"We shall defend our island, whatever the cost may be, we shall fight on the beaches, we shall fight on the landing grounds, we shall fight in the fields and in the streets, we shall fight in the hills; we shall never surrender."
OoOoOoOoO
15:35 Hours
Shanxi
Colonel Elissa Moore, better known as TITAN 1, moved nearly silently through the debris of a collapsed structure towards the location where a trio of x-ray drop ships had landed within the colony borders. Coming to a halt just at the edge of a collapsed supermarket, Moore raised her left hand, bringing the rest of TITAN squad to an immediate halt behind her.
Carefully edging a single finger from her right hand around the corner, she watched as a live feed popped up on the inside of her helmet, showing a couple dozen of the bird like aliens moving around with rapid, disciplined movements as they deployed barricades and set up gun emplacements.
"Three, Four, you have the guns. Five, Six, clean up the infantry. Two, you're with me on over watch. Once things are clear we're boarding those ships and clearing them out. Smash anything that looks like a pilot's seat but otherwise leave it intact. We want to keep these guys down here in some capacity to try and avoid any more orbital strikes," she whispered softly, receiving five cool blue acknowledgement lights in return.
Taking a breath to steady herself for a moment, Elisa paused before triggering the purple attack light in her squad's helmets.
In an instant, cloaking systems deactivated and Elisa launched herself forward from her position behind the ruined supermarket, a deafening crash sounding through the air as she and her five fellow MEC troopers raced out to secure the landing site.
The aliens immediately registered the threat, turning to look for the source as they reached for their weapons, some of the reactions were clearly more hesitant or shocked at just how close TITAN squad was, or perhaps it was at their sheer size.
Clad in their seventh generation AIAS Exo-Suits, every member of Elisa's squad stood well over eleven feet high and in matte black armor they appeared to be some sort of monsters almost, come to claim their victims and take them back to hell.
As all six squad members entered the open space where the drop ships had landed, TITAN Three and TITAN Four slowed and stopped in open ground before hefting their massive rifles to the mechanized shoulders of their bodies and taking aim. Even as TITANs Five and Six continued forward, a pair of electric blue lances, each only an inch in diameter, shot forward at hyper sonic speeds to pierce the assembled guns before a wider, half foot diameter blast of electric blue colored energized particles shot forward around the original beams, blasting the targets to pieces along with the aliens who had been setting them up. All of that happened, bits of metals and gore spraying about in every direction from the pair of shots before two distinct cracks echoed across the lot from the broken sound barrier.
TITANs Five and Six had not been idle though as their compatriots destroyed the gun turrets, no as TITAN Two took up an over watch position that Elisa mirrored nearby, she noted the sight and sounds as the aliens screamed in pain from burns across their bodies, no doubt the result of the elerium infused flamethrowers that the pair had equipped.
As the final dregs of resistance were swept away by Five and Six, Elisa spoke into her comms again, no longer bothering to whisper as before, as if the enemy had been able hear them. "Five and Six, you've used your flamethrowers already, keep watch out here and relay comms in case something goes wrong. Two, Three, Four, we're clearing the ships," she ordered.
A chorus of yes ma'am's answered her as Five and Six moved to secure over watch positions while She and the rest of her squad mover to the first ship on the right, noting that the once open door was now closed.
"How do we wanna do this ma'am?" Three asked with a hint of eagerness.
Elisa felt herself grin slightly as she replied, "Two, Four, get a grip on the door. Pull it down and we'll hose the inside."
"Understood ma'am." The two troopers replied.
OoOoOoO
General Gergis couldn't help but look with near despair at the tactical map before him that had been setup outside his crashed destroyer.
The ship that had brought him to the surface would never fly again, but fortunately enough inside had survived intact to permit his troops to still run what amounted to most of a CIC through the vessel's sensors and comms.
What he was getting from his troops though wasn't pretty.
Only two-thirds of the planned invasion force had even made it to surface and of that a sixth were already injured, and then the entirety of his force was scattered like birdshot across the map of the city rather than landed in concentrated hard points.
And then things had gotten worse, as soon as vessels had started deploying their forces, reports had started filtering in of attacking coming in, first the odd pot shot here and their from ballistics, but then it became reports of sniper fire from crimson colored lasers that their armor was doing nothing against. The situation only degraded further when troops in heavy black armor with heavy kinetic barriers had started appearing, using hand held versions of the weapons from Victus's report on the space battle, cutting down whole swaths of troops before either disappearing or boarding drop ships, wrecking everything they could find and then retreating.
According to the most recent report to come in, these aliens had some form of mechs running about as a group of six were assaulting a trio of his drop ships some distance away, but they couldn't lift off and for good reason.
The first group to try and lift off to avoid being boarded had been immediately vaporized when a swarm of the green plasma missiles homed in on them within seconds of taking flight. A group of gunships he had tried to deploy had met with some success, managed to harass a group of the black armored soldiers away from their goals and back into a building without being hit by the AA batteries, only they had been taken out moments later by what was apparently a soldier portable version of the missile system.
With the way the alien soldiers cut and fled at every opportunity and how none of them wore any sort of distinguishing armor, Gergis's command hadn't come up with any definite number for how many enemies there were beyond the most that had been reported at one time: One hundred and seventeen. Given they seemed to operate in groups of six though, Gergis was willing to bet the actually number was a full one-twenty and the last three just weren't spotted.
