"So why are we here?" Steven Gough asked.
"Beats me. I didn't even know we had a briefing room" Jessica Hawkins replied. She also wondered privately why even their wounded were asked to attend. Gough was mostly healed and just on light duty, but Patel was wearing a full cast on his leg. She didn't think he could do any duty they might get right now.
Jessica took in the room and its occupants. Captain Olsen and Sergeant Coburn weren't present. She hoped that the change in attitude, like using the proper briefing room instead of doing all of it in the hangar or mess hall, was a result of a more professional attitude. The last mission was hopefully bad enough to force them to switch to more professional methods.
Gough was here as she had earlier noted, he seemed to be generally content, which was surprising as she'd heard he was in a funk for having been forced to sit out the recent missions due to the wound.
Patel however seemed to be holding up fine despite his wound. He was a naturally easygoing person.
Desperaux was bored and seemed absurdly amused by playing with a pen. At least he wasn't picking a fight with her then.
Sayuri was the biggest mystery in the room. She had been quiet even before the terror mission, but now she seemed to try and act as if she didn't exist. Something was bothering her big time, and nobody seemed to be able to get through to her.
It probably had something to do with how Lockheart had died, but as she mused on what might have happened the door opened.
"Atten-SHUN!" Sergeant Coburn called. That set off some bells as he never bothered with that before. Simply put Captain Olsen never seemed to care, but she and the rest of the room dutifully came to attention with the exception of Patel who was still injured.
Captain Olsen and an officer she didn't recognize entered as Coburn stood next to the door. The new officer was tall, in his late thirties and had an aura of 'I'm in charge' around him.
Startled she realized that the rank bars identified the unknown officer as a Colonel, a rank that X-com theoretically had but wasn't currently in use.
She also noted that Olsen while he hid it well seemed to not be happy about him being here.
She allowed herself to hope.
"At ease Gentlemen." The colonel said.
"I'm Colonel Jonathan Croft and we're here to discuss the fate of this team in light of X-com's current reorganization."
oOoOoOoOoOoOoO
X-com: First to Fight
Change and Growth
oOoOoOoOoOoOoO
The X-com funding council meeting was not the usual fare where for the most part the primary funders were at best apathic, at worst trying to measure if X-com had made the gains they felt that could be reasonably expected regarding alien technology and should be terminated to gain them.
Right now they were scared.
"You are sure this won't end up having been just a onetime occurrence?"
He knew that they had already heard from their analysts what he was about to say, but also that they really didn't want that to be true.
"Now that the genie is out of the bottle and they have once disregarded keeping a low profile on Earth I don't believe they will just go back to business as usual. They crossed a pretty big line doing what they did."
" Then in light of the new developments we are authorizing a massive expansion of the X-com project." The US representative said on behalf of the entire room.
"Thank you sirs." Commander Thornton said however inside he was seething. Finally they got off their asses when it got too big to entirely brush under the carpet.
It was better late than never. Now they'd finally have the resources and cooperation to pursue more aggressive strategies that could actually impede the aliens operations instead of just grabbing the occasional UFO for interesting technology to steal.
And at least it came at a good enough time when morale in the existing force was at an all time high.
"You have however been reassigned."
"Wait what?" He forgot his posture for a moment.
"It was deemed that while an officer of your caliber was appropriate for the previous incarnation of X-com, for the new X-com you simply lack vital qualifications."
'Translation: It was acceptable to use a throw away officer that would have been inconvenient when we didn't care, but now that we're scared we want somebody more appropriate by our political standards for the job. I should have figured.' He barely restrained his fury.
"And what pray tell will my new assignment be?"
"That will be up to the new commander of X-com to decide. Even with the changes in the charter we cannot affect internal X-com decisions without a 2/3rds majority."
'Of course they'd keep that one as every nation is afraid of being overrun by a coalition of others and lose any influence they have.'
"I see. When will the new command staff arrive?"
"They should already have arrived and started the preparation for the re-organization."
'You Vultures didn't even wait until the corpses from Berlin were cold before you put your greedy fingers into the pie.'
oOoOoOoOoOoOoO
'Reorganization?' That was the thought that flashed through the mind of every squaddie in the room.
