Mar'Rela, captain of the Vulcan starship T'Maire, thought he was having a pleasant day.

He was (of course) wrong, but this can't be helped.

"Are there any enemy starships in range?" he asked his communications officer coldly.

"No, sir!" she responded, "Although we have not yet come within range of this planet's moon, and it is possible they may be hiding on the dark side!"

Mar'Rela gave her a stern look. It would have been a glare, but he was Vulcan, and it would have been a terrible breach of etiquette to show such a display of emotion on the bridge.

"Some massive army hiding on the dark side of a moon?" he asked, injecting as much sarcasm as he properly could into his voice. "And tell me, lieutenant, will they also be giant shape-shifting robots? Carry on towards the planet. We will commence orbital bombardment as soon as the fleet is in range."

"Sir," asked his lieutenant in a lowered voice, "are you entirely sure that a mere orbital bombardment will be enough to truly teach the primitives the error of their ways? This may instead merely inspire them to greater determination of destruction."

"A logical point," Mar'Rela conceded. "Gunnery, prepare the spatial torpedoes. We will aim for their major cities, of course, so as to cause maximum panic. Hopefully, a strong message that Vulcan is not to be trifled with will also present itself."

"Sir!" the communications officer interrupted, "There is a massive fleet of extremely small enemy ships coming from behind the planet's moon! They do not appear to have shields, but preliminary scans indicate they are heavily armed for their size!"

Mar'Rela stared incredulously for a moment before muttering under his breath, "Of course. It's a trap."

Corporal Leah Ellison was relatively new at all this XCOM stuff, and was mildly worried about being assigned as the sixth member of Black Squad.

What made it even odder was that it was quite evident that there were only five people in the Avenger, herself included, and none of the other squad members had said anything, so… Well, she certainly wasn't going to cause any trouble.

"Whoo!" exclaimed one of the black-armored troops, making Leah jump slightly at the first human voice she'd heard since launch. "We sure are tearing them up out there!"

Leah leaned over, ostensibly to peek out the porthole and catch a glimpse of the battle, but also to peek at the name plate of the speaker on the side. "Cowboy", it read, and she scanned through her HUD until she came to his name: Colonel Benjamin Angel, joined XCOM January 13th, 2015, et cetera, et cetera… 97 missions, 314 confirmed kills. Leah carefully swallowed and leaned back. She'd barely finished her 12th mission before the war was won and they retired everybody who wasn't in the top rankings. Besides, she didn't need to be that close to the porthole to see that the Firestorms were tearing through the alien ships – although individually the weapons would never be able to punch through the shields, they were swarming in such massive numbers that the hulls of the enemy were already beginning to glow and melt in places. Whenever a phaser beam fired, a shower of white-hot slag would spray into the blackness like a ghoulish firework, marking the passing of a pilot and his Firestorm. The sheer number of Storms in the sky, though... Leah grinned under her helmet as a chunk of Vulcan starship shattered and drifted off into space.

"You ever wonder," said the massive man carrying the heavy plasma repeater, "you ever wonder whether maybe we got a bit too stuck-up in the big war? Like, maybe the Ethereals really were prepping us for something like they said, and now that we've gotten too stuck-up, we're going to bite it against the big bad?"

"Yeah," said Leah excitedly, "I can't believe I'm not the only one who's thought about this! What I'm thinking is, humanity expanded too fast, and now that we're in the stars, the only thing keeping us together is the knowledge that there's other life out there!"

"And," said a woman cradling a plasma rifle like it was her baby, "that we're going to kick ass when we meet it." Leah frowned and peeked at her HUD. Apparently this was some XCOM psi operative named Demilira Firling.

"Paint," responded the hulking man patiently, "that's just a given. Manifest Destiny and all that."

Firling's sleek helmet twitched in a way that suggested she was laughing quietly under it. "Or," she responded, "the whole thing's just one big celestial joke from a godlike being who's messing around with us. You can't start getting into destiny and all that, Preacher, or you'll end up too weak in the head to fight off the next psychic who wants to mind rape you. Life's chaotic and weird and makes no sense." She leaned back and shrugged. "That's just the way it is."

A high, clear voice floated across the rumbling of the Avenger, singing

The time has come (the Walrus said)
to talk of many things.
Of shoes and ships and sealing wax,
of cabbages and kings.
And if the sea is boiling hot
and whether
pigs
have wings.

Leah stayed very still for a moment. Turning to the man in the Archangel armor besides her, whose blue name plate seemed to shine the word "Ice" etched in silver, she asked quietly, "What was that?"

As the man turned to her, the name Colonel Adam Peters came up on her HUD, and she involuntarily took a breath at the number of kills next to that name.

"We did say," he said calmly, "that there were already five of us. You're the sixth." With that he turned back to his plasma sniper rifle and began humming "Danny Boy".

Cpl. Ellison blinked a few times at her HUD to pull up his mission history, and did a double-take at one of the medals on his record. Surely there was no way a single XCOM soldier could clear an entire downed UFO, much less one that had landed in a populated town?

Sadly, her fears about his sanity would not have been much assuaged by a view into the head of Col. Peters, as he was (at present) idly contemplating whether or not it was possible to kill God, and if so, how one would go about it.

"Well, ladies and gentlemen," said Col. Firling cheerfully, "looks like we're heading in."

The Avengers shook heavily as it dodged some debris, and that lilting voice rang out above it again…

I'm gonna tell Aunt Mary about Uncle John
he claims he has the misery but he has a lot of fun
Ooh, baby… having me some fun tonight.
Well, long tall Sally she's built for speed
She got everything that Uncle John need
Ooh, baby… having me some fun tonight.