Vigilo Confido
…
*static*
I'd only had a day to train before the call came. Bradford's Commander – whoever he was – sent orders that had my name on the Skyranger, along with three names I vaguely remembered from when I'd moved in. My squadmates were to be a round-faced girl named Ellen Reach, a swarthy man named Benjamin Angel who insisted that everyone call him "Ben", and a quiet sort named Christopher McKay.
Our equipment looked to be good, if somewhat old and well-used. The body armor in particular was good, and looked as if it would stop several rounds before failing. Gun-wise we were doing all right as well. Everyone was carrying AK-47's, which seemed serviceable to say the least, as well as .44 AutoMags for sidearms.
Bradford kept telling everyone to hurry up, move faster. I personally think he would've been more helpful if he'd kept his trap shut. An officer who'd screwed first contact with alien life didn't have much a right to anything, and I could only hope that the new Commander, whoever he was, was a bit better at this sort of thing.
The Skyranger was just as creaky, rattling, and old as it had been two days ago, and most of the trip over was spent in silence. On the last leg of it, though, Ellen Reach spoke up.
"So…" she began hesitantly. "What's the plan?"
The four of us looked around, and realized that we were all the same rank. Finally, Ben Angel answered.
"Move carefully would be my best advice. Once we get on the ground, Commander Kinkade should give us our formation orders, and we'll be able to move in that way. As for the actual movement, though, just be slow about it. Look around for enemies after every twitch, and you should be all right."
The three of us nodded as the Skyranger descended, landing in… Where was it Bradford had said again? Some small town in Nevada, Panaca was the name. Panaca, Nevada.
We'd landed in front of an office building, that much was clear. The four of us moved out cautiously, crouching behind some tall flower boxes and a lamp.
"Watch out," Ben hissed, and we all took a moment to look for enemy movement. When none was forthcoming, we moved closer to the building, as slowly as we could.
It wasn't slow enough, though. As Ellen moved in, she gave a shout and flattened her back to the office building's wall, facing the rest of us. Loading her AK, she gave the signal that meant "Enemy Spotted" and gestured for the squad to get down.
I watched as she peeked around the corner, wondering what she could be seeing that was giving her such a confused expression. Her hands moved to her head as she activated her headset that connected her to the rest of us, and she whispered to me.
"Anna, peek your head out. Can you see them?"
Daring a brief glance out, I saw two of the same bug-eyed aliens from Germany, but there was something wrong about them. A wavy purple streamer that looked to be made of light was moving from one to the other, and the one it was moving into looked… stronger, somehow. More resilient.
"I've seen these things before," I whispered back, "I think we can take them. We'll combine fire on the one who's sending out that streamer thing, got it?"
She gave a quick nod, and held up a hand with fingers counting down.
Three.
Two.
One.
Time to see if those hours at the range yesterday had made a difference at all.
The sound of our rifles firing tore through the silent night. Ellen's bullets hit the thing's chest, mine it's head, and it flew backwards with a death squeal. To everyone's surprise, as the purple streamer disappeared, the strengthened one gave a cry of pain and collapsed as well.
"Commander," Ellen said softly, "the weapons they were carrying – they fell apart when the ones carrying them were killed."
"Understood," came a voice over the comm, "now move up and see if there's any more."
The squad nodded as a unit, and we slowly moved further towards the office building. In only seconds, though, I'd spotted two more, turning towards us with that mouthless scream of theirs as they drew the odd guns with their long, grey fingers.
Before I could give any thought to the matter, I found myself raising my assault rifle to my shoulder and opening fire into the one farthest from us, as a second stream of gunfire downed the other.
Apparently Ben had the same reflexes I do.
I hadn't even known what that feeling was, when it came. It felt like what I was born for. It felt like painting a beautiful picture when you've got the image in your head and you just know it's going to be a masterpiece. From then on, I knew what I was meant for. Meant to have a gun in my hands, meant to aim it as best I could at whatever enemies I saw. Meant to take them down.
*silence, the sound of a deep breath*
Well. A quick sweep of the area revealed that we'd gotten all of the X-Rays there. How they'd gotten there, we didn't know, and wouldn't for some time to come. Whatever they were there for, they might have already swept it away.