"In light of recent events X-com will be seeing a massive expansion of both force and area of operations. The issue however is that there are only seven people who have fought against the aliens and are still alive. And that is you people."
"Are you going to split up the team?" Gough asked worriedly.
"If we find it necessary yes, but we are going to avoid it if at all possible. We would rather not interfere with what works. As it stands we do intend to put several more teams into the field, albeit for the immediate future we're short on lift capacity for them. We have one Skyranger on site, but demands elsewhere mean that it'll be a while before we can get more."
Colonel Croft looked around the room as if daring anyone else to ask more questions before he had finished this briefing.
"The changes that will affect you immediately are the resizing of a combat team from eight to eleven including an additional sergeant, you would normally get one from outside the unit, but your captain has made a case of promoting from within, so that he will handle later. Squads will also be rotated in and out of duty on a weekly basis, with one squad on alert, another on standby and the final team is in stand down. As this team has pushed way beyond what the new guidelines state is acceptable alert time you are the first ones standing down.
The look that came around now caught them off guard. He looked at the assembled soldiers with respect.
"In light of not being the only X-com combat team anymore your team is hereby re-designated to the First X-com combat team or Team 1 for short, our first force to fight the aliens, but no longer the last."
That way it was phrased more than anything told them the most fundamental change of X-com. It was no longer just a 'We're doing something' measure. Now X-com was the frontline against the aliens. Now X-com existed to win.
"Further briefing will be the responsibility of Captain Olsen." He got up the soldiers coming to attention as he left.
"Right. I'll be brief as frankly I'm swamped. We'll be getting four new soldiers shortly and some nifty support hardware, you guys are off duty until further notice but I haven't been able to secure any form of liberty yet so we're limited to base. I'll get back to you when I have more to tell you. Dismissed." Must have been the room itself, it made him feel more militaristic than usual.
"Oh and Hawkins I'd like to have a word with you."
She stopped, Egon correctly read that she was apprehensive. His guess was that it was because she'd lodged protests at him repeatedly and it was ignored. That sort of thing tended to sour relations with most officers.
Egon wasn't most officers and he was proud of that fact.
"I've gone over the roster and out of the current team members you are the best choice for our new sergeant."
He like to think he was above such things as getting worked up over things like her behavior, but even so the look of shock on her face was immensely satisfying.
"Wait what?!"
"Just so you know this whole talk is off the record. I don't think you are going to accept, at least not until we've got more medics. So refusal won't hurt your career later down the line. You are however my first choice for the job."
She wouldn't accept, he'd known that before he offered. Still, if he'd just promoted someone else without apparently considering her she'd be resentful as they'd both know she was best qualified of the options. If he'd offered officially from the get go she'd feel trapped and be resentful either way.
Sure she may be smart enough to realize it intellectually, but one of the key issues she had with him was that she had spent more time learning her job than he had training and active duty combined. And she'd actually had a rather eventful duty for peacetime standards.
Dealing with intra team conflicts involving himself and a subordinate was like juggling live hand grenades. This wouldn't fix it, but it was a start.
"You are right. I don't want the job now. Thank you for the offer though. Anything else?"
"Not at this moment no. Dismissed." Egon watched her leave, and then swore to himself never ever to use this room again. It made him all stiff and formal.
oOoOoOoOoOoOoO
Hangar 2 which had up to recently housed Interceptor 1 was a beehive of activity. The equipment needed to equip a combat team, or even three, wasn't that much. The equipment needed to support several combat teams did. There was also the fact that despite having sizeable engineering departments and research labs they hadn't been kitted for more than a token complement of them.
In short they were receiving a shitload of stuff and they were rushing it hard. And of course they were in typical bureaucratic fashion not receiving it in any effective order so sorting out what took priority and what did not wasn't easy.
Technically the newly named Team 1 didn't have any stake in this for at least a week. In reality for the sweet stuff it was first come, first serve.
That's why Sergeant Cockburn was down here, to secure the best stuff for the veteran team.
It was basically a military version of dibs.
This approach also nicely explained why they had pre-filled requisitions for the autocannon for well into the next millennia.
