Light Weapons ch2.
AN: Wanted an update to this story. Hope you guys enjoy it. Chapter 3 will be the last one.
Captain Charlie "Rebel" Palomo thought: We've finally evened the playing field.
He was staring up at the second Firestorm, as two sets of engineers went to work maintaining the craft.
For once in his life, he was feeling good. Awesome even.
The engineers in back worked a fuel pump into the rear quarters of the craft. Right up its ass! Rebel thought happily. The fuel pump and hose was attached to one of the Elerium Generators in the lower levels of the base.
Unlike the fuel hose for the Ravens, the hoses for the Firestorms were colored purple. It was important the two were never confused. Putting Elerium in a conventional jet engine that couldn't handle it wouldn't do anything as dramatic as blowing up the craft or nuking the entire base. It would, however, melt the jet engine and whatever happened to be below the plane at the time, from the metal floors to the reinforced concrete between said floors.
Yeah boys, let's try not to frig this up, Rebel thought, smiling.
The ten engineers in front of the craft were using a small crane to install the plasma cannons that'd just been built. One for Commander Mars, and one for Rebel. Just as the laser cannons had glowed faintly red (flaring into bright red when firing) these cannons glowed green.
But not faintly.
Instead, watching them, they seemed to pulse and throb. Much like a human heart…and probably alien ones as well.
The Ravens had been further augmented as the war went on. They were able to strap on two laser cannons, effectively doubling their firepower. They didn't have to worry nearly as much about fuel, thanks to the prototype hybrid engines that soaked up fuel just by being exposed to UV rays.
The Firestorms didn't have to worry about "lacking firepower," even though they only had just the one hard point.
From the tests they had run (virtual tests…but accurate ones), these cannons would melt the shit out of even the middle UFOs, which would only be able to do mild damage to the Firestorms. If even that.
The small and large scouts wouldn't be able to take on the Firestorms. Not even a little bit. Not even if the Firestorms were horribly outnumbered.
And they would be outnumbered on this next mission.
[2]
The target was an alien assault carrier. That was bad. An assault carrier meant a terror mission. Of the twenty countries that had originally funded the XCOM project, twelve had withdrawn. Two of them were won back, after operatives invaded the alien bases there.
It'd been awful, bloody work: a captain and two master sergeants had been loss. Damn near a fortune in terms of experience. But the missions had gotten done, and South Africa and Argentina were back with them.
According to the hyperwave relay, the carrier was heading for India. Huge country. Huge population. It would be a bloodbath if not treated with care. It was a surprise to the Africa base commander, Jonathon Saburo, that it hadn't happened sooner.
As he sat in his chair in Mission Control, he stared at the large blip. Trying not to think of what had happened to Australia. Half a dozen chryssalids, and the whole continent had been evacuated. Casualties in the hundreds of millions. The government hadn't technically withdrawn. They didn't exist anymore.
"Send out the Firestorms." he said, "Send in everything."
And as the blue blips moved in toward the red blip, Saburo leaned forward in his chair.
[3]
As the mobile elevator rose her up towards the cockpit, Maria Estevez tried to clear her mind. That was easier said than done. Her mind was racing more often than not…and how many of the thoughts were her own? Four months ago, just after Harun died, she might've had a definite answer for that: the answer of course, was all of them were her own.
Psychosis. That's what Mars had thought at first. As the pilot training had gone on, it'd been nothing more than occasional murmurs, and always when she was either diving into or climbing out of sleep.
It had taken her a long time to finally open up about the voices in her head. It was only after some of the soldiers had started talking about it. The one who went by the nickname "Missionary" heard them almost constantly, and in loud whispers.
Missionary had talked about the voices first, and before you knew it, half a dozen people had stepped forward. It became the only thing base personnel would talk about.
It had annoyed Maria to no end. At the same time it convinced her to do the same. And yet, when Commander James Eric Gardener (or Gard as he was often called) called Mars in to his office, she had been sick with fear.
They're gonna can me after all!
But they did not, and she had been in the PSI labs the following hour.
She had floated in there for only three days; to her it'd felt like a good year. No food or water necessary. The psychic/nutrient bath was all the food and water needed.
Under the bath, it'd felt like she was dreaming rather than being tested. Only a few hours in, Mars was certain that it wasn't really in a transparent jar, no…she was in a vast ocean. All of the universe was an ocean.
