XCOM: Tour Of Duty

Chapter 1: Tour of Duty

1st March 2040 1840hrs

"Fuck me… If it ain't Ravern Shen himself"

The voice behind the door and peephole of the XCOM 2-man bunk was familiar, and Ravern Shen saw it open to reveal a friendly face. One which he had known for more than ten years. The other man gave Shen a bear hug, grinning broadly.

"What are you doing here? XCOM run out of meat?" Shen jested as he punched the other man's chest, seeing that Lee also wore the grey and blue of a XCOM trooper, the shoulders marked with the rank of an XCOM private – a single silver anchor. The anchor also meant that Lee, like Shen, had passed the XCOM Selections now being conducted worldwide as the Second Alien War became a open secret. Since XCOM only admitted volunteers, Lee must have signed on the dotted line of his own free will.

"Temporary madness I guess. Especially after the joys of Selection… I must have been out of my frigging mind when I signed up at the XCOM recruitment drive in Sydney." Navier Lee replied with a mock shake of his head as he helped Shen move his personal kit bag into the room. The Singapore-born trooper had served his standard two-and-a-half years as a sergeant in the SAF (Singapore Armed Forces) before getting his degree in Sydney and migrating there. Shen, on the other hand, had gone back to his birthplace after earning his degree in Sydney, signing up with the local XCOM division for Selection. Both men, like all Singaporean males, carried reservist ranks in the SAF.

Lee had spoken of Selection casually, but it had been anything but casual. XCOM attracted everyone with military experience. Or rather, everyone who thought they had military experience in the way that American Idol attracted everyone who thought they could sing. Two months of Selection had trimmed the herd to a 20 percent passing rate. Like Idol finalists, some dross inevitably got through, but most of the men and the few women who had passed Selection were good people. Paying for the training of wash-outs cost XCOM money and effort… but evidently loosing or damaging expensive XCOM equipment on lousy soldiers when they inevitably got themselves blown away in combat was the greater of two evils.

Both men had been posted to SporeCom, which XCOM pronounced as "S-Pore-Com". Evidently, the original name of SingCom had been deemed too similar to a telecommunications megacorporation based on the island. Faced with a possible lawsuit and the prospect of additional unwanted publicity, XCOM had chosen to rename the base instead. The alloy and plastic floating base hovered at neutral buoyancy a hundred meters under the surface off the south of the island, the location a secret to both xenoc detection and the ever-hungry press. Ever since New York got shaken up by the big alien attack, the Second Alien War had become a typical media circus… Selection drill sergeants had had to smash many a miniature camera underfoot before throwing their former-owners-cum-undercover-reporters out of land-based XCOM training camps. Media in disguise were always trying to find out the location of the secret XCOM floating bases.

SporeCom was the second floating base built by XCOM. The first, USACom – formerly named AtlantiCom – had been built off America. No surprises there. Placed within the Atlantic Ocean, USACom was the premiere XCOM strike and recovery base with the latest equipment, best officers and most subs. SporeCom officers had often remarked bitterly in more private and not-so-sober moments that their base should have been renamed Second-PriorityCom instead.

But such times were few and far between. XCOM was made out of professionals, and the officers knew that the top contributors always got the biggest slice of the cake. Fairness only existed in a fairy-tale world.

Which explained the second-hand aquajet rifle – long retired from USACom inventory lists – that now sat in the weapons rack beside the door as Shen unpacked his uniforms and personal belongings. XCOM had began with a centralised armsquote in the previous war… but practical experience had shown that alien attacks could happen with barely any forewarning, and weapons worked best when they were in the hands of soldiers as quickly as possible before the shooting started. There was the slight chance of giving suicidal soldiers the tools to carry out their ideas, but since Selection had weeded out all those who couldn't deal with military realities early, there wasn't much concern for that. Officer fragging, or the murder of officers perceived as incompetent by disgruntled men, was likewise of little issue in XCOM.

Shen finished unpacking and pulled the rifle from its rack, automatically stripping and cleaning the weapon with the sure ease of long practice. The ready-action magazines had their tungsten-cored rounds pulled out and inspected before being loaded into other empty magazines. This practice of 'mag-rotation' prevented the springs of ready magazines from being overly compressed and causing jams. Similiarly, inspecting the rounds for dents prevented a aquajet round that had 'lost its steam' – meaning that the gas capsule that drove and provided the bullet with its "supercavitation" water-shooting ability had fizzled out – malfunctioning at the wrong time. The AJ-42 aquajet rifle was a simple, reliable weapon that was designed to work even after rough handling… but no weapon ever suffered from over-attention. In fact, the true mark of a soldier wasn't his ability to shoot. Any armchair commando could shoot. Rather, it was the ability to keep his weapons clean and functioning that differentiated soldiers from chaff.