Today's haul was very light though. As far as weaponry went the X-com armories were very well stocked as far as a single squad went. And Team 1 had ensured themselves first pick there.
There was in fact as far as he could tell only one new weapon.
They looked like miniature tanks, each mounting a singular 25 mm cannon, far wider and longer than a man, though not as tall. As far as he could tell they were remote controlled drones
If they had one of these the earlier missions they'd probably not have taken anywhere near the losses they did.
He looked over them trying to judge which one would be in best shape, but being unfamiliar with them could only make a wild guess.
Still he picked one, noted the serial numbers and set off to write a requisition for it. These things looked like they could come in handy.
oOoOoOoOoOoOoO
"Hey Sharif, up and walking again I see?" Egon had been waiting for him to show up, everyone showed up in the mess hall sooner or later.
"Yes captain." "Skip the captain. You are on sick leave, therefore off duty, therefore formality stays home. Right now I'm Egon."
"Yes Egon." Sharif Patel prided himself on his ability to take things in a stride and remain calm no matter what the situation. It took more than an alien invasion and a highly unconventional commanding officer to beat that.
"Right anyhow. Medical ward treating you well?"
"Yes captain. No testing alien probing equipment or anything." Sharif said with his characteristic small smile.
"Heh, I didn't consider that, we better misfile any probing equipment we capture just to make sure we avoid that. The doctors here are much too fond of poking people. Well that should have gotten the small talk out of the way. I think you've already guessed what I want to talk about."
"You want me to be the new sergeant." It wasn't a difficult guess. There were only so many possibilities and he had realized that Hawkins turned it down, and that only left Him, Desperaux, Gough and Sayuri.
Out of the other three Gough was too green, Desperaux a touch too crazy and Sayuri didn't seem to handle pressure well.
"Yup. You stand up to pressure well and keep calm. Which as it's about the opposite of me and Sarge rounds the team out well"
"Well then. I accept. Do I get a pay raise?"
"To be honest I'm still not sure. They reworked X-com's procedures and charter pretty thoroughly. I'm working through it now. Some of this stuff is pretty weird."
"Like?"
"Well for instance X-com is allowed to sell equipment, but procedures are rather controlled as to ensure it doesn't go outside the funding nations, but the checks on the seller are pretty damn poor. A single individual who could somehow either mess with the inventory and cover it up, or simply not report getting it in the first place could easily sell the loot through legal channels provided they can avoid internal X-com investigations. They basically want as much of X-com's loot as they can grab without making it look like they are breaking restrictions."
"So basically they encourage X-com pirate operations?"
"Yar Matey." Egon nodded with his usual grin.
The one thing Sharif could say for sure about serving in this unit was that it was always interesting.
oOoOoOoOoOoOoOoOoOoOoOoOoOoO
"Hey Sayuri wait!"
She rounded the corner giving no indications that she could have heard him. He reached the corner only to find that there were nobody around it. Egon groaned.
"People who keep avoiding the people who happen to be trying to help them as well as happen to be their direct superiors are pretty damn annoying." He said out loud pretty sure that she was still close enough to hear him.
"Said people can count their lucky stars that I'm too busy to take the time to track their hiding places down, but can rest assured that as soon as I can reduce it to manageable levels I will track them down and have words with them."
Egon turned and left muttering under his breath about overreacting rookies.
Okay so Lockheart had died from a FAL bullet and she was the only one who could have fired it. Accidents happened, and the only thing you could do if you survived (both physically and career) was to learn from them.
There was the possibility that it wasn't an accident, but for the difficulty he had in reading her he couldn't envision her murdering a teammate. Still he wanted to know exactly what went down. Her report of events was extremely vague. Before that he would have to stop what appeared to be a rapidly approaching breakdown on her part.
He came close to thinking that it was good that at least they didn't have to worry about combat missions while he sorted things out but he caught himself before he could. Tempting fate was not a wise decision in a situation like this.
Somewhere fate went 'Damn I almost got him.'
oOoOoOoOoOoOoO
Meeting a new commanding officer was like playing hopscotch near a former frontline area in a third world nation with a penchant for landmines. It'll go right thousands of times, but there's always the worry that this is the one time where you run into a nasty anti-personnel mine that perforates your lower body.
