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"There is no hunting like the hunting of man, and those who have hunted armed men long enough and liked it, never care for anything else thereafter."
~Ernest Hemingway
Chapter Twenty-one: Fate and Furies
Night wind hissed over the compound, picking up anything left scattered on the open tarmac: Advent burger wrappers, discarded refuse, balled-up and ripped XCOM propaganda pictures...they all blew. They crackled as they slipped across the pavement, but otherwise the night was silent.
Almost.
"Did you hear that?" The question was asked in the Advent language, of course, but the meaning was clear enough. The soldier doing the asking half-turned from the compound he was assigned to patrol, and his scope-assisted gaze swept the darkened woods between the facility and New Baltimore. He scowled under his helmet.
"I heard nothing but the wind." His partner seemed less than enthusiastic about the pause. "There's no one out here."
"I could have sworn I heard a footstep."
"Of course you did. We are walking." His partner happened to be a stun lancer, and they had a remarkably short way with what they saw as time-wasting stupidity. "You heard your own boot, or mine, crunching a pine cone or grass."
"But I thought..." The soldier lowered his mag-rifle. "I thought I heard something."
"That's because you're an idiot." The stun lancer turned back for his patrol route, ignoring the glaring, hissing soldier in his wake. "Trust me! The Resistance in this region is disorganized and demoralized. They're on the run in every way! There's no one out there who would be stupid enough to-"
The annoyed lancer never finished his sentence. Purple wafted through the air in a searing lance, and the lancer's brain broke nearly in half - and his temples literally caved in - in less time than it took the soldier to freeze. While his brain was still processing and the lancer's mouth was still working on the syllables of attack, his steaming corpse hit the ground.
The soldier should have cried out for reinforcements. In fact, that's exactly what he started to do, but sheer shock paralyzed him for just an instant too long - and when he brought his gun up, he was aiming at the woods, in the direction of the purple waft, which was understandable enough.
Understandable or no, it left him blind to the figure who'd been lying under camouflage netting less than four feet away, and by the time the soldier's training caused him to open his mouth and reach for his com switch, a hand arrested his wrist from behind. He didn't protest.
He was too busy dying as the stiletto knife in the assailant's other hand cut out his throat.
"Perimeter clear." Shaojie Zhang threw the corpse aside, sheathing his knife without breaking stride. He passed the other body as the rest of his team melted from the darkness, casually claiming his heavy laser and checking diagnostics. "Weapons hot."
"Going hot," Said Tariq acknowledged, filtering past his commander with rifle at the ready. He took a knee by an Advent forklift, sighting in on the yard ahead. "I've got a muton and two MECs."
"Not but a light sweat," Matthew Hawkins pointed out, appearing from the darkness with Said's sister Fatima by his side. The two stragglers joined their fellow, and Zhang was perfectly content to leave the Furies to hold the yard.
"Don't engage unless someone's detected." Zhang glanced to his remaining operatives. "Annette."
"On your left." The Frenchwoman lacked a psi-amp, as did the Furies. But they had innate gifts, and Annette's eyes flickered and glinted with power that Zhang envied. "There's two soldiers covering the doorway. No way around them unless we want to trek through the yard or hit the thermal scanners."
"Not an option." Zhang checked his laser again. "Marcel, take command of the Furies. You're our extraction team and flying reserve."
"Si," Marcel Garcia growled. He took up position of his own, and Zhang saw the light of cold, professional anger in his eyes. The first veteran of this war, still fighting...
"Let's go." He waved to Annette. "Time's wasting."
"Don't die in there," Matt Hawkins urged. "Hate to have to find someone else who cooks as good of an omelet."
"The secret is searing hatred for human life," Annette assured him, and Zhang pretended he didn't notice the very...personal way they eyed each other, for just a split second. The General didn't approve of things like that, but he feigned ignorance too. Annette and the Furies - not to mention Zhang himself - were simply too good to make no exceptions.
"Come on." He started into the darkness. "We have a job to do."
The walk was quick, which Zhang appreciated. Carapace armor and heavy laser armament - not to mention the thing on his back - were heavy, and he'd been fifty-two when the invasion had started. He was quite spry and quite fit for a man in his seventies, but trekking great distances at a time with full kit was hardly the most pleasant experience he could imagine.