At least the ride back was a bit more cheerful than the last time I'd been in the Skyranger. Ben even cracked a couple of jokes, and Ellen was laughing so hard I thought she'd burst her body armor. I've always found that it's best to be a bit understated – there's no reason to show or tell everybody what you're thinking, after all – but I gave a grin nonetheless.
When we landed, there was a bit of a surprise waiting for us. As the hatch opened, I saw a tall, thin man standing in front of the hallways entrance. His brown hair was cut short, and slightly messily for a member of the military. He wore a neatly trimmed goatee, and had wide blue eyes. Despite his good looks, he was not a young man by any means, looking nearer forty than not. It was Commander Kinkade, of course.
When he stepped forward the first thing I'd seen was the stars on his uniform. He had me worried half to death that I hadn't done well enough in the mission, and was to be cut from XCOM. After that feeling I had on the field, that was the worst possible thing I could've imagined. He didn't say anything about failing, though.
"Rookie Adrianna Coe, for your prowess in battle, I hereby promote you to the rank of Squad Member." His voice was firm, and somehow after hearing him I wanted to fight even more just to hear it again. It was almost disappointing when he turned to Ben.
"Benjamin Angel, for your prowess in battle, I hereby promote you to the rank of Squad Member."
Ben's large features widened in a smile as the Commander stepped down to Ellen.
"Ellen Reach, for your prowess in battle, I hereby promote you to the rank of Squad Member."
Stepping back from us all, he looked us over and then made a note of something on his clipboard.
"Please report to the barracks for your assignment of class."
With that, he turned to Bradford and handed him the clipboard before walking out of the room and down the hallway. From the chance I'd had to study the map of the facility, he was probably heading down to the research labs. I hadn't met Dr. Vahlen yet, but I'd certainly heard a lot about her, as well as her counterpart in Engineering.
The four of us marched in formation down to the barracks, Ellen and Ben cracking jokes while Christopher stayed silent with me in the back. I wondered if he was upset that he hadn't been promoted – it wasn't his fault that he hadn't been able to take a shot in the battle.
Once we got there, a munitions officer whose nametag read Lamar, James approached us.
"Coe, Angel, and Reach?" he said in a bored voice.
We saluted, and Christopher stepped to his bunk.
"Follow me, please."
I'd never been in the munitions depot of XCOM before, and it was an eye-opener. There were enough old guns back there to take over a small South American country, or maybe even a large one.
First he picked up a shotgun off the wall and handed it to Ellen.
"Squaddie Reach, you've been assigned assault class. Your job is to run in fast and take out the X-Rays before they can react. You'll begin training for it later today after you've cleaned yourself and eaten."
Next he picked up a string of grenades that had a large "S" imprinted on them, and were a different shape from the normal ones we'd been given before the mission.
"Squaddie Angel, you've been assigned to the support class. You'll be keeping that AK of yours, but you'll also be trained in the use of these smoke grenades to provide cover for your squadmates. Take care of them."
I wasn't sure if he'd meant the grenades or the squadmates, but now he was grabbing a long scoped rifle off of the rack and walking towards me, and I barely had time to think before it was in my hands and he was reading off his list in that same bored voice.
"Squaddie Coe, you've been assigned to be a sniper. Apparently you displayed unusual aiming skills in the battle. If you can keep up those headshots in the training room, you might amount to something someday."
With that he walked away, leaving us wondering what was coming next.
…
The next day, I was wandering around the base trying to get the hang of the layout, when I ran into Ben.
"Look what Dr. Shen gave me!" he said proudly, lifting a strangely shaped red piece of equipment and presenting it for me to inspect. There was a handle to grip and a nozzle at one end, but other than that I had no idea what its use could possibly be.
"What's it do?" I asked. "Some kind of new weapon?"
He shook his head.
"No, it's a medikit! Apparently Dr. Shen developed some kind of nanospray that can heal up wounds quicker than anything else – you'll feel like you're fine within seconds."
My eyes sure widened at that one.
