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"Nothing in life is to be feared, it is only to be understood. Now is the time to understand more, so that we may fear less."
~Marie Curie
Chapter Four: Echelon
"ALERT!" Red lights flashed and a siren blared. Edward Gallant ground to a halt, inhaling sharply as the display showed no signs of ebbing. All eyes in the room turned to him, from the techs working on the computers and the big central holographic display to a few rough-looking characters who had to be soldiers. "UNAUTHORIZED PRESENCE DETECTED!"
"Commander!" From the throng he appeared, Bradford himself, with an eye-roll and a sigh. "Give me a second. Activate Echelon Protocol!"
"ATTENTION," the PA warned, as the lights flashed blue and the siren turned to a chime. "SENIOR COMMAND EXCHANGE CONFIRMED."
"Flashy," Gallant muttered, stumping into the blue light.
"I had wanted that to be a tad more ceremonious," Bradford groused. "Forced my hand, sir."
"Ceremony doesn't win wars." Gallant looked around at the techs and personnel...and how all of them still eyed him. "Good afternoon, then."
"Sir," a few of them chorused. One or two saluted.
The others watched: and they didn't watch their Commander. No. No, they watched a half-bent lanky man limping on a cane, taking deep breaths as he tried not to aggravate his heart too badly.
They watched a cripple claim lordship over them, and Gallant saw questions and uncertainty in their eyes.
"Don't you all have work to do?" Bradford demanded. "We have a mission, soldiers: we can't all celebrate the Commander's return yet."
"Celebrate," Gallant muttered, as the crowd much more energetically saluted and acknowledge his XO's order. "They don't want me here."
"They just haven't seen you in action yet. They'll come around." Bradford redirected his attention by waving to another set of computers. "Like I said, I wanted that to be a bit more ceremonious, but we've got something. Local resistance forces found an Advent shipment moving through the wilderness between a few of their cities."
"And?" Gallant followed the XO, trying not to hobble. Trying to give off an aura of strength. He knew they were still watching, trying to gauge him.
"And in this convoy is something Shen's been after for a while." Bradford moved on far too quickly for Gallant to react to that name being dropped. "A magnetic power converter. Alien tech. It's something that can help us adapt our tech to the alien power elements running through this place. If we can get our hands on it, we'll finally be up and running...and we can give the aliens a real war for a change."
"I see." Gallant let out a breath. "I assume you've picked out a squad?"
"Yes, sir. They're almost to the drop point."
"Good." Gallant looked around. "Where do I stand?"
"Here, sir." Bradford gestured. "It's just like the old days, and I'm right here if you have tactical questions."
"Right." Gallant idly noted that here, sir was up a small flight of stairs, and he promised to murder Bradford someday. Somehow, with heroic effort, he made it up four steps without any overt display of weakness.
"Firebrand, this is Central," Bradford said, touching his earpiece. "You're cleared to deploy."
"Roger that." Jane Kelly stood, which was a difficult feat in a Skyranger rocking in the wind and twisting under Advent sensor overlaps. She grabbed one of the overhead rings, hanging with one arm while she fished for her shotgun with the other.
"Right." Aileen stood next, nervously looking over her rifle. "We'll get them. We'll get them good."
"Arrogant, aren't you?"
Jane glared at the speaker and third man of their detail, a fellow with scrappy beard and mustache, muscular and proud. His accent placed his heritage in a heartbeat, too.
"Yeah?" Jane demanded. "That's my friend you're scolding, mate."
"And what about it?" the Australian demanded. "She's fresh. I see it in her eyes."
"That's no cause to be a dick, Rookie..." Jane glanced at his uniform "...White."
"Yeah, let's see if you still say that when you've had your entire team shot out around you," White snapped. Jane's eye twitched.
"You want to talk about that-"
"Settle down back there," Firebrand ordered, as the Skyranger pulled to a stop. "Drop is in ten seconds. Stand by."
"Right." Jane nodded to the fourth man. "On your feet, Nunez."
"Okay." Pablo Nunez stood with White, and Jane paused to pat Aileen's arm.
"We're going to be fine," she assured her friend, as the bay doors hissed open. "Just fine."
"Five seconds."
