A/N: college applications suck. taxes suck. family sucks. everything sucks. but hey, everythings fucked up enough that i can afford to write again. silver linings and whatnot. i also vaguely remember telling someone that there was gonna be a bit of action this time. well there isnt. probably gonna be in the next update instead. also gonna merge chapter one after i sleep.
Elizabeth felt the plane start to slow down and assumed that they had reached their destination. The sound of the engines starting to echo told her that they had entered a chamber, most likely a hangar. Once the plane jolted slightly as it came to a stop on the ground, she stood up, followed by the rest of the passengers. As if in cue, the large door of the Skyranger opened up and the occupants strode out into XCOM Central.
"If you'll excuse me ma'am, I'll be returning to the barracks," Cho said.
Elizabeth nodded and the corporal saluted before walking away. "David, if all of your personnel are as disciplined as the corporal was, I could get used to this very easily."
Her aide smiled weakly, "Some of us are less tactful than others, but rest assured that we are all highly competent and professional."
She was a bit suspicious of that last statement, more on the way he said it than what he said. But she supposed that, considering all the things this organization did, a few eccentricities could be tolerated. As long as those eccentricities don't interfere with protocol then it should be fine.
"In any case, we should head to the situation room where the rest of the people who report directly to you should be waiting after which you'll be given a proper tour of the facility and then you'll undergo the, ahh, surgery," David said.
The commander nodded and allowed him to lead her down a series of drab steel corridors teeming with people rushing this way and that. She couldn't help but notice that there were more people out of uniform than there were in uniform, though some were wearing hard hats and lab coas. Civilian assets perhaps? In any case, a few of them would give a brief greeting to David when they passed and he would try to respond in kind, though they tended to be long gone before he could do so.
"The first person you'll be meeting is Dr. Edmund Oort, head of our research department," David said, "Currently age 49, has doctorate degrees in biophysics and neuroscience, and was studying to earn an MD before we recruited him 5 years ago."
"I suppose that degree in neuroscience helps your psychic program quite a bit."
"Psionics," David corrected, "But yes, though his contributions were fairly limited since there wasn't much he could do that we haven't done already. Still, he helped create a few ingenious exercises to train our psions, the most popular of which is the paintball exercise."
"Oh?" Elizabeth asked with curiosity clearly apparent in her voice.
"It's the same as regular paintball except the arena lacks any cover whatsoever and team members are not allowed to speak to one another. Each team is led by one psion and orders are relayed via psionics. In order to avoid getting shot, one must shift the perceptions of the opposing team while simultaneously resisting their attempts at doing the same to your team.
It's fantastic training for when our psions are deployed while our scientists can record whatever they wish while our troops have a bit of fun."
"Sounds interesting, I would like to watch a match soon."
David laughed, "It's really not that interesting, ma'am. Just a bunch of humanity's most elite soldiers constantly shooting three feet off target."
Elizabeth couldn't help but smile at that, "Regardless, I still wish to spectate a match when possible." Interesting or not, it would be best to see the capabilities of the new troops she had, especially since they were in a class of their own. "In fact, I want a demonstration of the capabilities of your MELD enhanced troops. I need to know what I have to work with, after all."
"I'll set one up when I can," he said.
They stopped in front of an elevator, though were it not for the label, Elizabeth would have thought the heavy duty blast doors led to something else. David pressed his palm against a biometric scanner, opening the surprisingly empty elevator considering the flurry of activity going on around them. An exclusive elevator for command staff, perhaps. Fancy.
Once they were inside and moving, David resumed talking, "The next man you'll be meeting is the head of our engineering department, Mr. John Hailey, age 32."
"Just mister?"
"He came recommended from multiple people, Dr. Oort included. We picked him up a year ago before he could complete his thesis work in physics, I believe. In fact it was his thesis work that made Dr. Oort recommend him. Apparently he planned on creating a device which would force volcanic eruptions anywhere on earth. All our experts agree that it would work if we built one."
Before she could ask, David answered, "He enjoys challenges and when he can't find one, he makes one up for himself. Usually in the form of some pointless doomsday machine."
"Are you sure it's safe to appoint such an unstable man to a command position?" Elizabeth replied.
David nodded, "As far as we can tell, he's perfectly sane and despite what you might think, he has an exceptional work ethic. He says time constraints and such are simply other ways he could challenge himself in."
Elizabeth smiled, "Is this what you meant by 'less tactful' personnel?"
David smiled back, "More or less."
