On the Podium

The Commander couldn't see a thing. He could hear though, a crowd waiting for a speech, the gaps in the wall of sound that indicated the guards standing between them and the podium. There would of course be supporters of the Advent strategically placed within the crowd, to cheer and boo when the speech demanded it. There would even be some regret in the speaker's voice when it came time to execute him, that such a powerful enemy could not be turned. Lies and shams all of it. At least XCOM knew. At least someone would carry on the knowledge that the aliens were the ones in control of the whole mess. And so he waited for the speech to begin, in the dark.

Captain James Marcus stood to the right of the prisoner, the so-called "Commander" of the terrorists calling themselves XCOM. He didn't intimidate Marcus, but then again, few of the prisoners Marcus had guarded had. They had to be really off their rocker to get in his head. It was just like the horror movies he had watched as a kid. The monsters weren't scary, but the creepy houses with their movement on the edge of vision and little atmospheric details were terrifying. This prisoner was neither of those things. He selected his radio on his heads-up-display. "Squads, report. Ninety seconds to the speech. Alpha leader here, platform is secure."

"Bravo, down here on the crowd, ready to go."

"Charlie, sitting in the back of the trucks, we're ready"

"Delta, on the road, ready."

Then silence.

"Echo?" Marcus asked?

"Sir, this is Echo, we've been notified of a problem. Apparently some troops from the local garrison assaulted a hotel room, found a ton weapons and soldiers and were killed by them.

"WHAT?!" Marcus exploded on the communications channel. "They didn't tell us about a raid they did relevant to this huge fucking event that the brass had planned? Why the fuck not?"

"Apparently their opsec prevented them from doing so. It just went far enough up the chain that someone cut the red tape."

"Get into that building, Echo, control that room and watch the plaza from there."

"Understood, but it's going to take some time. It's being treated as a crime scene."

"Shit. Alright, everyone stay on watch. Echo, just push pa-"

"The dignitaries are arriving. Look sharp."

"Damnit Delta! We need time. This area is unsecured."

"Sir, we can't delay. The faster the better. Besides, the terrorists apparently dispersed or were killed or something. We're trying to sort it out now."

"Echo, get in there and you're the ace in the hole. This speech and execution will be quick."

The cars pulled into the plaza to the wild adulation of the crowd. The higher-ups really wanted to make a show, it seemed. The man stepping out of the car was Francis Jimenez, one of the most influential politicians in forming the Advent coalition. His neck discolored on the side with patchy spots from a birth defect and small glasses covering his eyes, he made his way to the podium. He adjusted the microphone, grabbed the sides of the podium, and began to speak. Immediately Marcus was swinging his view to the windows of the buildings around the plaza. He also scanned the crowd, looking for disturbance. Echo, if he was lucky, had gotten to the room where the operation had occurred. He heard a whirring in the distance of a helicopter. Isolating the noise, he sent an IFF query to the satellites that watched the air traffic over Moscow.

The signal bounced to a satellite relay in Moscow, went up, hit the satellite, which sent back what the helicopter was broadcasting. There was also a note appended that the helicopter's registration was forged and it was being accompanied by an unfamiliar design of transport plane. That information was sent back down to the relay station, and sent back to Marcus' visor, where it appeared as a flashing icon. It took only 1.2 seconds. It took another tenth of a second to open the information, a second tenth to read it, and before the processing could occur in the third tenth, an explosion carried the trucks with Charlie squad high into the air with a thunderous boom.

The crowd scattered. Francis Jimenez collapsed to the ground, clutching his neck and shrieking. A hazard light flashed as Marcus threw himself to the ground, warning of harmful chemical exposure. His visor finally started tagging targets with guns though, and he began to return fire.

From a window

As the trucks exploded, Kevin took a shot at Jimenez with his sniper rifle. It hit, but didn't kill. Kevin angrily reloaded and picked a new target. The Advent trooper in the midst of the civilians, still looking for targets, went down, missing parts of his head. Return fire sprayed the area around the window and Kevin ducked back.

Across the plaza

Lily and her troops charged from an alley, firing a protracted barrage that took down two troopers as civilians dropped to the deck, either dead or evading fire. While she regretted shooting near innocents, the mission had to come first. She ordered her troops with hand motions further towards the podium. Salazar pulled the only rocket launcher the team had back and used it, blasting another truck high into the air. Suddenly Salazar went down. The squad took cover. One rushed to the fallen soldier, but he had been killed instantly. She looked up, and from the position the squad would have taken, Advent troopers distributed fire across the plaza. Where were the veterans? The rookies were getting cut apart. She heard a shout and saw another one of her squad went down, dead. A fist of four troops advanced across the plaza towards her lightly covered position. Shouting and with hand signals, she managed to communicate enough to get across a barrage plan. The alive rookies grabbed their grenades and chucked them towards the fist. Three were close enough to do damage, and soldiers crumpled in a heap. Lily ran forward and scavenged one of their rifles and ammo from the body. Tentatively, she put a few rounds towards the windows in the room where the squad had been assaulted. The gun bucked hard, but it seemed lethal enough.

With her new gun, she ducked behind a car and yelled to the alive members of the squad. "Alright! We need to actually get to the podium! We can use it as cover against the ones upstairs! Ready?" Nods all around indicated assent. "CHARGE!"

Above

Kislewski watched as Desance and her rookies charged across the plaza. "Land land land!" she shouted. "We have to cover them!"

As she watched, one of the rookies was hit from the windows. He didn't die instantly, but the leg wound dropped him and a second barrage finished him off. The others pressed forward as the helicopter moved in and strafed the building, loosing rockets and thousands of rounds from its ancient rotary cannons. Pulling around the helicopter landed in the center of the plaza and the whole contingent disembarked. As the pilot managed to get out, a shell zipped across the plaza and hit a building on the far side. The tank that had fired it moved in closer, winding up another shot. Kislewski grabbed cover by laying down behind a concrete bench. She grabbed her radio, "Big Sky, deploy. Get that tank off of us." The words that came back were far too garbled, but she heard the whine of the engines intensify.

A scuffling alerted her to Desance and her diminished squad as they also ducked below the depression angle of the tank and took cover. "Good to see you Corporal!"

"Thank you Colonel. Any thoughts about how we're getting the Commander?"

"Once the second contingent deploys, we should be clear."

"Understood."