Sorry about the wait, let's get rolling!
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The mothership was not something that went down easily. The ship is functionally a mobile base, and is exactly as tough as that would imply.
Case in point, it was chewing up my ships. Now, normally, my units would be inflicting death and mayhem on the ship, since its attacks traveled at laughably slow speed that I could easily outmaneuver. The problem was that this ship was being backed up by two battleships and several escort ships, and the escorts had stasis bomb launchers. Unlike the last few times I'd fougth escorts, they now had something to capitalize on the moment of weakness their weapons created, which resulted in me taking several casualties. As in, my initial forces got utterly slaughtered and I had to start pulling in huge amounts of reinforcements. As for my allies, since I'd given them some forewarning about the attack, they were busy fortifying MegaPrimus. I hoped that they wouldn't have to deal with that ship or its escort fleet.
A hope that quickly proved to be in vain, as the despite suffering several losses, as well as crippling damage to the battleships, the fleet reached the dimension gate generators and teleported to Earth.
Panic began to spread the minute the ship arrived. Several accidents happened as people tried to escape the oncoming UFO horde, leading to several unnecessary casualties. Paramedics were already being dispatched, but to my surprise, they were shot at by human hover cars. A quick hacking of the city's databanks confirmed that it was registered as belonging to a member of the Cult of Sirius.
I should have dealt with those fanatics when I first arrived here.
While I moved several more ships in to intercept the aliens, I also started conducting bombing runs on the Cult's temples. While it was only normal munitions now, I was eventually planning to hit this guys with antimatter missiles, albeit ones scaled down for building busting. These guys were completely insane. As in, even EXALT thought they were crazy, according to some transmissions I'd picked up in the past few hours. Hell, a couple of branches of XCOM that were still on Earth had declared a truce with their regional counterparts on Earth just to kill off the Cult. A truce I was seriously considering joining - this cult was just a ticking time-bomb ready to blow at any moment. Well, blow with more force than it already had.
Surprisingly, things were faring far better now that the aliens were in the city, likely because they were going up against XCOM, who could turn their own stasis bomb launchers against them. Mentally, I made a note to start integrating those launchers into my interceptors and orbital fighters - that would give me an edge in the future, I just knew it. It only took ten minutes to down one of the battleships, and ten more after that to down the other.
Briefly, I was worried when the mothership dropped off an enormous monster I recognized as an overspawn onto one of the city's people tubes (which looked somewhat ridiculous), but that anxiety turned into humor when the creature promptly fell right through the thankfully empty tube and messily splattered on the ground below. Well, that was rather unexpected.
All in all, aside from the mothership, things were going rather easy at the moment.
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Gamma One fired at a megaspawn, riddling the beast's hide with bullets, killing it instantly. Around him, the rest of his squad was overwhelming the aliens, allowing their comrades to advance deeper into the alien battleship, which was a veritable goldmine of technology, assuming that they could take it, of course.
Above them, the aerial battle continued to rage, with the alien mothership facing off against the human fliers in the city's airspace. XCOM, the colonies, and Commander Flame had set an interesting strategy for dealing with these machines: the commander would use his aircraft as a sort of mobile shield to soak up damage, allowing the rest of the aircraft to hit the alien ship without fear of reprisal. So far, it was working out pretty well. Apparently, the aliens seemed to realize this, as their ships were starting to fall back toward the dimension gate.
All except for the mothership. That ship was instead rising further and further into the air, while its weapons began to aim...lower.
Oh dear.
The detonation of a grenade brought One's attention back to the ground. They had to win this battle first, and it wasn't like the aliens would shoot their own ship, at least when recovery was still an option.
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The fact that the mothership was raising its elevation was worrisome, as that gave it a better vantage point to attack the rest of the city. Granted, it was taking a ton of damage, but that wasn't much help right now. Especially not when the mothership could still take quite a boatload of damage before it would finally die. And yes, I mean die - this thing was more mushroom than machine.
