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"Far better is it to dare mighty things, to win glorious triumphs, even though checkered by failure... than to rank with those poor spirits who neither enjoy nor suffer much, because they live in a gray twilight that knows not victory nor defeat."
~Theodore Roosevelt
Chapter Twenty-nine: First Blood
"Aliens have set up a transmitter relay shooting data off into God-knows-where." Jane took hold of the overhead grip in the Skyranger's drop bay, rising to glare down at her squad. "Now, we have a limited window to stop that transmission before the data stream is complete and the aliens have the stuff. Whatever the stuff is."
"All right!" Mariah's eyes glowed, visible even though she perched in the furthest seat, nearly bouncing. "We'll school 'em good!"
"Settle down, Rookie." Jane spared an amused glance each for Aileen and David. Her fellow veterans were doing a worse job than she of hiding their grins.
"Twenty seconds," Firebrand announced over the PA. "Opening bay doors. Please return all tray tables to the upright position."
The doors hissed and cracked. Pneumatics whirred and hummed, and down went the ramp. Jane glanced to the winches dropping lines.
"We drop down in two teams," she announced. "Bradford and White, with me. Quinn, take the other two and push up on the east side along the road. We'll loop through the back alleys and try to catch whatever guards we find in a crossfire somewhere around that gas station." She gestured over her shoulder, and her team managed to spot the building before Firebrand tucked in behind a tall apartment building. Jane thanked God for the Skyranger's active camouflage - without it, there wouldn't be any way to fly in stealthily.
"Five seconds." Firebrand waited four, by Jane's internal count, before her craft stabilized. "All right, ladies and David. Go!"
"Move it!" Despite her order, Jane paused to reach over her shoulder first. She let out a little sigh of relief when she felt the protruding hilt.
"That's a first," Aileen commented in passing, before jumping for her line. "She remembers!"
"Shut up," Jane ordered, even though the blonde was well out of hearing distance. She studiously ignored smirking David, instead claiming her own line and violating every single human instinct in her body by jumping for the ground at least two stories below.
As usual, the fall was both exhilarating and terrifying. Jane had never seen one of these lines break, but she was starting to have nightmares about it. Or what if she jumped for it...and missed? That thought was enough to make her shiver, even in the muggy coastal Californian heat.
Her boots hit the ground safely. Jane hurried away from the immediate drop zone, listening to David land right behind her, and Sylvie with him. The brunette sighted through the crude laser sight she'd duct-taped to her shard gun, looking for any thermal signatures or angry Adventers.
"Clear," Aileen announced, only a moment before Jane would have. The Specialist still had her...unique weapon, but it wasn't what it had been: Lily Shen might be insufferable, but she had managed to magnetize the Bolt Caster's projectiles and add an acceleration ring. The new Magnetic Bolt Caster probably hit harder than Jane's shard gun.
But it's still a bitch to reload, Jane thought, approvingly clutching her own weapon. Not like a classic shotgun.
"Four on the ground," Sylvie informed her. She glanced up. "Two coming down."
Charlotte landed on her toes, face very white. She fished her rifle from over her shoulder quickly, hurriedly advancing to leave the ropes behind. Jane eyed her.
"Problem?"
"I am not overly fond of heights," Charlotte confessed. She held up a hand before anyone could press her. "I will survive. I have dealt recently with many things I am less fond of."
That would do as understatements went. Jane cleared her throat a bit self-consciously. "Well, Aileen, take your team and make some noise on the street. As soon as-"
"Damn it!"
"What the-" Jane cut herself off and scurried backward as Mariah landed with a thud, collapsing to her hands and knees from the force. A moment later, the cause for her curse landed, and the brunette scrambled on all fours to recover it.
"My strap broke," she explained, in between what sounded like muttered Spanish - and not very pleasant Spanish. The girl claimed her mag-rifle, then hurried to rise. "Stupid..."
"Check your gear before dropping," Jane advised. The idea of one of Shen's weapon straps breaking so easily seemed absurd, but now wasn't the time to seize Mariah's gun and check to see whether she'd actually clipped both ends in place. "Now, I don't care if a snake slithers out of your boot and curls up in your nether regions, Mariah - if you raise your voice again on our stealth op, you'll wish I was a copperhead."
