Welcome back, thank you for continuing with this story of mine. A bit earlier than I said, but I've been I really into XCOM, and didn't want to get too far ahead in the game than the story. Hope you enjoy.
Lihong watched the soldiers return from the mission. He'd been listening in to the chatter, so he knew what happened, nobody looked injured, so that was good, but he'd heard that one of the new guys got abducted. The new girl got off the Skyranger first. She had her mask off and hood down. Black hair in a pixie cut, brown eyes that practically sparkled with majesty, she was still wearing the armor of the Reapers, which, unfortunately, covered her body a bit too much for his taste. From a distance, it'd be hard to tell if she was even a woman, but that's not always a problem, she was attractive in a masculine way, Lihong appreciated the damsel look, but he also had a soft spot for the hardened fighter look as well.
He checked that his hair was perfectly done, black, with streaks of grey that he put in to give him the look of experience without harming his handsome features, his steel-grey eyes looked out upon all he saw, with what could only be described as delight. His eyebrows were perfectly plucked, and his clothes were the very air of sophistication and grace. Just because there was a war going on was no reason to look like a mess. He put on his face and approached the new lady, bowing to her and holding out his hand to take hers. She looked at him confusedly.
Ah, he thought, a fighter not a lover, very well, I can work with this.
Without missing a beat he recovered moving his hand back with a flourish "It is a pleasure to meet you, my lady, My name is Lihong Li, though most aboard this ship call me Chef. Might I have the honor of knowing your name as well?
She looked confused for a moment before recovering, "Elena Dragunova, codename Outrider. Now that introductions are done, could you show me to my quarters? The Commander informed me they were ready"
The other soldiers in the room cringed. They knew that inviting Lihong to your quarters was asking for trouble.
"Of course my lady. Please, follow me" He lead the woman through the Avenger. he wasn't sure which room was hers, but all the rooms were always prepared and ready in case of new recruits.
He took her on a tour of the Avenger, showing her Engineering, the Science Lab, his Bar (while it wasn't officially his bar, it was, he ran it and no-one else had the foggiest idea how to cook and serve as magnificently as he did), as well as showing her the areas under construction, before finally arriving at the barracks. He went through the common room, hearing the soldiers laugh and murmur as he passed with Elena. Taking her through the corridors, and stopping at the room adjacent to his.
"These will be your quarters for your stay on the Avenger, I'm afraid it's rather spartan at the moment, but customization is encouraged. Would you like any help moving in"
"No, I don't have very many things, thank you for the impromptu tour," She said, before stepping through the doorway.
"Should you ever need anything, a drink, some food, help with anything, don't hesitate to find me"
"Sure," she said, the door closing between them
Lihong walked away, a real smile on his face. This one would be a tough nut to crack, but Lihong did love a chase
The Commander was woken up by a banging on his door. He rolled over and groggily shouted "Uh, Yeah!"
The voice of Central Officer Bradford came from the other side "We've detected a Beacon, it seems to be one used by us before the Invasion"
The Commander was awake instantly, rushing over to the door "That means Vahlen!" He shouted, flinging open the door.
Bradford was getting on in years, somewhere in his fifties (The Commander was never great at figuring out people's ages), every one of his years showed on his weathered face, but his body remained strong, he had stubble from a few days without shaving, he still kept his hair short.
Before the Invasion, Bradford had looked a lot more innocent in his green jumper, now, he wore combat-ready clothes at all time, his shirt armored with a Kevlar weave, a combat knife sheathed on his shoulder at all time. His mind remained sharp despite his weathered look, and he remained The Commander's second in command. Bradford had even run field operations before the new X-COM had fully formed. He insists that he stopped going into the field to better run XCOM, acting as a General for XCOM, and, once the Commander had returned, as a Lieutenant, and Pilot of the Avenger (though many complained of his flying, no-one else wanted to give it a go), the real reason Bradford had stopped Field Work (though he would never admit it) was because he was getting old. A regular person might not be able to see it, but The Commander was no regular person, he could see the minuscule slowness in his walking speed, the tiny slowing of his reactions, the slight weakness in his muscles, nothing that would be noticed every day, but Bradford would notice them in combat, reacting even a fraction of a second too slow could lead to death for you or one of your team, thus, he had retired from field duty.
Bradford took a step back to avoid being hit by the door. Thankfully, the Commander had gone to sleep in his clothes that night. "Not necessarily Commander, it could be any number of Operatives, Engineers or Scientists that escaped the attack".
The Commander looked at Bradford blankly "Don't kill my hopes, Bradford. Now, let's see this beacon"
Bradford led the way to the Command Center, A big room just down the stairs from the Commander's quarters. Computer consoles lined the walls, each station manned by a scientist or Engineer, those that noticed gave the Commander a nod but most kept at their work. A hologram of the earth spun lazily in the middle of the room. A lot quieter than one would normally expect from a room like this, most kept to their work rather than talk, until something of note was found. Apparently, Bradford hadn't informed the others of the Beacon yet. He led The Commander to his console and showed him the Radar, a blip on the border of Jordan and Iraq, it was hard to say exactly which country due to the small screen, a stream of text beside it.