Olsen really shouldn't have done that high school project on the effect of landmines.
"Captain Olsen reporting as ordered."
The commander was well dressed and groomed, an obvious office officer, probably hadn't seen field work for years if not decades.
"Ah I've been waiting for you. I'm Commander Andrew Hunter, your new commanding officer. Sorry to say that while Thornton is a good officer the funding council thought he isn't suitable commanding for the sort of operations X-com will be undertaking after we finish restructuring."
The tone was friendly, there were no intentional accusations against Thornton veiled or otherwise and anyone who realized the score would agree that casualty-sensitive Thornton probably couldn't handle a much larger scale operation against the aliens.
Even so the statement rubbed Egon the wrong way. It was tailored. The man had gotten a good enough read of him to realize that as Egon had a very good working relationship with Thornton he'd probably be wary of his replacement, and had picked the words carefully as to try to assuage any negative reactions.
"Well sir that is over my pay grade. I'm just an inexperienced officer trying to do my duty to the team and earth."
Hunter was the type of person who dealt with people by figuring out how they worked and putting on the right mask to deal with them. He was a manipulator of sorts that worked with their perceptions to get a positive one almost exclusively. Hunter seemed to be a career oriented person, the type who put that as top priority. He wasn't the type common in fiction that would piss away his troops for nothing though. He was still human enough to care a bit about people under his command, but he deliberately kept his distance open as to be more able to see them as resources than people.
What bothered Egon about this was that he too read people and then used that to better deal with them if he felt he needed a positive response. He liked to think he only did that if it was vital.
But were they really that different?
"Don't sell yourself short. You've done good, managing to take a team that was known for 100 turnover every three missions or so and turn them into a viable combat team. That's an impressive achievement. Even though one of your squaddies seems to make it a point to file a complaint against you after every single mission, even though Thornton seems to have ignored everything after the first two."
"Well yeah. Hawkins and I have a professional disagreement in how to do things, but as long as it doesn't affect how she does in the field or she doesn't try to undermine my authority with the unit I figure that she might as well use it to get rid of aggression. Freedom of speech and all that."
Hunter smiled.
"Your reputation for attitude is well deserved I see. Well my impression of you is that you are a capable if unconventional officer. I was a bit worried given the reputation X-com used to have that I'd have to replace our most experienced field officer. Glad to see the worries were unfounded." A smile that appeared to be disarming and totally honest spread over his face.
It was supposed to show trust and inspire loyalties in subordinates. It was also completely fake. He didn't really care that much one way or the other about Egon or his team, but he wanted Egon to think that he did to ease his job, manipulating Egon for his own ends.
What really bothered Egon was that he could see himself doing the same thing under the right circumstances. He had handled Hawkins rather similar.
Right now Egon's extent of masks to his squad was to put on confidence and hide his fears, well maybe a bit concealing the urge to yell at Hawkins face for being such a pain in the ass, but that was it.
He swore to himself to keep it at that, basic officer's mask that anyone wore. He did not want to risk going down the path to Hunter.
"Hm. Something wrong?" Hunter asked at his silence.
"Oh sorry sir was just thinking about how to best manage my team. I'm a bit swamped at the moment."
"Ah. Then I won't keep you any longer. We can't afford to have our best team lose its edge. Dismissed Captain, and keep up the good work."
"Yes sir."
oOoOoOoOoOoOoO
Egon had looked at his file before going here, the kid was a fair pilot, but had a reputation for recklessness. Not that Egon could hold that against anyone without sounding hypocritical.
"Hey there Fournier."
"Captain." The pilot started to get to attention, but Egon waived him down.
"This is just a social call. I realized I didn't really know the guy responsible for lifting us in and out of hot combat zones with our skins intact and it might be a good idea to do something about that."
Alphonse Fournier, french. A year older than Olsen, and about three times as many disciplinary counts on his record. It stood out that he'd associated a lot with the troops early on before the first missions. Then he'd started hanging to himself as casualties started mounting.
"Heh. Glad to be appreciated Captain. So what did you have in mind? Just talking?"