Most of the dreams weren't so good.
She dreamed she was a Muton in an urban center: she had raised her large plasma rifle and dumped half of the magazine into a pot-bellied, middle-aged woman hiding behind a dumpster. Her child next to her screamed in grief and terror. Mars laughed. Then there was a sound like the earth ripping in half, and an alloy cannon shot took her right in the spine. Mars pitched over, but managed to turn in time to see XCOM operatives in powered armor walking towards her, alien plasma weapons in hand.
She dreamed she was an Exalt defending a terminal during a Covert Op. She was reloading her laser machinegun. An XCOM assault trooper dashed to her and hit her with an arc charger. Just before she collapsed, Mars injected herself with a syringe. She immediately started coughing up blood.
She had a dream where she was an XCOM sniper wielding a plasma sniper rifle and perched on a rooftop. She had on the skeleton armor and had just hookshotted herself onto a ledge. There were a bunch of little Sectoids running around in the field in front of her, scrambling for cover. She picked them off one after the other, not missing once. Each Sectoid flying backwards sent a powerful tremor through her body. She was in the zone.
She had a dream about aliens in the sea, in a vast city that was slowly but surely turning itself on.
But of course that wasn't real. None of the aliens knew how to swim. The idea had been so ridiculous Mars had been able to hear her own laugh, even as she was in suspended animation.
Eventually, the dreams had died down, and she in a stark-white room with objects in front of her.
She was urged by a disembodied voice to lift them if she could. And she could, and she did. The vases floated in the air, the beach balls flew around. They vanished and were replaced by larger objects. Those floated too.
Eventually, the floating tests were over and done with. Next was the shield test. She was to imagine a wall, and she did. A battery of plasma weapons were fired at this imaginary wall, and all of them bounced away.
Keep it up! went the disembodied voice. Mars eventually realized it was the voice of Dr. Vahlen. Mars kept up the shield. In PSI-lab-time, it felt like Mars kept it up for an entire month. The knowledge didn't annoy or frustrate her—it excited her.
At last, it was all done. She became vaguely aware of liquids falling down her body, as the container drained itself.
She opened her eyes, but only after a titanic effort. Dr. Vahlen stood in front of her.
"Well done Captain Estevez." Dr. Vahlen said.
[3]
But that was all past. No point focusing on that when she had a job to do right now.
She was in the Firestorm, now going through weapons check. Or weapon check anyways. The aliens now had twin linked plasma cannons on nearly all of their UFOs, not just the fighters or destroyers.
The Firestorms were badass, but not on that level. Not yet.
Plenty tough though, thought Mars, as her right hand settled on the joystick and her left on the thrust.
Den Mother spoke through the comms. "You have the sky commander."
"Copy that." Mars said. "My sky."
The Firestorm began to ascend, its elerium powered engines humming faintly, almost soothingly.
It didn't have VTOL technology; it used antigravity systems to hover. It rose up out of the base, facing east. The sky was deep blue behind her and pink in front of her, save for the yellow-white glow of the sun. It was four in the morning, at least in this time zone of Africa.
Let's party.
The Firestorm went from zero to Mach 4 in less than five seconds. The G-forces would've been devastating on her body if not for the force dampening system that surrounded the cockpit.
Palomo caught up with her almost immediately.
"How you doin' Mars?" he asked, sounding much to cheerful to be the same Palomo who'd been afraid of his own shadow four months ago.
"Doing fine Rebel." Mars chuckled a bit at his nickname, "And I hope it stays that way.
"Me too." Rebel said, and now he sounded like the nervous man she was familiar with.
She looked over her shoulder at him (which was easy, because the cockpit was seemingly transparent from the inside; she could look down and see the Indian Ocean underneath her) and saw a trail of blue behind his Firestorm. To Mars, it was almost beautiful.
The other Firestorm pilots arrived beside them. The first was.
[4]
This time, they were not met with allied forces before contact.
And dear sweet God was there contact.
They got a visual at 4:19 (a minute slower and Rebel might have cracked a stupid joke). They saw the assault carrier. That was easy enough. It resembled a battleship, more or less, and a battleship looked just like what the name said. A ship. In front of them, about a kilometer away, was a gigantic sliver of metal. It was nearly flat at the bottom, kept afloat by bulbous spheres that pulsed with blue light. Massive slanted compartments stood on top.