The elevator pinged to signal their arrival with a helpful screen showing that they were at the situation room. Inside was a giant wall-sized screen displaying a map of the world overlaid with various dots, circles, and arrows of varying colors and sizes. Situated at the center was a fairly large table with four chairs, two of which were occupied. A few papers and a datapad were strewn in between them.
"Look," the younger one with a hard hat said, "The designs of the ships that attacked the moon were too varied to be from a single unified culture. I say we're dealing with another multi-species conglomerate."
The older man in a lab coat looked up from his datapad to address his companion, "I'm not saying you're wrong, I simply find it hard to believe that there are more than one multi-species civilizations out-" his datapad interrupted him when it beeped, drawing his attention to it. "Nevermind, I just received a copy of the surveillance footage and survivor testimonies. Turns out we're dealing with at least 3 different species."
The younger one slammed his hand down on the table before raising a fist into the air, his blue eyes gleaming with victory. "Fucking called it."
His colleague sighed, massaging the bridge of his nose which pushed his glasses slightly upward. "Yes, yes. You win."
David coughed, bringing the attention of the two arguing men to him. "Gentlemen, this is Commander Elizabeth Owens, XCOM's new overall commander."
"Commander," the lab coat said as he walked over to Elizabeth with his hand stretched out for a handshake. "I am Dr. Edmund-"
"Dr. Oort, yes," Elizabeth interrupted as she shook his hand. "David told me about you. You have quite the resume."
Dr. Oort smiled, "What can I say? I enjoy the pursuit of knowledge."
Elizabeth turned to face the other occupant who opted to remain seated. "And you must be John Hailey."
"Sup."
Dr. Oort glared at him. "John. At least greet your new boss properly."
John sighed as he got up, "Fine." He crossed the room dejectedly but as soon as he was in front of the commander, he immediately began sporting a winning smile. He took Elizabeth's hand and gave it a firm, practiced shake. "It's pleasure to meet you, commander."
She fixed him with a withering look. David wasn't joking about the lack of tact. David and Dr. Oort, meanwhile, looked like they either wanted to hide their faces in shame or to slit John's throat.
John, on the other hand, was growing increasingly nervous as he slowly began realizing that the woman who was staring him down and refusing to let go of his hand could very easily order his execution. "Mr. Hailey," she said, "You are in a military operation now under MY command and I do NOT tolerate insubordinate behaviour. However, due to you civilian status and some assurances from Mr. Malateo of your reliability, I am willing to look the other way this time. I strongly advise you not to push your luck."
The moment she released his hand, he snapped to attention making a point to avoid her gaze. "Y-yes ma'am."
"Good," she said, "Now, I overheard that we've received some data from the moon attack?"
Dr. Oort nodded, "Yes ma'am. We have security footage from the base, transcripts of survivor testimonies, and some basic combat data from the space battle. I've sent copies to the labs for analysis."
"Then we'll do a quick briefing now while we're all here," she replied. "The tour can wait and I'm certain that your mandatory brain surgery will put me out of commission for a while. I'd rather we get this out of the way now so that I can issue a few standing orders."
They moved to take their places around the table. Elizabeth took the seat directly facing the screen, while David and Dr. Oort took the seats to her right and left respectively. Seeing that there was only one chair left which was directly across Elizabeth, John took it, much to his discomfort.
Once they were all properly seated, Elizabeth spoke, "Let's start with their ships. Mr. Hailey, you said earlier that they varied in design. Can you expound on that?"
"Wha- I- yea I guess I- I mean, yes ma'am" John stuttered. Dr. Oort tapped his datapad a few times, which apparently brought up rough schematics of the alien ships on the big screen. He motioned for John to turn around and face the display. John muttered a silent thanks to the doctor and got up to properly see the screen. He seemed to briefly consider moving his chair to the side before deciding against it and remained standing.
Elizabeth made a mental note to see if she could redesign the table so that everyone could face the screen at the same time.
"Right, so first we were attacked by about 10, uhh, individual ships. They seemed to teleport in but a bunch of dudes- I mean- a few observatories saw the ships near Pluto after they arrived on the moon, which means that they have some kind of faster than light travel."
"As for their differences, I noted two main ones. First are their sizes which range from 100-ish meters to about 600. Second are the aesthetics of their structure. It's not that hard to guess that these stingray… things were designed by a very different person from the di- pseudo-cylindrical shaped ones. Furthermore, ships of the same sizes but different designs were, as far as we can tell, operating in a similar manner. Makes me think that they classify ships based primarily on their size regardless of who built it."