"I was thinking more participating the team activities, you seem to have an active imagination and we could use that. If you want to I'd like you at the team meeting tomorrow afternoon. We'll be receiving a few more recruits as well as trying to figure out next few days training." It didn't take a genius to figure out what Egon was referring to.
"Oh yeah I'm in. You guys have been funny so far."
"Glad to have you on board Alphonse." Egon grinned.
oOoOoOoOoOoOoO
"Sayuri wait up that's an..." Door slammed shut.
"... Order." Egon groaned before he walked up to the door.
"I know you are in there. I'm sorely tempted to go get some explosives from the armory to open this door."
He was also seriously considering testing his sidearm on the door, but rejected it as he had no idea whether it'd work or just ricochet dangerously about. Besides he'd fired the pistol he was issued twice since arriving. .45 just didn't work very well on the aliens.
"This isn't over squaddie. Next time a locked door won't stop me." He promised the closed door.
oOoOoOoOoOoOoO
"What are you doing Captain?" Egon looked up from the notes he was reading to see Sergeant Cockburn (Need to snicker: Rising) sitting down across the mess hall table.
"Wondering what I can do to save my paycheck."
"Paying for those pranks out of your own pockets too much?"
"Yeah are you aware just how much it costs to buy several dozen liters of pink paint suitable for painting a very high velocity fighter without impeding performance or being worn off by the speed and having it delivered overnight."
"No, and I'd rather not. What sort of scheme do you have in mind now?"
"I was thinking of selling alien corpses." Egon said with a grin.
"What!!"
"Apparently the funding countries are willing to pay up to 20000 for them."
"You are out of your mind!"
"Hey it's just an idea."
"And we all know what happens when you get ideas!"
"I'm not going to use it to line my pockets. I was thinking a fund for supporting the team. Training equipments, extra pay to beneficiaries if we lose them, that sort of thing." The statement was tacky but totally honest. In all honesty Egon didn't need any extra pay with the paychecks he got here, provided he could preserve that one and not lose it all paying for the teams little unofficial 'operations'-
"Do rules mean anything to you?" The sergeant was fighting an aneurism
"Rules were made for a reason. The spirit of the law matters far more than the wording as far as I'm concerned. Following the word blindly seems rather short sighted."
"Basically rules are guidelines and you'll break them whenever they are in your way?"
"Yeah pretty much, but I'll always consider why they are there before I break them. Corruption rules are there to prevent people for getting unfair advantage, and to prevent the system from being harmed. Just selling an alien corpse and taking the money ourselves harms X-com as they lose money that could be used to support its field force, but selling the corpse and using the money on the team is as far as I'm concerned A-Ok as that is if used correctly a net gain for X-com."
"You are a bloody pirate."
"Yar matey." Egon grinned.
oOoOoOoOoOoOoO
"I've been looking over the reports and I'm not so sure about our ability to handle this. The reports speak of pure slaughter. We're going to take nasty losses in the establishment phase at very least." Colonel Croft reported.
"I was afraid of that. Our orders are clear, the alien are to be treated as an invading force and opposed at all costs, but this is going to be costly." Commander Hunter grimaced.
"We are going over the reports to find any good ways to deal with the menace, but it's not going well. We have a few ideas, most of them from how Team 1 fought them, but several of their tactics are quite controversial, like leveling the entire battlefield so they just have to worry about the UFO."
"Quite. So we cannot use them as cadre?"
"Given how they operate. That wouldn't be a good idea. They are a very unconventional unit and I'd prefer to keep the number of such units to one. I don't think this base could even operate if all the combat teams mimicked them."
"Ah yes. Pranksters the lot of them, but if they get the job done I'm prepared to tolerate a bit. They are the heroes of Berlin after all."
"We should keep an eye on them though. In case they go too far."
"Did I ever say otherwise? Still they are very good troops and we can cut them a little bit of slack."
oOoOoOoOoOoOoO
Egon was about to do something he was pretty sure he'd regret, but if he didn't it'd keep annoying him until he did something about it or something drastic happened.
"Hey Hawkins got a moment? I'd like to talk to you somewhere private." He was going to off the record tell Hawkins exactly what he felt about her whining.
Yeah he did expect to very likely get punched by an irate Special Forces trained woman who likely knew how to kill him five times before he could hit the ground. But it'd be worth it.