"Oh, shit!" Mariah at least kept her voice down, though she went red and white at the same time. "I'm sorry...ma'am!"
"Don't be sorry, just don't do it again." Jane turned back for the buildings, grateful that Aileen had taken her team and moved right along. David, dream that he was, had kept overwatch while she was handling the new fish. "Right. Gas station should be down that alley. Bradford, you're with me. You go where I say and do what I say, and nothing else." She hefted her gun, checked her axes again, and started off. "Fall in. I'll take point."
Boom!
Purple light flared around him. It sizzled and hissed, diluting into the air, and as it faded it revealed this new place where he was called to do his masters' bidding.
The Warlock hovered, surging with power, reaching out with his senses for a long moment. He felt, and he spoke, and he heard voices on the wind - the Elders first, but the Other beneath them, as always, murmuring at the edges of his hearing.
"You." He fell to earth, landing lightly and immediately marching up to the red-uniformed captain who had knelt at the sight of him. "Name?"
"Din Dourde," she said, still kneeling with rifle at her side. "I command this garrison."
"Do you?" The Warlock glanced over the patrol in this Dourde's wake: a few soldiers, a purifier released from Containment duty, and a pair of vipers. "Is this all your force?"
"No, Exalted One." Dourde still did not rise. "I have another squad stationed further out, sweeping the area around the transmitter."
"Yes. This transmitter." The Warlock glanced over his shoulder to the device, tucked in a seemingly-normal house. "They are coming, Captain Dourde. And we cannot allow them to destroy it."
Dourde seemed to take that in stride. "What would you have me and mine do?"
The Warlock smiled.
"Eyes on the patrol." That was Jane. Edward Gallant rapped his fingers on the railing of his command position, glaring at the holodisplay until it updated with the red icons of a lanky pink sectoid with its arms and legs too long for its gangly body, leading a lancer and a priest in steady march through the gas station. "Targets acquired."
"Probably a forward position. Hardly their main body." Bradford looked up. "Commander?"
Gallant mulled it over for a moment. Bypassing the scout position looked possible, but that would leave these units in his team's rear when the moment came.
Ironic, he thought. One of the best skills anyone commanding a stealth operation can have is knowing when to break concealment.
"Menace, this is Gallant." He took one last look at the holodisplay, then nodded more for himself than his troops. "Weapons free."
"Fire!"
Jane's shard gun roared the instant after she gave the word. She'd chosen her target carefully, and the priest screamed, tumbling head over heels. Her white armor turned yellow in a hurry, and the pavement for a sickening distance in all directions along with it. Jane couldn't muster much revulsion, though, not when the "blood" was so obviously alien and smelled so...clean.
The sectoid whirled. It pointed at her quite angrily, chittering and howling through its too-large teeth under frighteningly large eyes, before turning to scamper for shelter. Jane worked the pump on her shard gun, baring her teeth as David's magnetic cannon erupted mere seconds behind her, stitching the sectoid with dozens of accelerated rounds capable of shredding MEC armor in a godawful hurry.
There might have been enough of the alien left to fit in a shoebox.
"I got him!" Mariah's gun roared, and the lancer shrieked. But it wasn't a shriek of death, just pain and fury, as the rookie's well-intentioned volley ran headfirst - and wasn't that an ironic phrase just now? - into the creature's inhuman reflexes. The lancer was moving before his partners were dead, and Mariah only managed to wing him, blowing a chunk out of his left arm and spraying blood over the still-twitching corpse of the priest. It wasn't enough.
Click. Jane finished working the pump as the lancer's weapon came out. Just seeing the hateful electrified baton threw Carlos Mendoza into her head, and the brutality of his murder. She didn't let herself shiver - she couldn't. David was still turning his gun, so if she choked, she'd be the one with her throat ripped open-
"Stop!"
The voice echoed and rang with power and majesty that might have come from an Elder, and the lancer literally ground to a halt in his tracks, weapon flying from suddenly nerveless fingers. He howled, dropping to his knees and clutching at his head as purple whirled around him, driving knives into his skin. Jane's stomach twisted when she smelled burning meat and saw his skin melting off in a great pink stream.
The stun lancer collapsed, twitching out his last breaths and coughing up yellow blood. Jane decided to disable his communications set, in case he got the bright idea to call reinforcements.