Of course, he'd never complain aloud. He could still outpace Annette and her crew, despite their thirty-year advantage, and if he had his way, he would until the moment he died.
"How do we get past the two?" the woman herself asked, nonchalant as if she were discussing the choice of wine at a Parisian restaurant. "Doesn't look like there's much cover."
Zhang's boots slammed down on permacrete pavement, and he fished out a cigarette. "Go left."
"Why am I always on your left?" But then the Frenchwoman vanished like wind, and Zhang approved of how much she'd improved from the helpless civilian with whom he had first made acquaintance. He flicked the little white stub in his hand from finger to finger. With industry leveled and Advent in firm control of the manufactories, good smokes were a currency of their own, almost more valuable than the elders' credits.
Not that Zhang had any intention of spoiling this perfectly good one - made from real Virginia tobacco, not home-grown crap - with such a utilitarian purpose.
"Donut!" cried one of the two black-clad sentries, as Zhang strode carelessly from the dark. They whirled, leveling rifles at his armored frame. "Totally not enough!"
"Evening, gentlemen." Zhang held up the cigarette. "Got a light?"
"Donut!"
"All right." Zhang spread his hands reasonably. "All the donuts you can eat."
They hesitated. Zhang was no one's civilian, that much was clear. Perhaps the man was being a little vain, but he didn't think it would have been much in doubt even if he'd left his carapace and heavy laser behind. Something about his eyes, his scars, the way he carried himself. Still, he was cooperating, and they clearly hesitated to simply execute him when he might offer information. Zhang rather enjoyed watching the debate in their upturned lips under the faceless helmets.
Because every second they spent wondering was another second for-
Pow!
A hole burned through the fore soldier's chest, and a red beam shot out the other side. Zhang didn't flinch as it boiled air not even three feet shy of his ear, a wave of heat slapping him with an angry ex-lover's refinement.
The good news for the soldier was that the laser blast cauterized his wound immediately. It wouldn't bleed, which was a plus point for his chances of survival, even if he could be forgiven for not realizing it, with how hot and agonizing the searing blast of light had to have been.
The bad news was the shot had literally boiled one of his lungs and burned half his heart out, and no amount of cauterization or medical treatment could make that survivable. He never even managed to scream, simply collapsing in a broken heap.
His companion was...luckier was the wrong word. Sure, he escaped instant death, and he responded with the fortitude of a purpose-bred warrior, turning on his heel and leveling his mag-rifle at the impending doom searing down on him with a smoking, hissing laser rifle held left-handed. Unfortunately, Annette Durand's right hand was up, and she caught the soldier's helmet almost casually, her eyes burning with evil violet that made Zhang smile.
"You...will obey." Annette punctuated that with a little shove, and the soldier made a wordless noise of sublime compliance, falling to his knees with rifle forgotten, almost in position to kiss the psi-op's feet.
"You like doing that," Zhang chastised. He held out his hand. "I still want my light."
"What kind of girl do you take me for?" Annette's devilish smile undermined the protest, and she gave the kneeling soldier a little kick. "A light for my friend. Hop to it!"
"Your commanding officer," Zhang corrected, as the soldier scrambled up and lit his cigarette. He took a long puff. "We're wasting time with your play." He waved, starting for the door. "Have him open it up and see him off."
"Do I have to?" Annette jerked her head at the door. "Go on, then. Unlock the door."
"I insist." Zhang watched the slavishly obedient soldier fish out his pass card and open the secure portal. "Send him off, Annette."
"Fine." She scoffed. "I'll be right behind you."
"See that you are." Zhang took another puff, pulling out his heavy laser. He turned off the safety, firmly stuck the cigarette between his teeth, and then rapped the door to encourage its opening.
Pow! Pow-pow-pow-pow!
He hadn't even consciously registered the priest in the room before he eviscerated her with laser fire. She had two friends, but they'd all been standing around chatting about this or that or another thing rather than alertly preparing for a head-on assault from a professional warrior. Scarlet energy rippled through the air, and a backblast of muggy heat drew sweat from his hairline. It vented from the rotating barrels of prismatic focus lenses on all sides, and Zhang was thankful for the coolant system laid in under his arms and chest, very much like a drag racer's suit.