Jane checked her gun, watching as the lines snapped out from their housing, falling toward the desert below. It had to be two hundred feet...and then it was abruptly less, as Firebrand finished bringing her pride and joy into position.
"Jane!" Aileen smacked her arm. Jane jumped.
"What?"
"You forgot your-"
"Go! Go!" Firebrand waved from the cockpit. "Leave tips in your seats!"
"Come on!" White was first, and then Nunez. They caught their lines and slid, weapons hanging from shoulder straps, angling for a set of rocks off the main roadway.
"Jane, your sword!"
"Oh, damn it!" Jane turned and angrily grabbed the scabbard from behind her seat. She hurriedly threw the belt around her shoulder, letting Aileen cinch it in place without asking. "This stupid thing-"
"What's the holdup, Kelly?" Firebrand demanded. Jane caught her line in a vise grip.
"Nothing." Then she jumped, trying to ignore White's glare from the ground as she flew out into open air. Aileen was a heartbeat behind her, and while the boys covered their drop, the girls fast-roped down into sand scattered by the backblast from Firebrand's engines.
"Took your time getting ready," White snapped. "Your makeup not look right?"
"I'm gonna put you through a cactus," Jane warned, hefting her shotgun. "You don't have a sword to lug around."
"Settle down," Aileen ordered. She pushed past Jane and White both, peeking out from behind the rocks while the Skyranger rose, shooting off to a standby position ten clicks out. "I make six vehicles. Three cars, two vans."
"Cars are probably contractors. Workers." Nunez settled in beside her, scouring the roadway himself, and Jane figured it was a good idea to take a look. She spent a moment confirming Aileen's count.
"Vans will be Advent soldiers, then," White muttered. "Where are the Resistance fighters?"
"Firebrand?" Jane checked her earpiece. "Do you have a visual on the friendlies?"
"I see smoke up north. Can't raise them." She paused for a moment. "That's a lot of smoke."
"Right. While the main Advent unit is tied up dealing with them, we'll strike down here." Jane couldn't bring herself to voice the most likely possibility: that Advent was merely mopping up what was left of the Resistance saboteurs.
"Then what are we waiting on?" Nunez wondered. He rose. "I'm going for the first car. Someone cover me."
"Squad is moving in," Bradford reported. "Firebrand is confirming multiple KIA up to the north. The Resistance team is either down or in full retreat."
"Lovely." Gallant clutched the rail tightly, watching the little blue dots moving on the holodisplay. "I want Quinn with Nunez, pushing up the left flank. Put White and Kelly on the right."
"Sir." Bradford touched his headset. "Pair off. White, Kelly, push the right side. Nunez, you're with Quinn on the left. Commander's orders."
"I want to know the instant they see anything alive down there." Gallant narrowed his eyes. "I doubt Advent will just let us have the converter."
He was aware of the eyes on him. The bridge personnel made a show of their duties, but any instant they didn't have critical tasks to complete, they turned their gaze his way. Julie Richardson and a few other off-mission soldiers hung in the doorway, arms folded or clasped behind their backs, eyes flicking from display to Commander and back. All souls waited, gauging what kind of leader he was.
If Gallant was to win their respect and loyalty, he had to show them why he deserved it.
"Come on," he muttered, falling back on his experience in the Old War. "Where the hell are they?"
"Coming up by the first van." Jane paused at the corner, then peeked out. "No hostiles in sight."
"Clear behind." White kept it studiously professional, which Jane was happy with. He scanned with rifle upraised, a finger close to the trigger at all times. "I don't like this quiet."
"Contact." That was Aileen's voice. "Advent forces sighted."
"Where?" Jane demanded. "On the left?"
"No," White muttered. "In Canada."
"Shut up." Jane hurried around the van, checking the left side for motion. "I don't see any-"
"Get down!" White seized her hand, and in an instant, they both thumped in before the nose of a big Advent truck, lying dormant with her engine riddled with bullet holes. Jane glared.
"What the hell was that about?"
"I see more of them," White snapped, popping back to his feet. He peered around the truck, rifle down. "It looks like a sectoid and a soldier."
"Yeah?" Jane popped up too, and she examined the black-clad soldier with red symbols on his armor, trailing in the wake of... "Oh. So that's what they look like."