The comms set was in his helmet.
Blam!
"Thanks," she said, working the pump again and ignoring Mister Atomized Head.
"It stinks." Sylvie looked quite surprised by that fact. "I killed a man and I am wound up about what it smells like."
"Bring one of those air freshener cans next time," Jane suggested, only half joking. "And don't get too hung up on killing a man - I doubt that thing's really the same as you and me." Idly, she kicked him.
"Would you say the same to Mox?"
Jane made a noise not even she could identify - like a cat hacking up a hairball.
"Just...just move." As a way to admit defeat without admitting defeat, it worked well. It at least let her turn her back on the junior psi-op and hurry toward the transmitter relay. She glanced to Aileen and Charlotte, tailing Sylvie by a good twenty meters with weapons ready, as if they expected more aliens to drop from the rooftops at any moment. "Fall in."
"My gun isn't sighted right," Mariah muttered, as she hurried to her spot at Jane's side. "I knew I had him."
"Sometimes they dodge." Jane left it at that, though she did elect to go over Mariah's gun herself back at base. It wasn't impossible something really was wrong with it - even if operator error seemed far more likely.
"Jane." Aileen hurried up, eyes on the roof of the nearest run-down house. "Charlotte thought she saw someone on the high ground."
"Nerves?" Jane cast a glance up that way herself.
"I don't think so. I feel like we're being watched." Aileen chewed her lip. "I didn't see anything, and haven't, but I don't believe for a minute we're alone out here - and it's not just Advent. Advent doesn't watch and linger."
"Agreed." Jane glanced at Charlotte, hanging back and examining her surroundings with a good deal of care. "Keep a weather eye out. Let me know if you see anything. Warn David and Sylvie. See if she can...sense anything."
"Bradford?"
"I'll call it in myself." Jane reached for her comm. Aileen sighed.
"No. The other Bradford."
"Oh. Right." Jane coughed. "I'll talk to her myself too."
"Got it." Aileen fell back a half-step, beckoning Sylvie and David over.
"Central, come in." Jane waved for Mariah, and the rookie hurried her way, frowning. "Possible contact report. Observer."
"Just watching?" Bradford didn't sound happy. Jane wasn't happy.
"So far." She glanced worriedly at the nearest roof, then at Mariah. The girl nodded to show she'd heard what Jane was telling her father. "We'll keep a weather eye out."
"Roger that, one-five. Anything else?"
"Well..." Jane paused as she approached the data point. She frowned at the nearest ground-floor window, set inside an unassuming little house that probably belonged to someone without a lot of money. "Eyes on the objective."
"You see the relay?" Oh, joy, that was Shen. Jane still didn't like her, even if she no longer had the urge to punch her. Being part of the officer's club and its game nights might have actually been working after all. "It should come apart quickly under fire. Take it out."
"Roger that, Avenger." Jane hefted her gun. "All right. Mariah, let's-"
Movement. Jane spun as she saw movement flash by on a roof: purple movement, red movement, deliberate movement. It wasn't a flag or a hanging vine, of that she was sure. For that one instant, Jane almost thought she caught a face in the lurking darkness.
"Up there!" she warned. "I see-"
Blam!
The noise was horrendous. It was like ten thousand screaming souls, pounding with the bass of an overcompensating amateur band. Jane's ears stung, and she added her own voice to the echoing roar after only a moment. Thankfully, she wasn't the only one. Charlotte fell to all fours, and Sylvie dropped her rifle to cover her ears, shrieking.
"Come forth, my minions!" howled a deep, terrifying voice. It reminded Jane of another, and chills ran up her spine that had nothing to do with the racket. "Rise for your master!"
"What the hell is that?" demanded Mariah, as violet light shot up from the ground on all sides. The world vibrated, but Jane kept her feet, swearing colorfully as hands burst from the grass and dirt.
"They're..." She broke off there, because she wasn't at all sure what the glowing spectral forms were. They were obviously psionic, but they looked human...but they shambled and... "Some kind of psi-zombies!"
"Open fire!" Aileen cried, before unloading her one projectile into the first one she saw. The thing looked terribly surprised - but then a shot as big as its own foot ripped through it in a flash, and it disintegrated into glowing purple shards of light. David threw himself flat as Aileen's shot carried right on through, nearly clipping his head.