"Seriously? Why hasn't anyone heard of this stuff? Why isn't it on the market?"
Ben shrugged.
"Dr. Shen said that it hadn't been tested for side effects yet, so that might have something to do with it. Plus, it only lasts for six hours. After that, unless you're at a place that can give good medical care, your wounds will be just as bad as they were before this stuff was sprayed on you. Having that kind of trauma happen to you doesn't leave you with nothing, you know."
I suppose that made sense. Despite that, even as I walked away from Ben towards the research labs, I wondered. I sure understood why you should keep technology like that under wraps from the rest of the world. I was just surprised that someone else thought the same way.
…
I felt out of place in Dr. Vahlen's territory.
Not just because she was a gorgeous German scientist with smooth brown hair that made my own raven strands look like straw, but because everything about the place she worked in felt alien to me.
No, not that kind of alien.
It was all so white and clean, sterilized and protected. The people here had never felt danger in its personal form, never faced life or death situations.
Still, I decided it was worth talking to her, so I walked up and held out my hand.
"I'm Anna Coe. I'm a bit new around here, just joined up and fought in the battle yesterday. Hope you're doing good work with those corpses we brought back for you."
She smiled before hesitantly taking my hand as if it was some kind of new specimen.
"Yes, Anna. Hello, my name is Dr. Moira Vahlen. Thank you, by the by, for bringing back such good specimens, it is most useful that you used no grenades. After that kind of explosive damage… well, I'm afraid that corpses are all we get. No weapon fragments, which look to be the most interesting of our potential research subjects."
"What are you working on now?" I asked. I'll admit, I was curious. We'd just encountered alien life, they had to be doing something down here.
"Xeno-biology, a fascinating field." She turned away from me back to her databases, my face already half-way forgotten. "We're trying to map this alien species entire genome, although I'm not entirely sure it will be possible using our existing DNA sequencing techniques. Further research and specimens may be necessary…"
I thought for a moment about bidding her farewell, then realized that she probably wouldn't notice even if I did. Back to the barracks it was. There was never anything wrong with more training, after all. I wanted to be able to make headshots perfectly.
…
Another day had passed. I'd gotten to know the girls who bunked to my left and my right a little bit better – one of them I'd met my first day here, a Russian named Varsha Patel. The other was Ellen Reach.
Of the two of them, Ellen was always the one that was the jokester. She had kind of a babyface, and she used it to its fullest extent. I don't know why we all laughed so much, if you'd asked me before I'd have said that making faces was juvenile.
Varsha was a bit quieter (which isn't saying much) but more aggressive too. She used her rifle like it was a cannon in the training room, and lifted weights long after the rest of us had hung up our towels. For all that, she was a good kid. Helpful, at least, and kind. Loved American comics, had a stack of them under her bunk. Manga, too. I tried to get her to read some of my favorite books one time, but she was never all that into it. It was the art that caught her eye.
Four days after we'd come back, the alarm went on, and Commander Kinkade walked into the barracks with a grim look on his face.
"Ladies and gentlemen," he began, "I have just received word that three alien attacks are currently ongoing. As you know, XCOM's funds and manpower are severely limited, and we do not have the manpower, speed, or resources to deal with any more than one of those attack sites. I have been forced to choose which one of them to rescue, and I have chosen. Squaddie Coe, Squaddie Reach, Squaddie Angel, and Rookie Patel. Suit up and report to the Skyranger in five."
With that, he turned and left, and the barracks turned into a mad scramble for equipment.
As the four of us piled into the back of the Skyranger, I realized I'd wished for more time in the training room. I didn't think my headshot was quite up to par yet.
…
Hello, loyal fantasticks!
Well, here we are again. Yes, I prepared these chapters ahead of time. Now, aren't you grateful enough to leave a review? You are? Aw, shucks, fellas. You're too kind.
Anyways, here's the continuing adventures of my squad, which is (let me remind you here) an actual squad in an actual game of XCOM: Enemy Within that I am playing. I'm also hoping that none of the people who appear in XCOM: To Boldly Go die in my game. That would cause rather serious breaches in the space-time continuum.
Sincerely,
~The Once and Future Overlord