It floated high above the ocean, but even then Mars could see the disturbance in the
(there's a city in the sea there's a city in the sea)
ocean. And what a disturbance there was, like demons were roiling beneath it and the ocean was so dark—
Rebel's voice. "Mars, you still with me?"
"Of course I am."
The fool asked that same stupid question all the time…but was it really foolish when the aliens had tried to pierce her brain before. If not for Turk…
"Is your mind shield holding up?" Mars asked.
"It's fine and frisky."
Most of the troops went into battle with mind shields now. Most pilots did too. It was mighty difficult gaining mental control over someone flying in a distant object that darted in and out of sight…but it had happened before.
"It's got an escort." Rebel said.
Mars saw that it did. Not four, not five, but six destroyers. Medium sized craft that were larger about the same size as raiders but twice as armed and armored. Even from this distance, Mars could make out faint lights on the surface of the craft. Cameras perhaps, or gunports, or maybe just the exotic alien alloys catching the sun in an odd way.
The destroyer escorts were actually ahead of the battleship, closing in on the southern tip of India. The largest UFOs didn't resemble the flying saucers of the Independence Day. The small and medium sized craft totally did.
It didn't make sense that they were so far out ahead. That's what Mars thought until the fighters of XCOM Asia entered the scene.
[5]
XCOM Asia went by the nickname of Eastern Palace. The commander, Xu Zhang, named it so because of her love for Legend of Zelda.
The Palace base network had no Firestorms. What it did have was hangars full of Ravens and veteran pilots.
A team of eight was on the northern horizon. Their nicknames were based on cities. Dallas, Chicago, Delaware, Midland, Traverse, Salt Lake, Portland, and (of course) Vegas.
So we aren't hopelessly outnumbered after all, thought Mars.
"What kind of heat are you folks packing?" Mars asked.
"Four laser cannons." said Vegas. "I know that don't sound like much but—"
"No it doesn't." Mars said.
"—but they have supercapacitors."
"Pulse lasers?" Rebel said.
"You betcha." Vegas said, obviously proud.
Pulse lasers were the next step up from beam lasers. In this long ass war, pulse lasers were the fourth tier of weapon research, as they had taken place after gauss weapons but before plasma weapons. Beam lasers were still mostly sufficient against the weaker aliens: the Sectoids and the Thin Men and the regular Floaters. Against the heartier ones—the Berserkers and Cyberdisks and those fucking Ethereals—the beam lasers were extremely weak, and would take dozens of shots to finally put down.
"What about the other four?" Mars asked.
"We got plasma cannons." Traverse said.
"Holy shit!" Mars cried happily. "No kidding?"
"None at all."
"We are nearing engagement range!" Salt Lake cried out.
In the distance, Mars could see thick trails of red light cut through the sky, followed by green bolts of searing plasma.
They struck home on the most forward of the alien fleet, the first destroyer. Distant explosions bloomed like faraway novas, but it barely made any sound at all. Then there was a bigger, brighter explosion. It swallowed the front half of the destroyer and smoke soon followed. Destroyer-1 immediately began to descend.
"Direct hit!" Dallas (a woman) cried happily. "Somebody gather the Dragon Balls for these poor fuckers!"
"Dallas shut the fuck up!" roared Vegas. "This ain't grade school!"
"Really? It ain't? Well thanks for the update partner!"
My God, Mars thought, a bunch of fucking clowns are the air defense force of Asia.
Destroyer immediately returned fire. Charged green gas bolted through the sky. Mars' heart sank. Soon the screaming would start, and the panic. One of the Ravens would be blasted out of the sky, and then the numbers would just keep on dwindling as the fight went on.
But no.
The Raven pilots had already broken formation and were scattering. None of the enemy fire struck anything except for empty sky.
"Let's join the fight Mars!" Palomo shouted. Before she could so much as open her mouth, Rebel boosted forward. The Firestorm looked like some strange angelic form, oddly graceful in a way the Raven fighters never would be. It felt that way even as the craft did nothing more complicated than rushing in a straight line.
That's nothing to be worrying about right now, thought Mars. In front of her, Rebel was already opening fire with his own plasma cannon.