"Are you insane?" he demanded, though he swept up his gun and aimed at the second one in a flash. Jane covered her head with one hand, bringing her shard gun up on the third one - the final one, it looked like - just as it howled and glowed all over with more of that hateful light. Somehow, letting it finish what it was about seemed like a bad idea to her. Her shard gun went off at the same time as David's cannon.
Unlike Aileen's kill, and unlike David's...Jane's exploded.
"Fuck!" she cried, as the blast picked her up and flung her like a wet kitten. She tumbled through the air, slamming right into Sylvie. The pair crashed, tinted purple by the rising light cloud from the zombie's detonation. Around them, David stumbled and Aileen fell, while Mariah leaned on a bench for support. Only Charlotte kept her feet, swearing in her own language.
"Up!" Jane rolled off of Sylvie, grabbing for her shard gun. "There's no way that's all of them-"
"Mor balaten!"
"Oh, shit," Bradford breathed. Gallant didn't think he'd spoken aloud...and he couldn't disagree with the sentiment.
"Advent forces are occupying the house," alerted a tech who thought Gallant's eyes didn't work. "There's another group across the street holding down a crossfire. A viper in each group, a couple of troopers...an officer..."
Thud.
"And that," Gallant finished, looking at the enormous, looming blue figure standing carelessly in the open ground before the transmitter house. "What the hell is it?"
"It looks...it looks like the-"
"The Elders have chosen me, as they have chosen you, Commander Gallant."
"That damn channel!" That was the first thing out of Gallant's mouth. He clutched his ear, but at least this blast didn't have the feedback pulse that came with the Assassin's during the Switzerland op.
That thought led him to another...but he wasn't the first to voice it.
"That's got to be another of the Chosen," Bradford whispered.
"We are destined to serve at their side together, Commander," the Chosen continued, with an almost crooning note of longing in his deep voice. "To bring their vision to this world - and beyond!" He chuckled. "Come now. Allow yourself to be reclaimed."
"Not likely." Gallant didn't know whether the Chosen could hear him, and he didn't care. His eyes turned to the tactical situation. "If White can-"
"Sir, they're caught in a crossfire with a Chosen looming," Bradford snapped. Gallant cut his eyes at the XO.
"Kelly's handled worse." And he wasn't even thinking about Switzerland.
"But-"
Gallant could fill in the blanks on the but. He even opened his mouth to counterattack, bridge staff watching or not. Bradford could not let the fact that Mariah was in the group jeopardize his tactical sense.
The argument Gallant expected never materialized. Something else did the job instead.
"What the hell?" Aileen demanded, as noise erupted from the far house. Across the street, sudden Advent shouts broke the stillness, and guns withdrew from the window. Was it just her imagination, or was that purple light inside? Was that a machine gun she heard?
"David!" Jane wasn't one to let grass grow under her feet, and her boyfriend didn't need his hand held either. Up came his grenade launcher, and in the moment's confusion the sudden distraction back of them won, the Grenadier let out a Christmas present from Hell that smashed some unlucky suburbanite's window like a bad baseball throw.
Baseballs didn't usually explode.
"Sylvie, Bradford!" Jane waved the pair in her wake, already starting forward as fire seared out and glass and splinters rained and Advent screamed. "We've got the transmitter! Fall in!"
"Purple hair guy!" Aileen knew it was neither politically nor grammatically correct - his hair wasn't purple - but it was the first thing she let fly. The second came out at several thousand feet per second, accelerated with a furious whine to what Aileen fondly imagined to be the speed of sound.
"Insolence!" cried Purple Hair Guy, right before the Bolt Caster shot hit him in the chest. It knocked him off his feet, too, and he went through the ground-floor window underneath the house's new crater. Aileen scrambled to reload, hoping to be even more insolent at the first opportunity.
"Advent!" Charlotte cried. Her mag-rifle went off a moment later, and Aileen bared her teeth at the effectiveness of the rookie's fire. It tore into the open scar in the house's side, tearing down a pair of troopers in a flash.
"Keep it up!" Aileen shouted. She turned, bringing her Bolt Caster to bear on the far house. She spotted a viper that wasn't caught up in whatever was about on the inside, and her power cell hummed as she hit the trigger.
