Eagles Over Earth

Chapter 17: Devastator

May 22, 2020

Shanghai, China

Michael McNeil knew what was coming, and yet, staring at the dark clouds, still couldn't fully fathom it: an alien warship larger than some skyscrapers, about to blunder into a GDI kill zone. He'd caught a faint glimpse of it at Ningbo, but still had no idea what to really expect.

With the idea too incredible to process, he ducked back inside a forward command post, set up on a hill overlooking Shanghai for the XCOM team. With Guo KIA and Ulrich sent home, only Pavlova, Metra and Zhang remained with him. However, the Commander sent some extra soldiers their way; McNeil could guess he'd get his old squad filled out and perhaps some extra faces, too.

A tone within the command post signaled that Bradford was giving them a call. McNeil jumped to answer it.

"Listen up, Strike One." The Central Officer's face appeared on-screen as an unusually sharp image, outlining his clean-shaven face better than ever. "Operation Slingshot is a go. But..." He paused, allowing himself a smile. "We'll engage the battleship first with an Ion Cannon strike. If that doesn't destroy it, Chinese and GDI air squadrons will finish it off."

The screen displayed a simulation of a new-generation Ion Cannon firing a precision beam against the alien warship. Next, fighter aircraft approached from three directions, launching a massive missile volley that sent the hologram nose-first into the ground. McNeil let out a low whistle. It would be good to see that for real.

"Upon its crash," Bradford continued, "Army forces will secure the site and eliminate surviving alien crew. If necessary, Strike One will assist the ground assault."

"Got it, Bradford," McNeil confirmed. He could already hear the distant thunder of the fighter jets and heavy vehicles, the rumbles echoing in his armored boots. A much quieter, yet more intense, sound soon stood out from the rest of the storm – an incoming Skyranger. It landed on the hill's edge, its back door opening to five familiar faces.

"Glenn. Jackson. Kwan. Parnell. Torres." McNeil offered quick nods to their reinforcements. Parnell, Torres, Kwan returned the nod and headed off, while Glenn and Jackson lingered a little longer, taking in the sight of the distant Shanghai skyline. McNeil had found that Jackson, the designated marksman of Paragon Squad, was as introverted as the rest of their snipers, but a little more talkative with anyone from his squad.

"Welcome to China," Zhang said. "Is this your first time in this country?"

"That's right." Glenn nodded, still looking around. "It's a beautiful place."

"Gonna be a lot more beautiful when that son-of-a-bitch battleship goes down," Metra offered her opinion. "I can't wait to see the Ion Cannon fire."

"Anyone here ever seen an Ion Cannon in action?" Glenn asked.

A chorus of no's and nopes followed. Even Zhang shook his head; McNeil expected the grizzled Triad man, out of anyone here, to have seen GDI's iconic superweapon fire.

"I heard what happened to Guo," Jackson said. "I'm sorry to hear that."

"We're going to avenge him today," McNeil said. "Him and a lot of other people."

Jackson nodded, shouldering his laser rifle. "I'm looking forward to it."

Gathering around, the expanded squad began to look towards the skies, straining for any sign of the battleship.

"I barely see anything," Metra complained.

"Here," Jackson said, rummaging through his pack. "I brought extra binoculars."

"Gimme." Glenn instantly put out her hand, and Jackson obliged. "Thank you."

"I'll take one too," McNeil said next.

Metra and Parnell took binos too. Zhang politely declined. Kwan just shook her head, though the handheld binos probably wouldn't fit into her suit's hands.

"Anyone see it?" Glenn asked. "I don't see it."

"Dead ahead, one-seven-seven!" Jackson called out. "Look high!"

Thanks to Jackson's callout and binoculars, McNeil finally got a good look at the massive alien ship. It was a solid rectangular shape, in contrast to the circular scout UFOs, though it emitted the same otherworldly sheen and low, troubling noise.

"It's kind of pretty," Glenn said in wonder.

"Wait until you have to raid one, Glenn," Parnell replied. "They're less pretty then."

"Standby, Strike One…" Bradford called. "Ion Cannon is firing in ten, nine, eight…" McNeil silently counted down to the finale: "Ion Cannon activated!"

While everyone had already set their goggles on, they weren't enough. McNeil practically lost all sight and hearing for several seconds. By the time he began processing images again, the clouds had been completely stripped around the alien ship, itself wreathed with particle blue fire, with huge spark emissions bursting from its hull.

"Impressive," Zhang noted.

And yet, the ship remained in the air, albeit nearly torn in half and engines sputtering. For a moment it looked like it might steady itself, but a storm of missiles impacted all over, illuminating the clouds like a thousand tiny flashes of lightning. The air assault was beginning, and perhaps, already ending.

It ineffectually fired a few streams of plasma before a second missile volley completely overwhelmed it and broke the vessel in two, sending the burning halves sinking earthwards. One of the engines seemed to flame out, ejecting a huge pillar of spiraling white flames before the darkness reclaimed it.

"Fuck yeah!" Metra and Parnell cheered.

"I see crates falling out! Does anyone else?" Jackson asked.

"I do," McNeil affirmed. A hell lot of boxy crates were spilling from both ends, though their chaotic fall was obscured by the fires and smoke across the debris. The crates looked like falling bombs, coming in alone or in dozens as the two main pieces came down with a reverberating crash, sending up an impressive plume of dust, dark shadows still relatively visible as they settled into final graves.