There was an office nearby which qualified for this sort of thing.
"Why are you taking off your rank bars?" Hawkins asked.
"Well I wanted to speak to you off the record and not as a superior to squaddie, but rather as person to person on a personal issue."
The expression on her face was interesting, worry, suspicion, possibly a dash of disgust. Yup as anticipated she was drawing the entirely wrong conclusion.
"While you are good at making enemies dead and keeping friendlies alive, you are seriously pissing me off!"
That misunderstanding made this line all the sweater to say.
"What?"
"Are you deaf? I said you are pissing me off. I've come to the conclusion that either you are doing it on purpose or you are retarded. You seem to be making it a sport to complain at every opportunity you can get away with it!"
"You want to do this well fine. You are a disgrace of an officer or even soldier who should never have been allowed within a mile of a military base! And I will do whatever I can to ensure that comes to pass and if you have a problem with that you'll have to kick me off the team!"
"I'll never accept a loss that I can do anything to avoid regardless of it being in combat or otherwise, but you wouldn't know anything about that would you!"
She looked like she had been struck, but he was on too much a roll to stop.
"If you had your way and we went about it in the same old fashion the entire team would be dead several times over! Did you even READ the old reports to compare?! Average of total turnover every three missions and you want me to go BACK to that?!"
"That is not what I'm saying!"
"You might as well be! Almost the entire team got slaughtered the first time I went out! Every soldier of X-com besides me and Sarge who joined before your batch did it your way and guess where they are?! Oh that's right; dead and fucking buried!"
As he said that she had been angry, very angry, but the moment he mentioned that every trooper was dead her anger seemed to explode and he realized he had misread her badly and his own anger evaporated instantly.
"So that's why you joined." He said in a low voice with eyes widening. She hadn't joined for the money as he thought she had.
Unfortunately for him Jessica seemed to not care the least about his sudden change and was at the point of violence.
Egon realized this just in time and took a hurried step back causing her first punch to miss, but then demonstrating that she was special forces and he was not she used the momentum of the first punch to carry over into another with her left hand faster than he could do anything after his awkward dodge and punched him straight in the face.
He was knocked hard on his ass. She could punch pretty damn hard. She stood there for a moment apparently contemplating murder then stalked out angrily.
He slowly got up nursing his jaw. He'd been right it had been worth it, though not for the reason he had anticipated. He understood her much better now and that'd help quite a bit, though on the downside his realization took some of the fun out of the yelling at her part.
She wasn't here because she needed money as he first assumed, but rather because she had lost people close to her, probably one or more squad mates who had joined X-com before her during the worst time and died for it. She had joined a bit because she needed to find out what had happened to them, and a bit because she wanted vengeance.
That altered things quite a bit.
oOoOoOoOoOoOoO
"Captain what happened to your face?"
"Nothing special just went to a debate under-armed." Egon grinned, but the grin evaporated as he saw that there were only nine people around the table he was arriving at, there should have been ten.
"Where's Sayuri? I need to talk to her."
"No-one knows. We haven't seen her all morning." Sarge answered.
"Damn. Okay new order. Anyone who sees her calls me immediately. I'll be wearing both tac-radio and Cell-phone. I'm getting really annoyed at this whole thing." And there was that nagging feeling that if he didn't do anything very soon something bad would happen. And none of the things he could envision were acceptable outcomes.
"Understood sir."
This had looked like it'd be such a good day too. Well apart from Hawkins seeming to plot his gruesome and horrible death, but Egon could live with that.
"Anyhow let's get down to business. We've got most of our new people. We'll get some sort of specialist in the next few days to fill out our roster. Would our new people care to introduce themselves?" He gestured for one of them to start speaking.
"I'm Thomas Chapman from Britain. They say this is extremely dangerous so I'm glad to get to work with the veterans."
"Estefan Moreno, Spain. This war's as good as won now that I'm here!"
"I'm Federico Lombardi from Italy. Is it true that you guys use pranks as training?"
Egon grinned.
"I see our reputation is spreading. Well then let's get down to the second part of our business and yes Lombardi we do. Now we're a touch short on supplies so we're going to have to compensate with imagination."
oOoOoOoOoOoOoOoOoOoOoOoOoOoO
Johnson was lost, it wasn't supposed to be possible, but he was lost.