Thud! The first Advent soldier didn't even have time to turn before his armor melted and his skin boiled. He collapsed in a wrecked heap of charred meat, and the priest was next. She took a good, heavy blast right in the face, and Zhang lingered on her for a moment longer than he had to, relishing her alien shrieks. The elder puppet didn't die, of course. She drew on her power and collapsed into a dome of protective power that no assault could penetrate, clutching her mortal wounds. Shock would finish her off in minutes, even without assistance.
The second soldier got to his sidearm. He snapped it up two-handed, and Zhang's heavy laser twitched. He took a deep puff, cigarette end glowing gold and red, as scarlet death rippled and evaporated the soldier's vital organs. The second thud was louder than the first, and no less final.
Zhang lowered his gun, eyeing his handiwork...and he didn't flinch at all when Annette shot her adoring servant in the back of the head.
"Communications should be that way." The Frenchwoman swept in, a spring in her step. Zhang followed a bit more sedately, venting from the heat sink on his cannon until the heat gauge fell out of the red zone.
"Shut them down."
"Not my first drop, Chilong." Annette proved it, because she shot the priest the instant her shield dissipated, without even glancing her way. The thing collapsed, orange steam hissing from her body as her muscles contracted and thrashed without any higher-level agency.
"I'll hit the data archive." Zhang activated his comm. "Alecto?"
"All's quiet on the Western Front," said Hawkins. "Fatima and Said saw something on the right. They're pushing in under silence."
"Hopefully it's nothing." Zhang reached the data banks, and while Annette set to on the communications equipment, he began typing on the holokeyboard.
Warlock, he typed. The former Triad operative pulled out his datapad while the search ran, and he quickly jacked in.
"Anything?" Annette appeared over his shoulder, rifle in hand. Zhang didn't spare her a glance.
"Comms better be down."
"Down, with the casual chatter program installed. Not even their commander will realize his people are an AI with a voice modulator." Annette glanced at a security cam. "Looks like the fellow's in here, actually. One level up and down the hall."
"That's the next stop." Zhang didn't much care for the information he was digesting, but it was in fact information. He hit the download key. "That's one."
"And Beta?"
"And Beta." He hit a few more keys, pausing when he came across a camera file. "That's her."
"As big and mean as I remember," Annette mused. "Pity running away hasn't put her off her feed."
"Don't you have to make stupid comments somewhere else?" Zhang initiated that data transfer too, shifting information from Subject Beta's directory onto his pad.
"Not until four." Annette hefted her rifle. "Shall I see to the commandant?"
"You remember the rules?"
"Oui, papa." Annette backed for the stairs, smirking. Zhang eyed her.
"Do you have it?"
"Do any of us ever ship out without one?" She casually let her rifle hang from its shoulder strap, and she reached to her hip. Not the pistol at her right hip, or the medkits spaced along her belt, but for the other holster on her left. Technically, it was a thigh holster, even if just barely. Annette's fingers closed around the grip, and she casually drew her...alternative sidearm. "See?"
"Just make sure he's disoriented before you taze him." Zhang returned to data management.
"I've been around the block on this before." Then the medic vanished, and Zhang quietly fumed at how slow his data connection was, impatiently puffing on his cigarette. That it was good smoke did nothing to offset his annoyance.
"Come on," he growled, watching the progress bar stall. "You have a connection. There is nothing wrong with it. Work, damn you."
If a man's glare could intimidate technology into submission, Zhang's certainly would have. It still took an extra few minutes, and thus most of his cigarette, for the data to finally process.
"Chilong?"
"Here." He removed his datapad, checking to be sure the information on the Warlock and Subject Beta had transferred appropriately. "Tisiphone?"
"We might have a problem." Fatima Tariq didn't sound unduly worried, which by Zhang's reckoning had more to do with her stoic personality than the odds arrayed against her. "There's some kind of Advent general down here, doing an inspection tour."
"A...general?" Zhang paused to stroke his gray goatee. "How heavy is the guard force?"
"Sir," Said Tariq chimed in, "I hope you're not thinking what I'm afraid you are. They're almost between us and extraction, and he's covered by a sizeable Advent detail. Close to twenty of them."
"Only twenty?" Zhang's lip curled. "He must not be very vital to be so limply guarded. Keep them under observation. I'll round up the others."
"Do you still want me to take care of Idiot Number One?" Annette asked, and Zhang wasn't surprised she'd been listening in. Annoyed, but not surprised. Military discipline had never set in this girl's spine that well.