"I detected it half an hour ago, but I was running checks to make sure it was legit, ran it by Shen and she confirmed its one of ours"
"Anything else we can find out about it?" The Commander asked.
"It's severely decayed, which is likely why we've not picked it up before, but that's to be expected from a device over 20 years old, and in the heat of this part of the world, I'm surprised it's still active at all"
"Get a team together, I want to know what this is," The Commander said, turning to go to the Barracks to select the Operatives
"You know it's not going to be Vahlen"
The Commander turned back to him. "You said it's degraded and that's why you didn't detect it before. But you've had several years to detect it. You didn't miss it, Bradford. That Beacon was turned on recently"
"You can't be sure of that"
"No, but I can hope our best doctor is still around, and trying to find us again"
"Sir, you know what she has done, I'm not a squeamish man, but some of the things she did..."
"I know, but we need her now, more than ever. Tygan is good, don't get me wrong, and his knowledge of the inner-workings of ADVENT is invaluable, but I've not seen anyone who can hold a candle to Vahlen's talents. Her methods might be questionable, but she's extremely effective. Remember, I sought out every person who worked for us before the War. I knew of Vahlens questionable activities but decided our work was worth some questionable decisions to succeed. Tygan has done brilliantly, but he's essentially been fixing broken alien tech, Vahlen took the Alien weapons, and devised better versions, refined them. If we can get Vahlen back, this was is as good as won"
"Of course Commander" Bradford didn't sound convinced
The Commander continued on to the Barracks. He knew already who he was sending, he could send Bradford to get them, but he liked to get them himself.
"Do you know where Molly is?" The Commander asked Shen, having to talk loudly to be heard over the machinery in the room.
Lily Shen turned around from working on her GREMLIN, ROV-R. She was young, somewhere in her 20's he'd Guess. Of some kind of Asian descent (He was even worse with figuring out nationalities than he was at ages), she had black hair in a bob, her face pasted in dirt and grease from her work, she wore a sleeveless vest and had a tattoo of the XCOM logo on her shoulder. The Commander had been disappointed when he met her originally, Bradford had told him Dr. Shen was working with them, and he though another person from the original XCOM was back. Unfortunately, it turned out Dr. Raymond Shen had died some years ago, but his daughter Lily Shen had taken over his position. She proved to be just as good as her father, if not better.
"Uh yeah, she's down in the training range testing out her GREMLIN," Lilly said, nodding towards the stairs.
The Commander gave off a small laugh "You made her a GREMLIN? Be careful Shen, she's going to start getting ideas"
Molly Sundqvist had been a loner gearhead when they'd found her and convinced her to join XCOM. She had taken a shining towards Lily, spending all her off-duty time in Engineering, helping Shen with whatever she needed, and had earned the nickname 'Guinea Pig' for her constant testing of Lily's experimental gear. Everyone knew Molly had a crush on Lily, even though she denied it. Bradford had been worrying she might try something, but Lily had plenty of ways to defend herself if anything like that happened and she had never expressed any discomfort about her being around her so often.
Lily just rolled her eyes and went back to her work. The Commander smiled and headed down the stairs, finding Molly standing behind the low wall marking the start of the training room, her eyes were closed, focused on directing her GREMLIN. Her hair was a lot messier than normal, just flopped on her head, she normally gelled it up into spikes.
"Hey, Molly"
She opened her eyes, the GREMLIN slowly drifting to the floor. "Yeah?"
"Got a job for you, we found a Beacon and need some people to investigate"
"Count me in"
"Great, head to the Barracks, the others will be with you in a bit"
She walked over and picked up her GREMLIN before heading back upstairs.
The Commander walked into the bar, the murmur of conversation surrounding him. Lihong stood behind the bar, serving food and drinks to the others. He saw a few of the people he wanted and walked in to get them. Andrea was closest. All smiles as normal.
"The man whipped down his pants exclaiming "Look at this, still in the crate!"
There were some laughs around, not her best joke, but apparently decent.
The Commander tapped her on the shoulder. She turned "Oh, Commander, anything I can help you with?"
"We found a Beacon, you're on the retrieval team"
"Oh, alright, I'll be in the barracks in a sec"
He looked over and saw Hiroyo sitting nearby, and went over "You too, head to the barracks, got a job for you"
She put her drink down and nodded "Gotcha" before heading out the door.
He saw the final member of the group off in the corner, drawing something. Tania Ferreira, she could get pretty intense during fights, wearing a bloodstained Hockey Mask during Operations like some kind of guy from a Thriller movie. He had a glance at what she was drawing. She'd clearly started pretty reasonably, she had the outlines done but no details.
The Commander moved over to her, asking "What're you drawing?"
She didn't look up from her paper, "A scene from the mission they got back from this morning. The purple lady, some Lost, Mox, and Outrider"
"Well, I'm afraid I've got to pull you away from it"
"Why else would you be talking to me here?"
"That's fair" The Commander replied. Meet me in the barracks in a bit, I'll explain the mission when we're all together.