"So?" David asked, "Classification by size is hardly critical information."
"I think the point he's making is that we're most likely dealing with more than one culture," answered Dr. Oort.
"The Ethereals were like that too, weren't they?"
The doctor shook his head, "They were multiple races but they were all one single entity ruled by the Ethereals. All their ships and equipment more or less shared the same design philosophies. This time, however, it looks like different species with different cultures, and possibly with different governing bodies, are working in tandem."
John pointed at him, "What he said."
Elizabeth sighed, "Right now this is all irrelevant speculation. What do we know about their weapons and defences and how are we compared to them?"
"From what we could tell, their main guns are all forward facing kinetic weapons and a lot more powerful than they look, but they had to maneuver the whole ship to shoot things with it so I'm guessing they're fixed into position," John replied, seemingly more composed than before, "They blew up most of the surface to orbit guns and a bunch of Firestorms when they dropped in."
"So the moon was left defenceless, then," she mused.
"Not entirely," David said, who was now perusing his own datapad. "One surface based fusion lance, four Firestorms equipped with their own fusion lances, and one missile battery were able to avoid the initial attack. The groundside lance was able to damage one large ship, but was immediately bombarded after that. The Firestorms further damaged that ship until it withdrew and they were able to damage another before they were shot down, allegedly by laser point defences. The missile batteries were of dubious help as most of the missiles were shot down by the same point defences, though the ones that did get through caused significant damage to one of the smaller ships."
Elizabeth sighed again, "Those were fighters designed to take on ships the size of a city. How were they shot down so quickly?"
John answered, "I think its coz the alien ships were moving really weirdly."
"How so?" David asked.
"Well they could change orbits waay too trivially. And since all our knowledge on space combat relies on calculating enemy orbits, our pilots probably had no clue on what the fuck the aliens were doing."
Realizing that he had just acted a bit too casual, John looked towards Elizabeth, hoping that she didn't notice. What he saw was the leader of the biggest and most powerful black ops organization boring holes into his skull with her eyes. All he could manage was a weak smile and a meek "Sorry, ma'am."
Satisfied, Elizabeth addressed the whole room, "Is there anything else about the enemy ships that we know?"
"Not until we get more data, ma'am," John replied.
"Then let's move on," she said, "What about the aliens themselves?"
Dr. Oort tapped his datapad once again, replacing the ship schematics with a series of still images captured from the security cameras on the moon base. They depicted various groups of humanoid aliens in full armor, enough to hide plenty of defining features but not enough to differentiate them from humans. One kind of alien seemed to be fine without any armor, however.
While the rest were focused on the screen, John took the opportunity to angle his chair toward the screen and sit down, relieved.
"I have to say that they look a lot more human than any of the Ethereal races did," he said.
After scrutinizing the images for a moment, Elizabeth saw something interesting. "That image on the top right, can you expand that?"
A second later the image had expanded to fill most of the screen. It showed one of the aliens which looked eerily like a human female in yellow armor with its arm extended outward. What caught Elizabeth's eye, however, was the distinct bluish haze around her.
"Is she… glowing?" John asked.
"Ahh yes," Dr. Oort replied, "multiple eye witnesses reported that the ones which look very similar to human women were capable of some sort of telekinesis while they were glowing."
David frowned. "Doc, is it psionics?" he asked with worry.
The doctor considered the question for a moment before saying, "I don't think we should rule that possibility out just yet but it certainly is more physical than psionics and psions pointedly don't glow while using their abilities."
"That is quite worrying…" Elizabeth thought aloud. First psychics and now telekinetics. What would the galaxy throw at them next? "Do we know more about their abilities?"
"Not right now, no," said the doctor, "All we know is that they glow before they use their powers."
"Then what else do we know?"
The image on the screen shrank back into the corner as different pictures came up. This time they were cropped images of the various hostile alien species, one alien per image.
The first one showed the unarmoured alien which had claws, digitrade legs, and wrinkled skin. Its head was topped with fleshy spikes and had three holes on their foreheads. What stood out for Elizabeth, though, was the mouth which was lined with an innumerable number of spindle-like teeth.
The next was the aforementioned human female-like alien, followed by another alien which looked like a human male.
The fourth alien had what looked like an elongated helmet stretching towards its back. Its chestpiece looked very bulky when compared to the rest of its body. It had three fingers per hand and also had digitrade legs.