"Yes, Annette. Bring him. We learn more from two than one."
She didn't answer. Well, not with words. Zhang would have been worried if he hadn't heard her snickering cheerfully under her breath: as it stood, he was downright terrified.
"You and the Doctor, Durand," he muttered, once he was sure his com was off. "Kindred spirits. Something in the water on that end of Europe, I wonder?"
"Six soldiers." Fatima Tariq chewed her lower lip for a moment. "One priest. Two lancers. And a shieldbearer."
"In their lead unit," her brother noted, and Fatima's lips twitched.
"Yes. In their lead unit." She noted the gilded general's position at the center of the enemy encampment. "I count three units in the vicinity. Plus the sectoids and vipers at the other end of the yard."
"They'll join in," Said noted, a little glumly. "We'll be outnumbered by...what? Twenty, twenty-five? Versus six."
"Yeah. Hardly fair." Fatima's grin broadened. Said groaned.
"Don't say it. Don't you say it-"
"I'll have to shoot-"
"I said don't!" Said glared. "You're altogether too frustrating, woman."
"This is why you don't have a girlfriend." Fatima reset the spread on her scatter, then gently eased up. "Marcel!"
"Si?" the Argentinean heavy appeared at her side, and Fatima's head twitched.
"Come on. You and I move to the left side, shake 'em up. Alecto and Megaera hold here and light the candles, while Zhang and Annette make it Christmas from the facility roof."
"I hope you know what you're talking about," Marcel grunted, "because I haven't got a fucking clue."
"And this is why you don't have a girlfriend," Fatima added cheerfully, before waving him on. "Come on. Shake and bake!"
"Shake and..." Marcel trailed off, but he managed an aggrieved sigh that made Fatima grin.
They vanished into the darkness.
"Zhang." Annette nodded as the old man stormed up from the darkness below, datapad in hand, cannon at the ready. He eyed her for a long moment.
"The package?"
"Oh, he's here." Annette kicked the senseless, sparking body of the Advent base commander. "I never get tired of the looks on their faces when they get juiced." She beamed. "Ride the lightning!"
"A proper special operative, you are." Zhang approached the stairs to the roof. "Bring him up. We take down the general and we extract the way we came. Charges are already set."
"Magnifique!" Annette seized her cargo and hurried in the heavy's wake, giddy as she thought of the explosion setting this place off would produce.
It was funny. The old Annette Durand, the twenty-three year old aspiring cellist who loved swimming and tabletop gaming, would never have relished the idea of electrocuting anyone, no matter how foul, or blowing up anything in real life.
But the forty-three year old Annette Durand who hadn't played a cello since That Night had a score to settle, only made deeper, bloodier, and far more pressing with the time that had passed.
"Roof clear," Zhang announced, and Annette dragged the commander up onto it. She checked her special sidearm, then took a knee on the roof's edge, covering behind the low railing.
"Eyes on the enemy," she alerted her team. "I've got a shot on the priest."
"Left lancer," Hawkins muttered, and she could easily envision his frown of concentration.
"Marcel's primed on the big boom," Fatima chimed in. "I've got the right lancer."
"That leaves us, Megaera." Zhang took another puff on his cigarette. "We're on lawn mowing duty."
"I'll take left side. Good field of fire."
"Roger that. Weapons free, psionics at your own discretion." Zhang threw the cigarette on the roof, and his heel came down with a crunch. "On my mark."
Annette waited. She knew in the back of her mind that none of the soldiers down there had been involved in That Night, or the nights the Tariqs and Hawkins remembered.
She also didn't care. She'd gotten what vengeance she could in the Alps, with Zhang and Marcel and the others. Her lips thinned at the thought of them: Malin Larsen, XCOM's greatest soldier, hadn't deserved to die choking on a chryssalid egg in Switzerland. Nor the six others that had escaped the base in bit pieces with her, Zhang, or Marcel. But one by one, by plasma or by bomb or by mag-fire or worse...they'd fallen.
Leaving Annette and the Furies behind to avenge them.
"Mark."
Annette fired. She had the distinct pleasure of seeing her energy beam burn right through the priest's helmet, melting its armor to slag, and punch through skin and skull plate to boil the thing's brain. It never even managed to scream, simply collapsing in a wrecked heap with gray-tinted smoke wafting from the hole over its left eye.