Ka-thwam! It made such a satisfying noise, and that was just the launching - not even the impact that ripped the snake's head from its shoulders.
"Nice shot!"
Aileen nearly dropped the Bolt Caster. She didn't, because she was too busy diving behind a bench for cover, but shock still ran her veins. The figure appeared in a flash, bursting free from the window through which she'd shot the viper, doused in Advent blood and running with purpose along the porch roof for the next window.
"Who the hell-" Aileen broke off as the figure smashed through the glass without a care in the world. Maybe that huge metal helmet he wore was part of that blitheness.
"Fire in the hole!"
"No, dammit!" Aileen waved David down a heartbeat before he unleashed his next frag. "There's a friendly in that building!"
"There's a Jane in the other one-"
"Then shoot something with that overcompensating cannon!" Aileen ordered. "Suppressive fire to the south! Charlotte, keep supporting the breach team!" She took more careful aim as David hit the trigger, spewing hate in gold-tracer streams. Anyone his fire flushed out...
Ka-thwam!
"Flashbang, through the door!"
"Out!" Sylvie Richard ripped the ring free and tossed the little device, then ducked to the side, grabbing for her rifle. A moment later, the harsh bark and white pulse of light changed the world, and she heard Advent cries.
"Go!" Jane led from the front, and she was the first through the door. She forewent her shard gun altogether, and instead her axe - imbued now with the same circuits as the new arc blades - flashed, rending someone's chest in two.
Sylvie's rifle roared before she was even consciously aware her feet had carried her in, or that she'd spotted a target. The captain in her sights howled, staggering back with one hand over her eyes and the other on her thigh. Unfortunately, she made the window, and she dove free for cover before Sylvie could finish her.
"That's not a problem..." The psi-op hung back, letting Mariah pass her, whooping and howling and firing in quick bursts. Sylvie reached for her amp, and one pull on the trigger summoned Power with a capital P from the air around her. It glowed and seared, hissing sparks where it hung on her palm, and she reached out with her senses. She found the captain, but also...
Sylvie released the power with a cry. It hissed out, picking and prodding, until it hit on what it was looking for.
"Heads down!" she warned, before diving through a side door, hands over hers. She saw Jane and Mariah duck...in the instant before the grenade she'd found on the next soldier's belt blew up.
"Ah!" Sylvie rolled, coughing as the blast hurled dust into the air. She heard screaming, but both Mariah and Jane's angry voices sounded over the carnage, so she knew they were alright. There couldn't be many more of them left in here, could there?
Sylvie reclaimed her amp and her rifle. She pushed herself to one knee, groaning and working out her shoulder. However many there were, she would deal with it. That was why she'd joined XCOM in the first-
Her thoughts ground to a halt.
"Central?" She was more hesitant about opening the channel to Avenger than Jane or Quinn, but this seemed like the proper time for it. "I have eyes on the transmitter."
"Are you clear?" That wasn't Bradford. It was the Commander.
"I...I don't see anyone." Sylvie glanced around, spotting nothing but a shattered window. "I am clear."
"Destroy the relay. Our window is closing." Bradford now, very stern and commanding. "You're running out of time."
"Oui. Consider it done." Sylvie raised her rifle, sighted in on the smooth, almost plant-like device, and hit the trigger.
Blam! Blam! Her fire blew chunks out of it, and sparks flew. Electricity crackled on now-exposed wires, and Sylvie fired another burst. This must have hit something important, because the transmitter shook and cracked, and finally its upper half burst apart in a surge of flame. Refuse fell, smoking and sparking, and Sylvie hurriedly stepped back to avoid it.
"It's down," she alerted the Avenger. "I destroyed it."
"The transmission is offline," Bradford confirmed. "Good work, Menace."
"Merci?" Sylvie wasn't entirely sure what she was supposed to say. Deciding actions spoke louder than words, she turned. "How many thermal signatures do you-"
A hand caught her face before she'd finished her turn, and Sylvie sucked in sudden breath.
"I wonder how much you know?" the Chosen mused, before power burst over Sylvie's forehead and seared into her brain.