He stopped up as he reached the mess hall yet again. The lines intended to direct you to important areas didn't seem to lead anywhere but the mess hall.
Just around a few corners then back to the mess hall through a different entry. It appeared somebody had repainted all the lines to lead to the mess hall.
He really should have figured it out earlier what with the giant sign with 'Rome' written on it in the middle of the hall.
Somebody had creatively altered the menu list of the base too.
"Today's dinner is mutilated alien ala France with plasma blasted blood pudding for desert" the sign said proudly
"I'm going to kill that team. "
oOoOoOoOoOoOoOoOoOoOoOoOoOoO
"What is this supposed to mean?!" The Captain of the newly formed Team 2 yelled
The sheep bleated.
A sign had been hung on it: 'Standard issue X-com sexual relief sheep, please clean after each use.'
"Team 1 struck again I guess. I wonder how they got that sheep past security." One of the more long time base personnel commented.
oOoOoOoOoOoOoOoOoOoOoOoOoOoO
"Can somebody stop this noise!?"
The Doctor Who theme kept repeating over the loudspeakers ignoring the request as only a piece of machinery could.
"How can one team cause of this much havoc?"
oOoOoOoOoOoOoO
Egon was in a good mood when he set about tracking down Sayuri. The new team-members had taken the whole operations style of Team 1 a lot better than he'd expected. He was lucky with this batch albeit he'd have to watch Moreno who was too overconfident for his own good and take step to prevent another Fenix.
Egon had decided to start looking in the place he least wanted to be that she might be and work his way down, the hope being that she was smart enough to figure out which places he might avoid and then go there to avoid him.
The first place to check was her quarters which she shared with Hawkins. And given that Hawkins was both pissed and very lethal that'd be a very good reason to stay the hell away.
"Open the door Sayuri or I'll call base security." The voice of Hawkins in a bad mood carried down the corridor. That didn't bode well for avoiding the bodily harm quota of today.
"I'm serious."
He reached the corner and walked down the hallway towards the door.
"She's holed up in there?"
Hawkins spun around having been too intent on the door to notice him.
"Yes sir." She was good. She could make the sir sound like an insult without any change of tone at all. Egon couldn't help but be impressed.
"Sayuri open up we need to talk." No response. He didn't honestly expect one.
"I told you last time that I wouldn't be stopped by a locked door again." As team leader he had keys to the rooms of his troops. However as he tried to put it in he found that it wouldn't turn. He crouched down and looked closely.
"She's wrecked the lock. She really doesn't want anyone to get in. We're going to need tools." Egon felt a sense of urgency he couldn't quite explain.
"Well then you better get them. She's not going anywhere." Hawkins was still pissed.
"Crap you are right. There's no other way out of there, so she doesn't intend to leave."
"Well of course not. Wait what are you doing?" Her tone changed from sarcastic to worry.
Egon didn't know how he knew, but he knew they were almost out of time. That's why he took drastic action
"Putting a breaching charge on the door."
"Why the hell do you have a breaching charge?"
"In case I ran into a door I wanted to get through but couldn't. Get clear."
She dived aside as he set it off and blew the lock apart. Egon immediately rushed up to the door and looked in.
"What the hell is wrong with you?!" Hawkins cried out. Egon ignored her in face of the more pressing problem.
"Put the gun down Sayuri." That shut Hawkins up.
Sayuri was holding the rifle with the muzzle towards her face; Egon had no doubts that it was loaded. She was looking up towards the door obviously startled by the blast, but had been far enough away from it to not be hurt by it.
She didn't answer.
"I know things went to hell and that you ended up shooting a teammate, but accidents happen."
"It wasn't an accident." She replied in a quiet voice that sounded somewhat haunted.
"Then what did happen?" Egon asked, not primarily because he wanted to know but because every moment he spent talking was one she didn't spend shooting herself.
"I don't know. One minute we're talking and about to attack some aliens, the next he's dead from a single shot and I have no idea what happened the last minute or so. But I had only fired a single shot then. I don't have any shots unaccounted for. I killed him. It wasn't an accident or misfire. I must have aimed and killed him deliberately. But I can't remember doing so. I'm a danger to the team sir."