XCOM was pulling out all stops here, calling in every shop they had, including a few leviathans and avengers. Apparently, these avengers were micro-versions of one that they used as a mobile command center on Chiron, ala the Avenger from XCOM 2. Equipped with fusion lances (both on the avengers and leviathans), they were shredding through the hull of the mothership life it was tissue paper, it just still. Wasn't enough.
As for the colonies, they'd managed to develop a starship version of the gates they'd used to arrive here, which they had unsurprisingly called the warp nexus (which made me glad I'd played Starships, even if it wasn't as fun as the rest of the stuff Sid Meier made). Already, ships were exiting those gates, moving in to assist against the mothership. I'd even exploited the gates to move in my own reinforcements start pounding that giant mushroom, but still, things weren't over yet.
Once it was high enough, the mothership stopped ascending, then opened fire. Disruptornbombs began raining down on the city, though they were rather easily intercepted by my laser turrets. My main worry was that the mothership was firing way more shots than it could fire in game, and at its current rate of fire, it would eventually overwhelm my turrets and obliterate the city.
How the hell was I losing to a giant mushroom? I was firing everything I had at it and it still wasn't dying. How a mushroom couldnwithstand Progenitor grade weapons was beyond me, but once this thing went down, I was going to steal that resilience for myself.
Unfortunately, the mothership was shifting its attention toward the XCOM base in the city, and at the rate of increasing firepower, once it was in range, the base would be toast. That is, if it couldn't shoot it down.
Quickly, I slaved all of my available aircraft (and, for that matter, everything else I had under my control) and directed it at the mothership. Still, given its resilience, I'd need a miracle to stop it now.
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Hydra One peered through the sensors of her planes, and through her, the Commander peered through those same sensors, alon with dozens of others.
The Commander has, in desperation, slaved all of his machines to his direct control and had sent them against a mighty spacecraft in the atmosphere of Earth. The plan was to disable the craft with precise strikes, but so far, that plan wan't sucessful. Through her link to the Commander, Hydra-One could feel his fear and desperation at how bad things were getting, but though it could feel them, it did not know what they meant.
Slowly, the locust tac-jets moves into position. Once in range, the locusts would open fire. Yet as they got closer, the odds of them even reaching their effective range grew even more minuscule. The firepower they were up against was simply too great.
Then, suddenly, a pillar of light blasted through the ship, temporarily blinding the sensors on the jets. When they deactivated, the cameras revealed that the ship now had a gaping hole in its superstructure. For a moment, the jers and hydra one did not react, instead holding still as their commander processed the sight before him in shock.
That didn't last long.
They entered the hole and opened fire, blasting away at the sensitive inner working of their target. An overspawn was blasted out of the ship to its death, while several skeletoids were pulled by the jets' fire. All around the jets, the ship burned and sparked, with aliens vainly attempting to repair the damage and, when it became apparent they would lose, get the ship to safety.
Finally, the mothership took too much damage and fell from the sky, landing on the outskirts of the city. Already an army was moving to greet it. Soon the ship would be the Commanders.
With their mission complete, the locusts flew back through a portal to Chiron as the Commander terminated his slaving function with the rest of his forces, leaving them free to act on their own. As the locusts filtered into its chassis, Hydra One reanalyzed the information before it. The battle had needed a miracle to be won, but it had still been won.
This left One with an anomaly in its code, which constantly made it think over this victory for the next few hours. One felt it was a glitch.
Humans would call it satisfaction.
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I watched the new shape come into view. This had been what had fired the weird laser earlier that had given me the opening to level the mothership. This was the reason I had won.
It resembled a pillar, yet it also had a star design to it. The shape was larger than even the mothership. Strangest off all, though, was that I recognized the ship.
This had been the flagship of Origin, leader of the Outsiders. A long time before I had arrived, they had tried to conquer Earth.
Now, I was worried they were back for round two.
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AN: Read and Review! This is Flameal15k, signing off!