It is my firm belief that Egypt is shit. That is not due to any sort of prejudice towards Egyptians or its historical, political and geographical connotation, not at all, merely a side-effect of the intense and completely unreasonable urbanisation ADVENT put (what was left of) the Earth through. Apparently the aliens didn't care for us, they just wanted to build immense megalopolises with state-of-the-art services and omnicidal gene therapy clinics. I'd been there on vacation once or twice, when I was younger. Funny people, if dutiful, the Egyptians. During the invasion they put up an extremely fierce resistance, stubborn and relentless. The desert did offer some sort of relative safety from the aliens. No matter where you're from, extremes of heat and cold kill you all the same. Alas, it wasn't enough. Egypt fell, just like the rest of the world. Just like your ears, if this dreadful silence continues.
There was silence in the Skyranger. We just lost a couple of rookies during that raid. The ADVENT Administration, while besieged on all sides by the very people they were (not) protecting a mere months before, was still as ruthless and deadly as ever. Still abducting civilians, if possible, to further the plans of the Elders. Still raiding isolated outposts, still putting on that façade of righteousness that didn't quite shine like before. In the Commander's opinion, they would be eradicated eventually, but not without great costs. Such is the price of war. There were 5 people in the Skyranger, plus a robotic unit, designation "EMPEROR". I personally gave it its name. Always loved Warhammer. Could not resist. I also personally pleaded with Chief Engineer Shen to give it a deep, resoundinc warrior-like voice, to better fit its pompous but apt name. I mean, she called her GREMLIN unit "Rover", why could I not call... Am I fangirling? Yes, you are.

In any case, we were getting back to the Avenger. Home, as much as home a spaceship can be. True, it was full of commodities of sorts, for a soldier, but it's just not the same. Once there, though, that feeling of mild unease disappeared. I almost instantly found my way to the bar with the human components of my team, eager for a round or two, or three, or four hundreds. 18 months of war, and still I was sort of deeply hit whenever someone died in action. You know, there's a reason why nobody gets a callsign before a certain amount of time or missions have passed: that's because if we see them as people, we may put them above the mission. Yes, true, we all strive to make sure everyone gets out alive, be they green as grass or grizzled and bloodied, and there is a deep, very deep sense of camaraderie amongst us, but that's not the point. Point is, it's war: you have an objective, and you have to complete it as ruthlessly and quickly and efficiently as you can. Especially against an enemy that neither asks for, nor gives quarter. It's like... Let me try to explain. Imagine that you're in the 1940s, in Poland, and you're a Jew. One day the Wehrmacht comes barging in, and you've heard that some bloke named Adolf Hitler wants to exterminate you for what you are, for who you are. You can't hide, because you know they'll find you eventually, or someone will rat you out. You can't run, because they can run faster than you. That's the difference between a war and a genocide: you can reason with your enemy in war, and maybe you can agree that it's a pointless thing to do, to slaughter each other. Genocide doesn't work this way. It's you or them. There are no explanations, no blurred lines, no depths of depravity left untouched.
That's what the aliens wanted. Us. We weren't letting them take us, but we were letting them win, maybe. Maybe.