"Got it" she stood up, collecting her paper, and heading towards the barracks.
Andrea stepped off the Avenger. The Commander had told them they were in Iraq somewhere, so she'd been expecting a blast of heat when they got off the temperature controlled Avenger. But, it was, Warm. Like, Long sleeved shirt weather. It was a touch too hot since they were in armor, but nowhere near what she'd been expecting. "Well, that's unexpected"
"What's unexpected?" Molly asked
"The weather. I thought I'd be melting"
"You know it's March right? Beginning of Spring, not summer" Tania replied through her hockey mask.
"I thought - You know what, never mind, let's find the Beacon"
Hiroyo was already walking towards the Beacon location, Shotgun in hand. The others jogged to catch up.
"A strange group we've got here" Andrea noted "Guinea pig I get, cuz tech stuff. But what about the rest of us"
"I'm here in case we need explosives" Hiroyo called behind herself to them.
"Fair, but why the Artist and the Gunslinger?" Andrea asked, meaning Tania and herself.
"The Commander's always used unorthodox tactics, I'm sure later we'll fully know the logic behind it" Tania replied.
"Fair"
After a bit of walking, they came across the location of the Beacon, finding a metal door built into the side of a cliff. Psycho took a run up to ram it. She hit it at full speed ramming her shoulder into it... and falling into the room beyond.
She picked herself up, rubbing her shoulder and coughing the dust from her lungs "I thought it'd be locked"
Andrea laughed and helped her up. "Maybe try the door handles first"
"I didn't expect it to be unlocked, he said the Beacon just came on, I figured it'd be locked to stop, you know, aliens wandering in," Psycho said, rubbing the last of the dust from her eyes.
"The lock's broken," Molly said, looking at the door "Somebody went to town on this lock with blunt force. We should be careful, whatever did this was pretty strong, and might still be inside"
"Any tracks?" Tania asked
"Not anymore," Molly said, looking to Psycho.
"Hey, my bad. I'll lead the way so I get decked first if something jumps us"
"You were going to do that anyway" Andrea replied, lightly pushing her ahead.
"True" Psycho led the way into the dark room beyond, lighting up the flashlight on her gun and scanning around.
Just a single room, no visible exits. Armored-looking crates lining the far wall. Most of them open.
Psycho approached them and saw them all empty. Inside was what looked like foam padding, a gap in them to fit an object. One, the largest crate, had the imprint of what looked like two large axes. The next biggest one had the imprint of what looks like... the baby of a rifle and a bow. Another half dozen crates had imprints of some kind of grenades
"Looks like someone beat us to it," she said, scanning the crates
"Not this one," Molly said, opening the one crate not flung open (apparently nobody locked anything anymore), reaching in and pulling out what looked like a pistol, wood handled, it looked almost like a revolver, but a lot fancier.
"Dibs" Andrea shouted, taking the pistol from Molly's hand "I'm the pistol person after all"
Molly shook her head and looked at the other crates "These had some serious locks on them. As in, we'd have needed to burn our way through it. But something broke the lock. Same kind of blunt force. Looks like someone kicked the lock off, but I don't think even a Berserker could manage that kind of force"
"Well, what the fuck got in here then?" Andrea asked
"Beats me, but I'd rather not hang around if it comes back.
The four women jogged back to the Avenger.
"This was all that was in there?" The Commander said, looking at the pistol Andrea had brought back.
"There was more, but something had beaten us to it. Looked like a pair of axes, some kind of rifle-crossbow thing, and a bunch of 'nades" Andrea replied
"Strange they'd leave the pistol behind, it'd be the lightest one, easiest to add to a backpack. I'll have to look into this. In the mean-time, take this to Shen, let her have a look at it, as long as it's safe to use, you can have it"
"Cool, will do" Andrea ran off to find Shen.
The Commander shook his head, smiling at Andreas enthusiasm. The pistol was clearly made by Vahlen. No signature or anything, but it had the marks of her work. It'd be a very fine pistol, perfect for the gunslinger. The other weapons, he wasn't sure. Vahlen had never liked the soldiers using Grenades, chastising them every time they destroyed a corpse too much for her to use. If something had been there before them, that meant one of two things. Either:
Vahlen had left it a while ago, and someone had broken in, setting off the beacon in the process.
Vahlen had been there and started the beacon when she was under attack, and they'd taken to long to arrive.
He hoped it was the former. If the aliens caught Vahlen, it would not end well for her. Although thinking about it, she'd probably be making mental notes about the alien's methods of torture.
He was broken from his thoughts by a loud banging on his door. He got up and opened it, seeing Bradford standing there.
"Commander, a Resistance Haven is under attack by ADVENT!"
"No better test than in the field" He mumbled to himself, before ordering Bradford "Get Soldier, Grandpa, Psycho, and Andrea. We're going to save them."
I obviously won't be doing chapters for every mission. Generally only if there's some story stuff (facility missions, the ones added in the DLC's, and the first time I encounter a Chosen or Boss from Alien Hunter), or just something interesting happens.
Hope you enjoyed, see you next time.