"Never seen one?" White wondered, curling his lip. Jane didn't dignify him with a response, instead examining the lanky humanoid figure, pink-skinned and naked save for the bracer on its arm. Jane suspected it was a psionic amplifier, and a backup weapon as well. Only the sectoid's head shape was undeniably inhuman, and its four fingers.
"We've got an officer and a grunt over here," Aileen reported.
"That has to be most of them." Jane clambered to her feet, and she checked her shotgun one last time. "Permission to engage?"
"Permission to engage?"
Edward Gallant breathed out. "Do it."
"Sir..." Bradford hesitated. "Sir, we've spotted several pockets of the enemy. It might be best if we concentrate our force to ambush one before-"
"If we can see them, they'll see us trying to move." Gallant glared at the holomap. "Give the order to engage, Central."
"Commander, we can-"
"Engage the enemy," Gallant snapped. "That's an order, Mister Bradford."
Bradford paused. Gallant glared him down from his high position, gaze sharpening.
Eyes bored into him from across the control room.
"...roger that, sir." Bradford touched his headset. "Menace one-five, this is Central. Permission granted. Wipe them out."
Jane squeezed the trigger.
Blam!
"Gotcha!" she cried, as buckshot ripped into the Advent soldier on patrol. He tumbled in a spray of orange and yellow, splaying out over a discarded supply crate with a shriek of something about toucans.
Then the sectoid shrieked, and it scuttled low, dodging White's burst of hot lead.
"Damn it! That thing's moving-"
"I've got it!" Jane brought her gun around, but her snap shot missed, and recoil nearly bowled her over. 'This gun-"
Bang! Bang! That was weapons-fire, erupting from the left-hand side of the road. Jane spared a glance that way, and she yelped as something exploded.
"Nunez? Aileen?" she demanded of her comms unit.
"Forget them, worry about this fuck!" White opened fire on the sectoid, who ducked behind a car. It chittered angrily, poking its head up in between bursts to get a good luck at the XCOM operatives.
"Cover me!" Jane darted from position, scrambling over to a tree discarded in the road. Part of the Resistance roadblock, she supposed, as she jumped over branches and limbs.
"Kelly, watch-"
"Fuck!" Jane threw herself flat, rolling the last two feet as green energy shot through the air where her head had been. Red bolts came next, and she warily popped up to get a better look. "There's three more of them. Soldiers and an officer-"
"Grenade!" White warned, before hurling it. Jane ducked, wincing as the pineapple detonated and smoke plumed into the sky.
"Come on!" She rose to one knee, raising her shotgun. "Move up!"
Boom! Clickity-boom! Clickity-boom! With every shot she worked the manual pump, and buckshot ripped up dirt and shattered the glass in car windows. The sectoid screamed, and Jane hoped it had been hit rather than annoyed.
"Donut!" screamed an Advent officer, pointing squarely at her. Jane yelped as one of his subordinates opened fire, and the officer joined in a moment later. The yelp became a scream as she had to dive, covering her head as evil, hateful red projectiles ripped through solid wood.
James, Irina, Obsidian...
"Contact!" White shouted, blasting away. Jane scrambled for her shotgun, dropped entirely without thinking when she dove. One check confirmed her worst fears: the bloody thing was dry.
"Nunez is hit!" Aileen cried over comms. "I'm trading fire with the last one right now-"
"Kelly's pinned down!" White chimed in. "Hang in there!"
"Damn it!" Jane clutched her arm as a splinter flew in, driven by the force of Advent shots. "Fuck! Fuck!" She reached to her belt. "All right, then. If that's how you want to play, let's fucking play!"
Gallant growled, watching as Kelly hurled her grenade. It clattered up beside the Advent officer, who had only a moment to shout "Butts!" before it exploded in a flash of white light and black smoke, spraying shrapnel in a thirty-foot radius. Gallant had the pleasure of seeing the red-breasted officer tumble head over heels, clutching a variety of wounds.
"Quinn's got one of them pinned down on the left, but Nunez is hit hard," Bradford warned. "He's bleeding out. She can stabilize him on the Skyranger, but unless we want to pull them from the field..."