As Shen cleaned, he allowed Lee to fill him in on events. Navier had come in only a day before, SporeCom currently taking in new recruits to replace experienced soldiers that had been transferred to USACom to patch up depleted front-line platoons. There had been some grumbling over that – the transfers had caused good sergeants and officers to be separated with their SporeCom platoon. Colonel Noel Ng, the top officer of SporeCom, had been pissed to high heaven, but to no avail. The XCOM CIC Commander Franklin G. Bush wanted experienced people to replace those killed or incapacitated in New York and he wanted them now, and Noel was too good an officer to know when gold xenoc-skull shoulderboards trumped twin-chain ones.

A couple of sergeants left behind had been commissioned to lieutenants – XCOM promoted only from the enlisted file, refusing to take inexperienced officers fresh from OCS – to make up the numbers. Colonel Noel retained command of the SporeCom Platoon 1, the 14-man formation that rode the transporter Triton-3 to combat. He had a captain as second-in-command, and 4 sergeants to keep eight privates and corporals under control. The Singaporean colonel had been chagrined to find out that USACom platoons rode into battle with experienced sergeants as line troopers – rejecting any no-kill privates. In SporeCom, those sergeants could have been more usefully employed as squad and fireteam leaders instead.

Shen and Lee were assigned to the SporeCom Platoon 2, a reserve formation that was only a team in name. In reality, XCOM preferred to have only 1 active platoon per base, wringing out replacements from the secondary platoon to make up losses. However, recent worldwide increase in Alien attacks had caused more attention to be paid to the secondary platoon, including the assignment of Trition-4 full time to it should the need for a deployment arrive when Platoon 1 was out on a mission. In short, it meant that Platoon 2 was a thrown-together team that was just there as a second option to the premiere USACom platoons and SporeCom's Platoon 1.

SporeCom Platoon 2 had only 1 officer – Captain Pierpoint – in overall command. He had authority over the 13 others in his platoon as well as personal command of 1st Squad, the 7 man section that comprised of the 4 man 1st Assault Team and 3-man 1st Support Team. Squad B mirrored A, having its own assault and support teams. Lee passed Shen a list of the current known platoon estab. The latter looked at it.

Platoon 2

Assigned Craft: Trition 4

1st Squad

1st Assault Team
Team leader: Captain Nick Pierpoint (Platoon Commander)
Point: Private Ravern Shen
Rifleman: Corporal James Calley
Breacher: Private Jason Chan

1st Support Team
Sniper: Corporal Vermont Smith (1st Squad 2IC)
Gunner: Private Misha Alexseyev
Missileman: Private Navier Lee

2nd Squad

2nd Assault Team
Team leader: Platoon Sergeant Abd. Bin Faizal (Platoon Sergeant)
Point: Private Ryan Koh
Rifleman: Private Jorban Singh
Breacher: Private Charles Lim

2nd Support Team
SniperCorporal Casper Van Dyke (2nd Squad 2IC)
GunnerCorporal Hideki Sato
MissilemanPrivate Ventral Thames

Note to all SporeCom personnel: As XC-155 Tactical Guided Missile Launchers have not been issued to SporeCom, Missilemen of all Support Squads are assigned to their respective Assault Teams as Point 2, with standard Scout/Spotter thus referred to as Point 1. Accordingly, the position of Squad second-in-command shall be passed from Missilemen to Sharpshooters instead.

"Not only do we not get nukers, it seems like XCOM has decided that 2 pointmen are better than one. My ass will be hanging in the wind right beside you while our supporting intreprid comrades do their best to not blow off the wrong heads." Lee gave a sour look. "USACom is hoarding all the nukes as usual. The same old 'Inexperienced personnel should not be issued with TGML systems' excuse my ass".
"At least our armsquote isn't dumb enough to issued us with scout-standard pistols, I think. According to some of my drill instructors, an aquajet pistol won't even scratch a lobster. Hell, if you are lucky, the bastard might not even notice it and leave you alone." Shen replied as he scrutinised the list.
"Lobsters?" Lee snorted. "Shit, I don't think we can even handle a bunch of greenskins or bigheads. We're using USACom castoffs which our mighty friends would probably donate to a museum if we hadn't been here begging for scraps. Our brave Captain's rating is a 2nd Class Gunner… not an assaulter. So much for being able to lead from the front."