"Go!" Aileen waved David off, and the Grenadier rushed into the house. Whatever was going on in there was loud and vicious, and she had her own problems. "As for you..."
Ka-thwam!
"Don't you run at me," Aileen snapped, as the stun lancer, now heartless - literally - tumbled and rolled twenty further feet. She shoved a new bolt into place and finished the reset process. "Don't you dare run at me, bitch-"
Crash! The door on the far house came apart, and an Advent trooper tumbled through, screaming. He at least wound up behind a car, which saved him from Aileen's next shot. He scrambled for his gun, shouting some kind of plea for backup-
He burst from the building, vaulting over the car with a single smooth flip. His gauntlets opened without the slightest visible command, and Aileen's eyes widened as blades nearly four feet in length sprung from each one. They flashed, ripping through the air, and he neatly bisected the trooper at the waist, flinging his two halves in different directions.
"Who the hell are you?" Aileen demanded, as the helmeted, purple-clad, calm-as-pie newcomer's gauntlets sealed back up.
"Chosen, inside the house!" Aileen lost all interest in the newcomer then, because Jane's harsh bark filled her earpiece. "Sylvie's down!"
Bang! Bang! Bang-bang!
Aileen hesitated. She glanced to the car and the newcomer, now crouched in cover. The Irishwoman hesitantly lifted the Bolt Caster, looking for whoever it was laying down mag-fire-
"Go!" It wasn't a he. Contralto maybe, but that was definitely a woman's voice. The helmet had no eyeholes, but somehow Aileen got the impression of a wink or grin as the figure glanced her way. "I've got this!"
"And how did you hear my earpiece?" But Aileen wasn't going to linger, not when the figure produced a pistol that could fire for ten years at a spell and set to work laying down suppressive fire on the last Adventer. She turned for the transmitter. "I'm coming in. Come on, Nessie - stand by for medical detail."
"She's alive." Those two words sent a shiver of relief through the bridge. Gallant allowed himself a quiet sigh.
"Thank God!" Julie Richardson allowed herself a good bit more than that. She leaned on Da-Xia Liang for a minute, and the Grenadier wrapped an arm around her shoulders. "Thank God."
"Her condition?" Gallant gripped the rail tightly. "The Chosen? The stranger?"
"She's stable." Quinn sounded certain of that much, at least. "I don't know about anything else. Medically speaking, she's just unconscious. The Chosen..."
"Made a clean getaway as I entered the room," Jane picked up. "I got a shot into him and it seemed to piss him off, but he just blew apart into purple light and vanished."
"Teleportation," Tygan muttered. "Just like the Assassin demonstrated."
"Lovely. Then we have to assume he got what he wanted." Gallant growled in the back of his throat. "And?"
"And whoever the newcomer is...she's gone." Jane made a very similar noise. "Just vanished, leaving bodies in her wake."
"There's someone else out there," Shen muttered. "But who? And who knew about all of this?"
"I don't know, Lily," Gallant muttered. "But I'm sure whoever it is will be in touch sooner than we'd all really prefer." He lifted his voice. "Pack it up and return to base. I want Sylvie in the medbay for a checkup as soon as possible."
Author's Note 29: Man, I Wish I Hadn't Had To Trim This
It was supposed to be longer. It didn't work with my outline for later parts. Kill your darlings, fellow writers: put guns to their heads and ignore their pitiable wails. Kind of like I do with my characters. Don't believe me? Oh...you will all hate me by the time Season Two is over.
I hate the dodge mechanic. I don't remember if I've talked about it before, but I hate the dodge mechanic with a passion. No one asked for it, no one wanted it, and it adds literally nothing to the game but another random element - the last thing XCOM needs. Especially since it's not listed in any of the shot menus, so you never know what your odds really are. Maybe you have a 99% critical - or maybe there's a 100% dodge chance so you actually have a 0% critical chance. You're not entitled to that information, evidently.
Do I sound bitter? I am. The patched version of the dodge mechanic is...acceptable...but far from good. I don't like it for beans, but it isn't actively gamebreaking now, if that makes sense. But I started playing before it was patched, and that original version...Jesus, archons and stun lancers. If you know, you know. If you don't know, get down on your knees and thank the XCOM gods for their mercy. Maybe do it anyway.
Until next time, Vigilo Confido.