The fifth and final image had a very lanky-looking humanoid with a head that was too tall to be human, or at least the helmet was. The torso was also too small for a human's. Like the previous one, it had three fingers per hand and digitrade legs.
"As I've said before," Dr. Oort continued, "There are at least 3 different species based on their body shapes, though there could easily be more since their armors conceal a lot. I'm basing my assumptions on the fact that the last two pairs are male and female versions of 2 different species since their body types are fairly similar, and considering the degree of sexual dimorphism of some terrestrial species, I believe that this is a valid hypothesis."
"So far, the ones we need to watch out for the most are the telekinetics and the unarmoured aliens. The telekinetics are a threat for obvious reasons while the unarmoured ones are absurdly durable according to the survivors. They were reportedly able to survive multiple plasma rounds to the abdomen and were able to recover from otherwise severely crippling wounds within minutes."
Elizabeth was about to comment of the sheer absurdity of that until, once again, she remembered that she was now part of a world with psychics and telekinesis. Instead, she decided to ask about things she could wrap her head around. "What about their weapons and armor?"
This time, it was David who answered, who turned out to have been studying the testimonies and videos on his own pad. "Plasma appears to have less of an effect than desired. Instead of clinging to targets and burning them, it seems as if the plasma just splashes off of them, greatly reducing the amount of damage it theoretically should. As for why that happens…"
"It might be some kind of force field or barrier," John contributed. "It wouldn't be too far-fetched, all things considered, and there were a few reports of the fusion lances detonating a few meters away from the hull of the alien ships. Can't really confirm it though since all four pilots might as well be dead right now."
David just nodded, not really wanting to argue with the idea. "As for their weapons, they're using kinetic weapons, of all things. Powerful ones, though, and I didn't see any of them reload once in any of the videos."
Elizabeth nodded in understanding. Frankly, this was more than she expected. She thought she'd be dealing with a 'conventional' war with none of the fantastical elements she was now confronted with. But officer school had taught her to take what she got and run with it. This was probably not what her teachers had in mind when they told it to her, but it was more relevant now than ever before.
"Alright, so is this all we have at the moment?" she asked. When nobody responded, she took that as a positive.
"Ok then. Right now we know precious little about our enemies. That is unacceptable. We need to know what their goals and priorities are and then deny it from them." Especially since we have absolutely no way of attacking them, Elizabeth thought. "Try to figure out their preferred tactics as well as modes of communication. The sooner we're able to interrogate one of them, the better."
"If I may, Commander," David said, "we already have a way of interrogating aliens without having to talk to them. It's fairly limited, but it's better than nothing."
Elizabeth nodded. Whatever they did to accomplish that seemed complicated and she's had enough complicated for the day. "Then do it. While we're doing that, I want you to prioritize defending population centers first, if you can afford to do so. Our population is still a long way from pre-war levels so having it plummet any further would be a bad idea. Mr. Malateo, do you think our psionic troops will be able to tell if the telekinetics are psionic based or not?"
David paused for a moment. "I suppose it won't hurt to try. I'll order one of the Queens out with a squad first chance I get."
"Order the Queen to stay back and not expose themselves at all costs. Whether or not our enemies have psionics, I don't want to tip our hand just yet. They made that mistake, showing us their abilities, let's not follow their footsteps," Elizabeth added.
David replied with a snappy "Yes, ma'am."
"Mr. Hailey." John jumped at the mention of his name. "Force fields or not, our weapons are less effective than I want them to be. Find a way around it. Also, since missiles are apparently inefficient against these bastards, I need you to develop a new surface to orbit weapon that works in atmosphere. I also need you to improve our fighters in any way you can since they're our best and only bet at challenging them in space right now."
"Aye-aye, ma'am!" he replied, slightly less scared and a lot more excited as ideas raced through his head.
Finally, she turned to Dr. Oort, "Doctor, I don't think I need to tell you to perform extensive autopsies on as many corpses as we can recover. Prioritize the telekinetics. Also, see if you can somehow find a way to communicate with the aliens without… doing whatever it is you do to interrogate them" She paused before adding, "And try to help Mr. Hailey with his projects."
Dr. Oort smiled as he was tapping away at his pad. "I was already planning on doing all that, Commander. Although," he said, "my teams have been developing an improved version of the medical spray. It's near completion and it won't take too much effort to finish it."
"Do it," the Commander said. Keeping soldiers alive was always a good thing.
"That should be all, then. Gentlemen, dismissed." As she stood from her chair, she turned towards her aide. "Now then, David, I believe you owe me a tour of the premises.