"Quinn's got to handle that soldier," Gallant snarled. "She's got to take him out. Then she can evacuate Nunez."
"What about Kelly and White?" Bradford pressed. "If she pulls Nunez to treat him, she can't..."
Gallant clutched the rail. "They need to push forward."
"Sir, they're outnumbered two to one-"
"They've got to push forward, Central, and find that goddamn power converter before Advent can pull the bulk of their force back south!" Gallant slammed a fist down. "If we don't get our hands on that thing, we're done for."
"Sir." Bradford didn't look happy, but at least he didn't argue. Gallant took a deep breath.
And they wouldn't be outnumbered if I hadn't jumped the gun, he told himself. Nunez wouldn't have been shot. You're going a wonderful job of impressing the command, aren't you?
"Come on, Jane Kelly," he whispered, far too low for even Bradford to hear. "Come on. Pull it together, now."
Jane clutched her shotgun close, trying to peek between broken branches, through holes rent by mag-fire. She saw one Advent soldier, keeping her well pinned-down, and the sectoid nursing at least a few injuries, crawling along for the boot of its car with bracer glowing green. Purple energy sparked in its eyes, and Jane winced as she thought of all the monster could do...or make her do.
"I'm pinned down here!" Jane cried. "I need support!"
No response. Jane set her teeth.
"Hey. I said..."
She saw it.
It was tall, and it pulsed and sparked with the same green energy as the sectoid's bracer. It sat abreast the back of the Advent truck, humming and whirring and vibrating in most unpleasant-looking ways.
"C...Central?" Jane touched her comms unit. "Avenger?"
"This is Central. Report."
"I...I see it." Jane stared at the magnetic power converter, sucking in deep breaths. "I see the package. It doesn't...it doesn't look good."
"Doesn't look good...how?"
"Well, it's glowing and shaking and-"
Boom!
"Fuck!" Jane covered her ears as the device cracked with thunder, shooting a blast of energy out on all sides. "It's trying to kill me! It's going to blow!"
"Roger that." Bradford sounded awfully calm about this idea. "I'm getting in touch with Shen. She'll have the fix. Secure the area."
"We need reinforcements-"
"Secure the area, Menace one-five! Central out."
"Secure the..." Jane trailed off, taking her finger away from the transmit button. "You absolute sod! You-"
"Donut!"
Her world slowed to a crawl. Jane whirled, snapping her shotgun up, and got a flash image of the Advent soldier she'd misplaced, looming at the far end of her tree. There was nothing between them but empty air heated by flying slugs, and the open barrel of his rifle loomed.
But Jane had her shotgun, and she snapped it up without thinking. She fired from the hip, not expecting a hit but hoping to make him flinch-
Click.
She'd never reloaded.
"Donut!" the soldier repeated, and Jane covered her face as he took aim down his gun barrel-
Bang!
Hot yellow blood sprayed her, and Jane yelped when an Advent corpse spitting hateful words in the aliens' broken language crashed onto the road. The mag rifle flew away, and a moment later so did the soldier's helmet, ripped off by the fall. Jane stared at the body.
"You're welcome, Kelly."
"W...White?" She swallowed, taking in the Australian as he dropped into cover right overtop of the Adventer's body. "You..."
"Thank you will suffice." Then he rose, firing wildly. "Someone has to get to the converter. There's one soldier and the sectoid out there."
"Right!" Jane scrambled to reload, sliding cartridges of buckshot into place. "If you can keep the soldier's head down, I can...I can flank him." It took a breath's worth of courage, but Jane was willing to try.
"I can manage that." White rose, then ducked incoming fire. "Try not to get killed!"
"You too!" Jane pushed up onto her feet, wiping her sweaty hands on bloody trousers. "Say when."
"When!" White let loose a torrent of heavy fire that drove the Advent soldier down into cover. Jane clutched her gun.
Then she dove into the open.
"Shit, shit, shit!" she cried, bending double as the sectoid opened fire. Evil green blasts seared over and around her, and she screamed as she sensed one coming. Only a last-second dive and a shoulder roll kept her from getting a hole burned through her chest. Her heart thundered, and every shaking step seemed likely to be her last.
"Call a taxi!" screamed the soldier, as she put a food on the hood of his car. He rose to shoot, but she was faster, vaulting over the vehicle and firing two blasts from the hip in passing.
