The battle against the aliens was pretty lopsided in my favor: the aliens were caught so heavily off guard that the motley Alliance of XCOM, the colonies on Chiron, and my forces were able to down all of their ships without taking a single loss in return. Exactly half of the ship's we fought were outright destroyed in the fighting, leaving nothing to salvage, but the ones that did crash provided me with plenty of artifacts to research.

Well, after all the crew were dealt with, anyway.

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Gamma One opened fire, downing an anthropod under a hail of plasma fire. Nearby, Two blew a hole through a psimorph with his sniper rifle, sending the beast hurtling toward the ground. Several multiworms found themselves being shredded to pieces by Three's shotgun, while an unlucky spitter found itself with a new hole in its chest due to a well aimed shot from Four's rifle.

All around them, aliens were dying in droves. Surprise was one cause, but a big part of it was the help they had this time around. No longer did they need to worry about allies who couldn't defend themselves; XCOM's newest allies could easily hold their own in a fight.

Suddenly, the ground began to shake, leading One to order his squad to seek shelter. A moment later, a building crumbled, revealing the monstrous form of a megaspawn, weapons primed and ready for combat. It opened fire, but its aim was off and the shot missed, hitting a (thankfully empty) taxi instead.

The megaspawn roared and tried to line up a second shot, only to take a huge green orb to its face, partially melting said face and killing the giant. Turning around, One noticed the sight of a manticore being directed by a handler, instructing it where to strike and when. Few of Chiron's native organisms could survive on Earth, but those that could were proving to be excellent allies in this battle.

How long that would be true, though, remained to be seen.

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A brain sucker flew through the air, only to be batted aside by the barrel of a rifle. A swift shot from the gun finished it off, while a second one killed the antropod who had fired the brainsucker launcher.

Behind his golden helm, Henrique Blackfire smiled. One Alien down, another couple dozen to go.

Hailing from Portuguese settlers who had been among those selected to be part of the Franco-Iberian Seeding Mission, Blackfire had long heard of the stories of Old Earth. The tales were varied in both tone and subject, but all of them had shared similar ideas: Old Earth had once been beautiful, but man's greed, wrath and shortsightedness had ultimately ruined the glorious cradle of mankind, forcing them into Exodus, unlikely to ever return.

Well, now he had done the impossible, and had returned to the birth world of mankind. The joy he had felt, though, had been marred by his rage at the sight of the aliens attacking it. Why did they seek to rule this world? This was the seat of mankind, and it would never fall under the power of an alien ruler.

Four more shots came out of his golden rifle, felling the hyperworms that had emerged from the fresh carcass of a multiworm. He was then forced to take cover as a group anthropods attacked him, fighting even harder than they had earlier. This confused Henrique for a moment: why would they fight on if retreat was more practical? Were they that desperate to take Earth, and if so, then why? These questions only remained in his mind for a moment, though, before they went away. Regardless of why the aliens were invading, they were still putting millions at risk.

A skeletpoid surprised him when it charged out of an alley, knocking his weapon away and trying to claw him to death, only to receive a kick in return. Following up on this, Blackfire punched the Alien in the fast a few times, then lifted it up and slammed it back down, pulverizing its back.

Idly, Henrique noted how distrustful this would have looked, even to his allies. Few in Franco-Iberia believed in tampering with the human genome, but Blackfire believed it was necessary to do so if mankind wished to unlock its full potential. Sometimes, the Old did need to make way for the new.

With no foes on sight, Henrique reloaded his rifle and listened in on his comms. Wherever he was needed, he would go.

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Well, this hadn't gone as planned.

The mission had been clear: damage as much of the city as possible, capture any sectoids in the slums to replace the lost crop, and, if possible, infiltrate Transtellar and convince them to ally with our forces. That was the plan the Micronoids had agreed on, just prior to the attack. The resulting damage would likely lose the finding of their foes, making it easier to destroy them.

Now, though, things were looking bad. Well, they would've if the micronoid had eyes. As is, it could tell that things were taking a turn for the worst. The bomber it commanded had been disabled by an unknown party, who had arrived through two giant portals that had emerged in the city. Now, the unknown party, joined by at least six other groups, had assisted XCOM in fending off the attack, much to the ire of the Micronoids. This mission had proven to be a disaster: they had lost so many forces, uet they had. It inflicted a single casualty, not even to the populace of the city.

No matter. The rest of the Micronoids knew that this mission was a failure, and were already drawing up plans for a new assault. Having seen the battle through the cameras onboard the ship's, they would have had a chance to see the strengths and weaknesses of the new comers, allowing them to formulate a new pan of attack that would be more effective. And once the XCOM Project was destroyed, they could claim this world as their own.

Satisfaction filling the individuals who comprised it, the Micronoid puddle slunk away from the remains of its sho, toward some nearby rubble. Hopefully, it could wait out the fighting and last until the next ship arrived in the city, after which point hitching a new ride would not be difficult.

That wasn't going to happen today.

The Micronoids were forced to stop when they encountered a pair of metallic feet. They had just enough time to realize that something was wrong before they felt a nasty shock and found themselves falling toward the calm oblivion of sleep.

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Carefully, I had my CNDR load up the Micronoids into a glad coanfiner, which would be transferred to a lab for study. Perhaps I could learn some things that may help me uet when facing the aliens.

Oh, and apparently, there were no human casualties during this fight. Score one for mankind

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AN: [USER=319653]MasterG/USER: hope you liked this chapter.

Everyone else, Read and Review! This is Flameal15k, signing off!