and though the wounded officer dropped, she wasn't sure if he was dead or smart enough to take cover. "Irina, we have to...we've got to-"
"Hold them off!" She ripped open the crate. "I've got an idea."
"What?" Jane quivered, running through her second-to-last mag with shaking hands. "They're between us and the only way out...there's six of them..."
"We're right over the main sewer line. If we can blow a hole through this concrete pad, we can drop in there and maybe we'll get out of here." Irina laid the gray plastic explosives in a mad frenzy, practically upending the container.
"Okay-" Jane dropped as two enemy soldiers opened up, covering their fellows as they began working their way in. "We need that hole now, Iri!" She slammed her last mag in place. "Now, now! The old man isn't paying us enough to-"
"Charges set!" Irina skittered backward, palming a few from the container. She rose, pulling out her detonator. "All right. Cover your ears-"
Bang!
Jane let out a wordless shriek as the next shot went into Irina's shoulder. The Russian's face contorted more with shock than anything else, and then the next set of red projectiles came in.
"No!" Jane fired blind, forcing the enemy down. She reached for her friend, but Irina was too far away, coughing up her own blood on the ground. Glassy-eyed, she looked up, fishing in her pocket.
"Jane...Jane..." She drew the charges she'd taken, and with all her remaining strength, she slid them over the pavement. Jane caught one without understanding.
"What do you want me to..."
"Donut!" the Advent troopers appeared, guns raised, and Jane fired. Two bullets came out, and then...
Click-click-click-click!
"Cover...cover your ears," Irina repeated, before coughing up another gout of blood. Two soldiers seized her, and the others approached Jane, sitting frozen with fear.
"Wait...wait!" She saw what was in Irina's hand an instant before Advent did, and Jane's blood ran cold. "Wait, Irina-"
The Russian's thumb came down on the detonator.
"No!" Gallant stared as the battlefield erupted, as some burning hazard Strike-one hadn't noticed vomited flame and shrapnel that ripped through his team, flinging them around like bowling pins. The ground must have shaken, and he trembled as he saw how much blood scattered, in how many directions.
In the flash and blast, he saw an echo of his own trauma in Iraq, and Gallant's heart rate spiked.
"Sensors coming back online," Bradford notified him, down at a terminal with one of the technicians. "They were scrambled by the size of the blast. We're..."
Gallant waited. He swore as he saw the few survivors of his team, pulling their friends to safety and checking the alien bodies, scrambling for medkits as they worked. He clutched the rail with white knuckles, swearing that he would exact vengeance for this the next time he crossed paths with an alien strike team.
"No alien life signs, sir," Bradford finally reported. "They're all cold."
Gallant's eye twitched. "Good."
"Very," Bradford agreed. He glared at the map for a minute too. "Well...there's always more soldiers."
"That's right." Gallant clutched his forehead. "Why...do we really have that many?"
Haze. There was so much haze...
"Commander." Bradford clutched his arm. "The team in Canada's running into resistance."
"They are?" Gallant frowned. "Weren't we dealing with a situation in...in..."
"In where, sir?"
"In..." Gallant breathed out. "Nowhere, I guess. I can't remember. It's been a long few days, John."
"For you and me both." Bradford turned to the hologlobe. "It looks like a few floaters are trying to kill a civilian target important to the Council. Our friend has asked us to intervene."
"So...you do exist."
"You...you see the package?"
"I do." Outrider removed her mask, examining the Advent stasis pod. She glanced past the broken body of the sentry she'd disposed of on the way in, making sure no further hostiles lurked in the doorway or beyond. "I could retrieve it now."
"Negative. You'll never make it out of the city alive." Her contact sounded very insistent. "Give me time to set up an extraction. We'll remember your service."
"I'm sure you will." Outrider reached for the control switch, and with one pull, she reinitiated the sealing process. "I'm extracting. Get in touch if you require my services. And Central?"
"...yes?"
Outrider replaced her mask. "Do me a favor and don't require my services."
She was gone long before anyone discovered the body.
Darkness. Pain.
Life.
She hit metal. She pushed and pushed, screaming in the dark, but after long minutes of swearing and sobbing, she succeeded, and it yielded to her touch. Though her arms strained and her legs shook, she shoved the little hatch open.
Jane Kelly sunk her fingers into grass as she emerged from an old sewer manhole somewhere west of Galway, heaving herself topside with Herculean effort.
Her gun was gone. Most of her clothes were gone, and what she'd worn in place of armor was definitely lost. She'd have to burn her tattered shirt and trousers when she got home, and maybe her pants too. She was covered in shit and blood, and she stunk of Advent gore.
But she was alive. Alive, like her friends weren't.
"James...Obsidian...Irina..." Jane hugged herself, weeping on her knees as light rain tickled her hair, falling from the overcast night sky. It brushed at the blood and sewer grime caked over her cheeks and shoulders, but it didn't wash it away. Nothing would.
But still...
Jane put a hand into her pocket. Arthritically she withdrew it, and she contemplated the shield-shaped packet of gray explosive matter in her palm.
"...phone," she finally muttered, eyes hardening. "Phone."
She sank one worn boot into the mud, and then the other. Jane had to lean on a tree for support, but she was alive, and she could walk, and that was enough. It was more than enough.
Drums beat angrily in her heart, and she grit her teeth, forcing herself to start.
"They didn't die for nothing, Jane: not if you can get this to the old man." She spat, thinking of spraying gore and friendships ended in harsh fire. Her fists clenched. "Hopefully it'll get a few Advent killed."
Author's Note 1: Hello, World
Hey, everyone. My name is Lighthearter, and this is my first(serious) fanfic. I'm a huge fan of X-COM; though I was never able to get into the 1994 original and never discovered the sequels, I hit Enemy Unknown and Enemy Within like a freight train, and XCOM 2 was literally everything I ever dreamed it would be and more. War of the Chosen is currently making my life complete.
In 2013, I had the idea to novelize XCOM: EU, and I created a cast list, a plotline, and a lot of other supplementary information. I got about 3,000 words into this idea(you know, up through the opening cutscene of the game) before EW was announced, and I threw most of the material side(not AWAY...I rarely discard anything writing-wise. More on that another time). Then later, I tried to pick up the idea with EW's changes added in, and we made it to 8K words.
That was 2014. I've done nothing since then, but the characters and canon linger, and when War of the Chosen came out, especially as I started to have fun with it, I thought...why not?
This story will cover from here, just before Operation Gatecrasher, all the way through the ending. I have a sizeable buffer and an excellent writing work ethic(another thing we'll touch on in a later note) but I do have to stress this story is a side project. If I get a call or a request for my main line of work, this is the thing that gets back-burner'd. That said, I do have a buffer on the order of 30K words as of right now, and that will only get larger by the day.
So enjoy, and stand by: I'll be uploading the second chapter very soon, and then we'll settle into a regular schedule. Until then, Vigilo Confido.