Shen recalled the extensive XCOM ratings system that had been devised after the First Alien War to assist with the problem of assigning the proper jobs to the proper people. The thing was, different soldiers had different strengths and abilities. Some could distinguish and fire on the correct targets in a shorter time, others could shoot the eye out of a needle with a carefully aimed shot, while others might have bodybuilder genes that enable them to easily lug loads that put down lesser men. Civilian life made little difference between each soldier's strengths and weaknesses… but tiny differences could mean life and death on the sword-edge of anti-alien combat. The old XCOM system only distinguished between rank – and thus leadership ability – when manpower officers assigned jobs to new people, leading to unbalanced platoons, squads and teams. A better system was required, though only implemented near the end of that war.

The new Ratings system added a cloth patch on every soldier's shoulder under his enlisted rank (officers wore their rank on shoulder straps). Each trainee began with a 'sleek sleeve' devoid of any decorations. Since reactions – the measure of a soldier's speed in analysing the tactical situation, distinguishing the most dangerous targets from civilians and teammates, and opening fire – were the hardest to train compared with other attributes, Selection prized reaction speed, sifting the trainees into Marksmen Troopers, Troopers, Combatants and Grunts accordingly. MT's wore a black horizonal lightning streak, Troopers wore a pair of black wings, Combatants wore half a wing, while Grunts (a recent category introduced due to lowered entry requirements during the horrible losses of February) wore a small black squashed-looking X. Everyone else was washed out of Selection.

That was only the first step. Subsequently, rating tests conducted daily allowed one to display improvements on their shoulder patches. For the Sniper ratings path alone, MT's went on to Sharpshooter, Sharpshooter Master, Sniper and finally XCOM Sniper, with 4 subclasses per stage (vanilla, 3rd, 2nd and 1st Class except XCOM Sniper) making up a total of 14 different classifications for sharpshooters, each rank harder to qualify for then the previous one with added accuracy and strength requirements. The shoulder patch added more details as one's rating improved – a sniper crosshair above the streak at Sharpshooter, a banner below it at SSM, a tab above the crosshair at SNP and a grand X background to polish it off at the grand rating of XCOM Sniper. The crosshair, banner and tab were also coloured black, bronze, silver and gold to indicate subclass level as well.

People from the Sniper path usually became team sharpshooters, the soldiers who looked for high ground with wide fields of fire to cover the assault teams as the latter advanced. Both Shen and Lee also agreed that they were the prima-donnas who always thought that their shit don't stink.

Troopers had a choice of 2 different career rating paths – the Assault or Rifle paths – depending on whether they were better in close-range eyeball-to-eyeball assault or medium-range accurate rifle fire. The assault nuts became Assaulters, Commandos, Special Forces and XCOM Shocktroopers. Straight-shooters went on to Rifleman, Guardsmen, Rangers and XCOM Stormtroopers. Men of the Assault path tended to become Pointmen in squads, while Rifle path walkers became Riflemen. While snipers wore crosshairs, Assaulters were marked with crossed lightning bolts and Rifle path troopers wore the crossed rifles of infantry.

The position of Breacher were usually taken by former Combatants who earned their right up the Pioneer path, with ratings at Pioneer, Ordinance Specialists, Heavy Weapons Specialists and XCOM Weapons Master. Wearing a gauntlet patch on their shoulders, Breachers were usually men of bigger brawn who carried, in addition to their standard AJ-42, the heavy XC-79 Breachers (The cumbersome weapons were popularly known as Bitches. It should be noted that calling a Pioneer a Bitch is highly discouraged given the Pioneer emphasis on brute strength. The weapon was fair game, but the man was not.) that enabled a squad to blow a surprise entry 'mousehole' through a USO's side or door. Pioneer-path soldiers also used to take up the Missileman spot, since missilemen carried and fired the XC-155 TGML, otherwise known as the Nuker. Aside from the emphasis on strength, the path also demanded accuracy… A badly-aimed nuke wasn't funny at all.

However, the role had been reserved lately by the squad's second in command, XCOM officers realising that the support team also needed a commander who could communicate with and support the assault team/squad leader leader. Besides, it took responsibility and experience to judge where and when to fire the dangerous (and more importantly, expensive) nukes.

Finally, Grunts moved up in life to become Gunners, Machine Gunners, Heavy Gunners and XCOM Heavy Gunners. Marked with crossed cannons, the soldiers who walked the path emphasized accuracy and strength, while giving reactions a lower priority. Their job was to support the snipers in engaging targets spotted by pointmen. While the fast-reaction snipers gave the ability to take down targets of opportunity, the heavy machine gunners could provide far more suppressive fire, tearing up both cover and aliens with sustained heavy bolter rounds.

Both Shen and Lee currently rated as Troopers, their service records marking them as good candidates for the Assault path. Unfortunately, coupled with their private ranks, this meant that the pointman position naturally went to them.

As with the previous alien war, pointmen rarely lasted long.