She must have hit, and not just a glance to the temple. No, the soldier's head literally exploded, spraying bone and brains and yellow Meld-infused goo everywhere.
Jane landed on one knee, ducking low as more energy fire came in. Her hand went in what was left of the soldier's ear, reduced to a vague paste on the road, but she barely noticed. Instead Jane scrambled to her feet, ignoring her aching legs and pounding heart, knowing that if she stopped now, she wouldn't move again.
"I'm going for the converter!" She fired on the move, forcing the sectoid down even though her shot was wider than the English Channel. "White!"
"On him!" The Aussie leaned out from behind the tree, firing as the alien shifted positions, trying to shield itself from Jane's fast-moving fire. She heard it scream, but it sounded more annoyed than agonized.
Ten meters. Jane slung her shotgun over her shoulder the instant the magazine emptied, reaching for her datapad.
Five meters. Gunfire ripped through the air around her, and she heard the sectoid's psi-powers activating. If it took White over, that was it.
Two meters. Jane bent her knees on the next step, and she jumped, her boots landing hard on the flatbed's back. She skidded over alloy plating that vibrated of its own accord, barely checking her momentum before she drove her shoulder into the unstable converter.
"Central, I'm at the thing!" She crouched, hunting for a data connection. She winced as it vomited more green energy, hot and acrid and smelling of dead fish and burned bacon. "Tell me you have a goddamn bloody fix-"
"Menace, we're uploading the fix now." Bradford might have sounded relieved. Jane couldn't tell. "Connect and upload this to stabilize the converter."
"Right, right." Jane let out a relieved sigh that was almost a moan when she saw the active data connection icon in her pad's upper-right corner. She quickly found the necessary program, and in an instant and five taps of her finger, she set up the upload. "Central, it's-"
Thump.
It wasn't the sectoid. That footstep was too heavy, just like the breathing. It wasn't White, because she heard him still shooting. Jane whirled, dropping her pad as she came face-to-face with-
"Oh, shit," Jane whispered, as the Advent officer loomed, clutching bleeding shrapnel wounds but very much alive. "One grenade..."
His gun came up. So did hers, but it was empty, just like before. That was fine. Jane threw it in the officer's face, which made him stagger. He snarled in that awful, ugly language Jane hated so much, but then he was back on the attack, snapping his rifle into place-
Clang! Jane's sword came out in a flash, and she knocked the gun right out of the officer's hands. Before he could reach for his sidearm or his grenade, Jane flipped the blade, and the thing could only shriek as three feet of steel drove between its ribs.
"That," she snarled at two inches' distance, "was for Irina."
She withdrew her blade, and the body dropped. It tumbled off the flatbed's back, and Jane watched it with satisfaction every inch of the way.
"Sectoid's down." White appeared, poking the officer's corpse with his toes as it twitched out its last breaths. "Quinn is back on the Skyranger with Nunez. He'll be fine."
"Good." Jane flicked her sword to shake off the alien blood, then returned it to its scabbard with a shaking hand. "That's good."
"Menace one-five, this is Central." Bradford definitely sounded relieved now. "We're not picking up any more life signs in the immediate area. Grab what you can and make sure you get that converter loaded up, then extract as soon as possible. The rest of the escort will be back within the hour, and you don't want to tangle with mutons."
"Roger that, sir." Jane turned to the converter. "Come on. Let's get this packed down for transport."
Author's Note 4: FIGHT
If you take some liberties regarding animations, the combat in this chapter can be boiled down to actual in-game actions and logic. Enjoy it: I won't be doing this very often, for the sake of story. For the most part, I'll be treating in-game abilities and equipment with the same Broad Strokes mentality I use for the cutscenes: overall, I'm going to try and keep things relatively appropriate for the point in the game the story has reached. However, if I think it makes a scene flow better, be more dramatic, or just plain feel more kickass than otherwise, I will quite happily bend the game's rules, the soldiers' ability progression, and even what gear should be available when.
So if Jane whips out a melee kill streak that should only be possible through Reaper, or a team sniper unloads what is clearly Kill Zone...you know what's up.
Until next time, Vigilo Confido.