She was rambling. Not quite coherent, eaten up by guilt.
Egon saw a way out of it. He wouldn't like doing it, but it was the only thing he could see right now.
'I'm not losing anyone I can avoid.' He looked straight into her eyes then sneered.
"And killing yourself will fix it will it?" He said with as much derision as possible. First he had to shock her out of her current mental state, and for that he had to hit her hard verbally. Hurt her even more.
She didn't answer, but she flinched like she'd been slapped. Egon switched tacks immediately not letting it sink in.
"Yes Lockheart is dead and you might very well be responsible, but this way you'll only make things worse. Tell me could what happened out there happen again?"
He waited a few seconds then pressed again.
"Could it?"
"I don't know. Maybe." She answered.
"And could it happen again with somebody else than you out there?"
"I don't know."
"Neither do I, but if the only known case kills herself before we can figure out exactly what happened we'll only know about it when it happens again, quite likely taking another person down in the process."
Now that he had shocked her he'd redirect her guilt a bit. Guilt saying that she had killed a teammate and she had convinced herself that she was a danger that had to be removed was the main problem. Then redirect it to guilt over having set things in place to let it happen again. This was a really cold way to go about it, but he could make amends if she survived.
She was frozen. She wasn't going to shoot unless he provoked her now, but she hadn't put away her gun either. Now was the time to switch from vinegar to honey.
"And nobody on the team blames you for it. None of us want you dead. We want to help. Let us. Just put the gun down and we'll sort this out. We'll figure out what happened and how to prevent it from happening again, to you or to anyone else for that matter." He held out his hand towards her. It was a bit theatrical, but she wasn't mentally coherent enough to really consider that. She probably hadn't slept at all since the mission.
"Just put the gun down and we'll sort things out. Okay?"
The rifle clattered to the floor. Egon stiffened for a moment half expecting a discharge, but they got lucky and nothing more happened.
Sayuri collapsed sobbing. Something given the stress she was under Egon didn't fault her for.
"Captain Olsen to Medical. I need a team down in my Team's living area immediately." He said as he moved forward and held her. It was a bit to comfort her, but also to be able to restrain her should she change her mind about not killing herself. She still wasn't very stable.
He'd played her emotional states like a fiddle to get her to put her rifle down, he wasn't proud of himself for doing that, but he told himself it was necessary.
oOoOoOoOoOoOoO
"I'm sorry Captain but no that's not an option."
"Sir I can handle it." Egon protested
"Maybe you can, maybe you can't, but this is a case where it really isn't worth taking the chance."
Egon wanted to keep Sayuri on the team and just give her a few weeks recovery before putting her back into duty while keeping a close eye on her. Commander Hunter had overridden him.
"Sir I'm good at this sort of thing."
"I don't doubt it. You did talk her out of pulling the trigger, but in this case it's better to remove her from X-com service completely. Ensure that she gets full treatment for her problems and maybe after that put her back into duty, but that's not going to be anytime soon."
The commander leant forward looking Egon straight into the eyes.
"I realize that you hate losing people, but not only isn't this your fault. You are the only reason she's still alive. You saved her life, but it's not your job to save her soul. Leave that to the professionals while you focus on the rest of your team, learn from it and prevent it from happening again. You are a good officer, but don't fall into the mistake of trying to do too much for your team. That'll tear both you and it apart."
"Yes sir." Commander Hunter was entirely correct and Egon knew it. It just felt wrong to just... Give up on Sayuri like that.
"Good job handling it though, as far as we can tell from security recordings she was just about to shoot when you blew the door. If you'd been a minute slower you'd have been too late. Why did you carry a breaching charge around anyway?"
Egon managed a grin. "Well you see sir. I always keep my word no matter what."
AN: I'm kinda embarrassed about it, but I finished this about the same time I posted part 3 and then forgot to upload it due to heavy workload at college right then. It's basically just been sitting on my hard drive the last few months until somebody called RTM sent me a message asking about it and reminded me. Sorry about that. Currently trying to bash my way through a writers block at part 5.