And Annette's was far from the only shot. Fatima's scatter roared, and Said's rifle and Zhang's cannon filled the night with pows and red searing beams of light. Hawkins' sniper rifle killed its target with one shot, and for four shrieking seconds, Advent had no idea what hit them. Annette managed to get a second shot off before they started to recover, and it blew a soldier's leg off at the knee. He lived long enough to be agonized, but Zhang's fire put him down after only a few seconds.
For all of that, Advent's soldiers were neither weak nor fool. They reacted swiftly, scrambling for cover and taking aim at the sources of the assault. The wing units moved in, seizing positions behind trucks and tanks in the killing zone, spotting targets while their lancers injected themselves with stimulants and steroids, preparing to make their inhuman runs into the face of impossible odds.
But in the end, they were creatures of habit. And the mistake they made was in clustering.
"Yes!" Annette cried, eyes wild and teeth bared as Marcel Garcia's Dragon rocket ripped out from the darkness, borne on a trail of fire as it lanced right into the vehicle depot and the entrenched Advent infantry. It slammed into a munitions truck dead-on, with the Argentinean heavy's characteristic havoc-making aim, and the resulting fireball-
Boom!
Annette's rifle went off. She fired into the searing whirling of smoke and flame, roasting the shell-shocked survivors. Her companions fired as well, and red bolts tore down the wounded on all sides. Zhang's fire slacked, and Annette picked her own up to compensate, watching as Marcel tossed an alien-model grenade into the killing field. The screams were music to a vengeful Frenchwoman's ears, and she laughed as the second munitions truck, ignited by the blast from the first, went off and sprayed shrapnel into the Advent defenders.
There was no chance of recovery. The general himself couldn't have rallied these soldiers, and in all likelihood he was still beyond them, staring in horror at the conflagration that had erupted in less than thirty seconds.
Or, he was, until Zhang's rocket shot out and obliterated his own guard.
"Well," Annette mused, as the flames lit up the state of Maryland and the pyre blocked out the moon, while the earth shook and almost a hundred Advent voices shrieked in agony and terror, "it's possible they've figured out we're here."
"Unlikely," Hawkins chimed in, before shooting another one from two thousand yards' distance.
"The general survived the blast," Fatima notified the team. "He looks dazed and hurt. Two guards left standing." Pow! "One."
"Finish them and take him," Zhang ordered. "Alive."
"Alive." Annette reached down to touch the grip of her Arc Thrower. "A nice present for the Doctor. Vahlen does go through them, doesn't she?"
Author's Note 21: And Now For Someone Completely Different
Soldiers the caliber of Annette, Zhang, the Furies, the Argentinean Heavy, and any of XCOM's veterans wouldn't just go home and pop a brew when XCOM surrendered. I'm surprised there aren't any vets in XCOM 2 - though, from a gameplay perspective, it makes sense. Having XCOM start with even a few elite soldiers from the get go would be a tad unbalanced. Yes, I know the Resistance Warrior pack gives you a so-called veteran at the start(I have it). But that's all cosmetic, and as nice as that is, for gameplay purposes that soldier is as green as anyone else except Jane Kelly.
The point is, I would think most survivors from XCOM would wind up congregating together. Bradford, in this verse, tied in with the Shens and wound up collecting a few veterans from the War, who helped in the acquisition of Avenger. So too, as established by canon, did Vahlen draw at least some of her techs along with her to keep up her mad scientist routine. It's not illogical to think she has to have had some form of security force, and once that leap's been made, isn't it just logical to think they would have been veterans of the War? Like, say, Zhang, Annette, and the Furies?
This is CH21, and there are only 25 chapters in Season One. I know I haven't clarified what the "Seasons" are, but I think it's relatively simple: undertaking the novelization of such a game as this is a Herculean task, and I really do have a lot of other work to do writing-wise in my life. So I've subdivided the game into four "Seasons"(I might add a fifth, depending on how 3 and 4 go when we get there) of ~25 chapters each, to make it more manageable. I love this story, but I do look forward to knocking Season One out so I can take a break and work on something with a less grueling update schedule for a little bit. Of course the flip side of that is that more professional work means more serious editing and quality control, which is...fun.
Until next time, Vigilo Confido.