His self recrimations were brought to a halt though as one of his aides brought him a datapad displaying a trooper's helmet feed.
A former trooper's helmet feed most likely given that his status read MIA, though Gergis found that surprising, this was the only one that wasn't KIA and if his aides thought he should see it, then it truly must be something interesting.
OoOoOoO
Lieutenant Commander Faren Cree, commander of the seventeenth expeditionary platoon of the Turian Navy, or rather what was left of it, took a breath to steady himself as he crouched low behind a bulkhead, readying his assault rifle beside his fellow soldiers as he waited for the aliens to try and breach his drop ship, and while he would never admit it, he was terrified.
From the ship's external cameras, he had watched as the hulking, mechanized alien troops had peeled open the external doors of the two adjacent ships and moved inside them only to reappear minutes later coated in Turian gore. No one on his ship had been unaffected by sight, much less the shouts of panic and then dead silence on the comms as the aliens had breeches each drop ship.
This time though he, and his men, would be ready. Four of his soldiers stood directly across from the door with heavy weapons, ready to launch their rockets filled with shaped charges directly into the mechs as soon as they ripped off the hatch.
But it wasn't to be.
This time, as the char black mechs approached his ship, no pair moved to take up positions on either side, instead a single unit came up to the door, an oversized left hand glowing with mass effect energy as it prepared to attack.
As the giant raised its fist, Faren began to shout a warning to the troops directly opposite the door, hoping that against all odds he wouldn't be too late even though he knew he was.
Assisted by some sort of thrusters, the giant's fist crashed into the air lock, amplified by its mass effect field as it knocked the heavy metal door free of its hinges and rails, sending it flying straight across the bay and into the soldiers there. One of the four heavy weapons specialists though, had the itchy trigger finger to fire as the door came forward, resulting in a tumultuous explosion filling the entrance with smoke as a strange quiet settled over the scene, if only for a moment.
"Fire Damn It! Fire!"
It took Faren a moment to realize it had been him who had shouted those words as he mashed down the trigger of his assault rifle, spraying hypersonic projectiles into the new opening in the drop ship as his fellow troopers did the same from all around him, pouring hundreds, if not thousands of rounds of ammunition into the smokey haze before the door way in an attempt to kill the invading soldiers.
As he let loose with his barrage of fire, feeling his rifle rattle and begin to heat in his hands, Faren was vaguely aware of his subordinates beside him opening up in kind, firing into hazy black smoke.
Just as he was about to order a cease fire, Cree spotted the tell-tale blue-orange flicker of reacting kinetic barriers within the smoke, triggering some primal urge within him as he reached for a grenade at his hip, flinging the explosive forward into the smoke to hear a satisfying explosion.
Before he could order a cease fire though, their was a electric blue light within the smoke that sent Faren Cree, Lieutenant Commander of the Turian Navy, scrambling for his life past his troops as something clicked inside his head, telling him to run for his life and not a moment too soon.
The blue light behind him flared and discharged with the booming snap of a direct hit from a lightning bolt as electricity rolled outwards, consuming everything in its path. The troops Faren had left behind jerked and twisted as their muscles spasmed before they started to smoke and collapse in heaps. Every surface arced with electricity as consoles and panels overloaded and exploded, blowing out into the open halls as the lighting failed.
Rolling onto his back as a series of dull, thudding footsteps approached him, Faren looked up into the wide, glowing green slit visor with an uncontrollable sense of fear as the figured raised a hand glowing with electrical arcs and then pain and darkness claimed him.
OoOoOoO
Looking down at the unconscious alien, Elisa reached down and yanked off the creature's ornamental red helmet for her first real close up look at the creature before sighing. The things really looked like some sort of child's horror monster.
Good, it made them easier to kill.
"Two, tell the base to have one of our psionics get ready, we got a HVT here for interrogation," she ordered.
"Understood ma'am."
With the last ship taken, her troops were busy scrounging whatever they could in order learn whatever was possible about these invaders, something made much more difficult by the lack of a full on base since X-COM Shanxi's destruction, but a number of the outlying facilities X-COM soldiers were operating from we're still capable of autopsies and the like thankfully.
So as she stepped outside with her prisoner under one arm while TITANs Two and Three carried a number of corpses and weapons for evaluation back at their FOB as they headed headed back the way they had come, TITANs Four, Five, and Six providing over watch.
OoOoOoOoO
So another new chapter, sooner and unfortunately short than I expected. And to those who like Churchill, you'll see a lot of quotes from him as I quite admire him now to address some reviews.
Greendagger9900: How will Exalt or Cerberus show up?
A: Undecided as of yet, X-COM cracks down hard on rogue factions, a group like Cerberus wouldn't last long.
Gytrash1167: Reads like Hot Chocolate.
A: Thank You?
EddBlackheart: This story will die soon.
A: Thanks for the vote of confidence.
Sneaky Breeze: Will X-Com have any gear from the older games?
A: Unlikely, I don't know what's available. X-COM Enemy Unknown 2012 was the first one I played.
Celtic Reaper: You adding stuff from the DLC?
A: Already done.
Lone Courier of XCOM: you going to include the Ethereals?
A: They are quite likely completely gone.
TokoronaSH: Blah Blah Blah.
A: be constructive or go away please.