"Maybe?" Gallant's voice shook me from my somewhat coherent rant, making me jump on my chair.
"What?" I uttered, automatically, pointlessly surprised by what was a legitimate question to a very, very controversial statement.
"What do you mean by 'letting the aliens win'? I mean, seriously, what does that even mean?" There was a note of irritation fueled by a sense of righteousness in her voice, and I almost felt guilty for a second. Therefore, I was in a hurry to explain.
"He who fights monsters should see to it that he himself does not become a monster. And if you gaze for long into an abyss, the abyss gazes also into you." I paused. "Do you know what that is?" She shook her head, negatively. "It's a quote from Friedrich Nietzsche's Beyond Good and Evil. You're probably too young to have read him, but basically it means-"
"It means that to beat a monster you need another monster." She interrupted me almost instantly. "That you can't play fair with someone who doesn't, and that if you want to win you have to learn to play by no rules at all."
I admit that I was surprised. "So you did read Nietzsche, after all."
"No", she said, "I merely understand the concept. But why do you say that?" She inquired. I noticed her writing hand had stopped writing for a while, hinting that she took what I said to heart.
"Because we had our own society back then. Before the war we prided ourselves on having created a civil, peaceful society where violence had almost no place. We still knew war, mind you, that's what the human race has ever done, but it wasn't nearly as endemic as it used to be, say, a hundred years ago. Then the aliens hit us hard, and destroyed it. Can we regain that kind of life by simply standing idle, while they slaughter us?"
"The people in ADVENT-controlled cities lived that kind of life, no?" She inquired, counteracting my statement.
"No, that's different. Complacency and submission are something entirely different. It may look the same kind of life I had, but if it is so, it's merely on the surface. Besides, this wasn't really life. It's not life if you can get freely abducted, experimented and then disposed of with the blessing of those who call themselves your benefactors."
"But yet they lived."
"Temporarily."
"We all live temporarily." Now, there she has a point.
"But that's not life."
"Life is about staying alive, isn't it?" Now she has another one.
"Strictly speaking, it may be. But life back then was different."
"And maybe that's your problem."
Ok, I did not expect that. "Beg your pardon?"
She stayed silent for a few seconds, almost as if she regretted saying that. "With all due respect, sir, I think..."
"Go on, I don't bite." I urged her, sensing her hesitation.
"Well, last time you told me how many people resented XCOM and the Resistance, how they were just born into this world and knew of no other thing. No other society, no other culture, no other... Anything, really. Well, I was very little when the war came, I have pretty much no memory of how things were before, but I understand it because I was brought up with the Resistance, I lived with this kind of people all my life. You're trying to restore a past glory that will never, ever be the same."
Shit, now I'm out of sensible things to say. This is a solid point she's got there, old chap. "No, we can't." I conceded. "But maybe we can do better." I paused. "Let me explain: it's like breaking a glass. Maybe you can't put the pieces back together, but you can still use them to make, like... A mosaic?" Did you really quoted Moira Brown? I did. You quoted something from Fallout? It's a good quote. It's a videogame! It's a good videogame.
"I see your point, Colonel, but I'm not entirely sure." She said, not entirely doubting my words, but not entirely accepting them either.
"I have a feeling that we're not exactly talking about me during these interviews, Miss Gallant, I think we're debating philosophy." I joked, to which she smiled slightly.
"True. You were going to tell me about..."
"Operation: Night Storm, yes. My latest trip to Egypt."
"Indeed. But this time, please, start from the beginning, will you?"
I smiled a bit, almost sardonically so. "Right, where to begin..."


The team had been waiting for me for a mere ten minutes. Thirty. TEN minutes. Not like they had anything better to do. I wasn't to take command of this particular unit. Although technically I was the equivalent of a Colonel, and in fact I was sometimes called one, Psi Ops like me had a different hierarchy. I was a Magus, the highest rank attainable to those who entered the Psi Lab and learned all that there was to learn on Psi... Stuff. There was a wide spectrum of Psi power, from 0 to I don't even know where. 0 to 30 meant that you were like a hole waiting to be filled. Weak, unwilling. PTSD-afflicted people, depressed, stressed, broken men and women. Not just these kinds of people, but they were definitely included. Most of mankind was between, if I remember correctly, 40 to 60. You know, from mildly weak willed to mildly strong willed. 70 to 100 meant that you were a fighter. Not necessarily gifted, but with the proper training they might make something useful out of you. But the real deal was what were those who scored more than 100. I don't know the details of the story, but a French girl scored the highest amount ever recorded in history, during the initial invasion. I don't even know if it's real, or if it's just some urban legend spread by someone with nothing better to do. Tell them how much you scored. Come on. Not yet, my sweetheart, not yet. Wanker. Love you too.
Anyway, I was- no, I am a Magus. I won't yet say my score, nor am I sure you'll ever know it. You know, classified information and all that. Let's just say that the average Psi Soldier can and will kill almost anything with their power, and will be able to cast a relatively various amount of, say, "techniques" (in absence of a better word). That is, provided they have their Psi Amp at the ready. Otherwise, they're not that different from a normal human being, if not for white hair and purple eyes, which are side-effects of tremendous amount of physical and psychological stress. They can still "play tricks" without a Psi Amp, though. You know, levitating small things, slightly altering perceptions, that sort of stuff. It does sometimes cause physical pain though, especially migraines. Then there are those who are gifted or just seasoned enough that can do the same with more efficiency and potency. Even without their Psi Amp, these men and women can do great deeds.
I can potentially warp reality. Without my Psi Amp. I'm not unique, but I am special. Some would say very special. Fuck off, I was trying to be serious. No, you were trying to be smug. True enough. Anyway, I can go outside the limits of the average, even above-average Psi Op. It's not easy, and sometimes it's really, really painful. As a matter of fact, I very rarely do it, since it's not something I can fully control. I mostly stick to the usual Psi stuff. You know, direct attacs, mind control, breaking the laws of physics and overall creating small supernovae and black holes. Lots of fun. Not as much as warping reality, but let's say I like to play safe.
You're going off-track. Oh, right.

I was the only Psi Op in that team, as usual. Psi-gifted people are hard to find, and their training takes a lot of time. I knew the team's greenest rookie, a woman named... Well, honestly I don't remember. I think she came from Argentina, though. Good looking, that's for sure.
I knew one of the team's two Sharpshooter. This one in particular was Lieutenant William Wilkes, condenamed Kingsguard, or sometimes Queensguard, but he really didn't like Queensguard because someone mistook him for a woman. He did not take it well. Anyway, he was born before the war, served as a marksman in the SAS for quite a long time. He fought in the invasion, too. He liked killing Sectoids, Thin Men, Mutons and whatnot, but those were the only ones he could kill. Not for lack of trying, mind you, it's just... To put it in his words, "Regular guns work for fuck-all against Sectopods, mate." Guns back then were different. Twenty years ago the world's armed forces had little warm guns that shot lead bullets. Fair enough, if you're targeting flesh, but the aliens really wanted to take the piss, and so mechanised warfare was brought to a whole new lever. But now there are no standing armies, just us and the Resistance. The Resistance has pretty much anything they can scavenge, which means a wide spectrum from "total shit" to "maximum mayhem". But we have plasma weaponry and power armour. That is pretty fucking sweet.
Then we had our Ranger. Colonel Peter Van Doorn. Man's skill and reputation were legendary. He served with the original XCOM, he fought during the invasion, he survived for twenty years, either on his own or with others. Everyone had heard of him. His face was always on the news. Everyone was on the lookout for him. One of the toughest sons of bitches I've ever known. Doesn't talk much about his past, I only know that he used to be a UN official, and that XCOM pulled him out of a tight spot. I never asked him much out of sheer respect.
The more experienced recruit was what we'd call a "Squaddie". It means you can pick your own specialization, but you still have to prove yourself in the eyes of the team. This one was a Polish farmer-turned-freedom fighter whose name I dare not repeat, for it gives me a headache. He was a Sharpshooter too, and I was told he was pretty good.
And then there was EMPEROR. Written in capital letters. Not Emperor, EMPEROR. The aliens had MECs, turrets (which we too have, by the way) and Sectopods (no, we don't have those, unfortunately). We had SPARKs. Basically a MEC, just way better. It didn't tell jokes, as JULIAN and CENTURION did, but it could shoot you in the chest with an Elerium Cannon, or wipe you off the face of the universe with a plasma blaster. And if that didn't work, it'd just knock on your face with a mechanised power fist. Maybe it doesn't sound technological, but it does the job admirably.
We were all sitting, all nervous in our own way. The veterans like me and Kingsguard knew that half the job was keeping our head cool, but we also knew that a tiny bit of fear does wonders to improve reaction time, reflexes and the sort. It makes you plan ahead, it keeps you on your toes. Fear must be dominated, lest it takes you on a spinning joy ride towards getting your sorry ass killed.
The rookies, however, were visibly nervous. Repetitive gestures, deep breaths, equipment checks every ten seconds or so. Veterans checked their weapons and equipment too, just not as often as that.
And then there was EMPEROR. EMPEROR did not check its equipment. EMPEROR was a robot. EMPEROR did not give a cybernetic fuck.
"ALL SYSTEMS OPTIMAL. UNIT IS COMBAT-READY." Does XCOM pay it by the word? We don't get paid. That explains a lot.

"Firebrand ready to deploy!"
The time had come. Heart pounding like a hammer, we touched the ground.
We came bearing debts to be paid.