On cue, GDI tanks, APCs, and infantry began swarming towards the downed ship. McNeil even spotted a pair of Mammoth Tanks, the double-barreled tanks steadily trudging their way to the downed battleship. One of them fired its cannons at the hulk, two large explosions erupting on the alien metal. McNeil wasn't sure if it had spotted an alien or merely wanted a test firing. Then muzzle flashes appeared all over the GDI line – there must have been a few alien survivors after all.

"Look at them go!" Metra said. "They're kicking ass!"

"We might get the day off!" Glenn suggested with her perennial optimism.

McNeil watched the first GDI soldiers nearly arrive at the downed ship when the Mammoths vanished in a flash of green.

"What the fuck…?!" Parnell began to ask, as an APC and everything within twenty meters disappeared next, replaced by a boiling crater.

McNeil couldn't comprehend what was happening. He was suddenly thrust back into his first mission, watching his fearless squad leader die in an instant, Aerts' heart destroyed as the haunting cries of more aliens celebrated the kill.

Were the ship's weapons still active, despite the vessel being broken in half and paralyzed on the ground? Even if they were, those plasma strikes came from above; the ship was already down.

As streams of plasma larger than cars rained down on the hapless GDI troops, a bright orange glow began to emanate from the clouds. All McNeil could do was avert his eyes from the blinding flash, greater than the ion cannon, and look a moment later at the outcome: the regiment was virtually gone. Only a two-kilometer long trench remained, as if someone had detonated a daisy chain of tactical nuclear bombs.

"Guys…" Parnell had never sounded more scared. "Look up."

McNeil did, to see another hovering shape in the sky, twice the size of the first ship.

Upon the realization, the squad burst into barely-controlled panic.

"Oh my God…!"

"No way. No way!"

"Is that… it's another ship!"

"If we shot down the battleship, then what the fuck is that?"

"Christ! We're fucked!"

"Oh, what the hell is going on?"

"Is it not obvious?" Zhang snapped, his commanding voice drowning out everyone else. "This is an ambush!"

"What?" McNeil dumbly replied. The simple military concept seemed an impossibility to grasp in this context. "An ambush?"

"That was your device! Is there something we don't know about you?" Metra leveled her submachine gun at Zhang. "Why shouldn't we shoot you now?"

All eyes went to Zhang, who didn't flinch as Kwan also aimed at him and everyone else backed away. He simply shrugged and explained the obvious.

"My device was genuine. Your XCOM staff verified it, and GDI executed a plan around it. It is clear that the aliens anticipated this ambush, and countered it with an escalation. I assumed you had a backup plan in case that happened. Do you?"

"We don't." When the Commander spoke, everyone listened. "GDI Command bet everything on this operation going to plan. They did not plan for that... thing to obliterate the regiment and our ion cannon uplink. And Metra, Kwan, lower your weapons. You don't shoot humans except on my order."

"Well, we have to do something!" Glenn spoke up. "We can't just sit here and let our people die."

"What do you want to do against that?" Jackson pointed to the intact ship above, at least half again the size of the first ship.

"Let's find cover while we can," Torres suggested.

"Cover is supposed to protect, and nothing except a light year of distance is protecting against that."

"Hey!" Glenn piped up. "I have an idea."

"What?" almost every soldier snapped.

"You know how every UFO has an alien crew? So should that battleship." Glenn tilted her head towards the vast shadow, portions of it occasionally lit up by bright plasma launches. "We could board it, kill the crew, and bring it down."

"Board it. Board it?" McNeil couldn't believe what he was hearing. "What century are you living in, Glenn?"

"We've assaulted downed UFOs before. We can attack this one too and find some way to bring it down. Taking things down is always easier than keeping them afloat."

There were a few seconds of silence, broken up by another blast of the battleship's explosive lance that burned away multiple neighborhoods. When everyone had recovered enough to stand back up, the debate over Glenn's idea erupted in full.

"How many aliens do you think are on an active battleship versus a downed scout?" Kwan pointed out, quite logically.

"A fuck ton more!" Parnell answered the rhetorical question.

"An immobile UFO is very different from a flying, shooting one!" Pavlova said. "We saw what it did to the regiment!"

"Strike-One." The Commander silenced them. "Get to the Skyranger."

For the first time since joining the Air Force, Leo Ryan wished he'd chosen a different job. Hearing the Commander's orders, he couldn't believe he had such a stray thought – then a sideways glance at the looming shadow reinforced it.

"XCOM Command, Olympia, prepare to engage the battleship. We will attempt a boarding operation, and you will provide cover by engaging the battleship's front."

"Yes, sir." Ryan instantly turned his new aircraft around. The ADF-11 "Raven" was a hyper-advanced interceptor, its alien alloy airframe built around its sole weapon: a pulse laser cannon. In test firings, the laser had proven only slightly less damaging than the legendary Nod Obelisk of Light, and here, he still had seventy percent charge – more than enough to savage any conventional aircraft or UFO. Whether they could scratch the second ship was moot. He had his orders, and a pilot like him would execute them to the last.

Nicole… he thought. Have I said "I love you" enough?

"Wukong Two, all aircraft," a MiG pilot called in. "My squadron will attack from high altitude, north vector. Recommend an alternate approach for you."

"Olympia, Wukong, acknowledged." Ryan signaled for Gauthier and Pinpoint Team to follow him, turning for a low-altitude attack from the east. Gauthier also flew a laser-armed Raven, while Pinpoint Team, originally based in Europe but temporarily transferred here, continued to fly King Raptors. He had promised to buy Pinpoint's pilots drinks afterwards, and rather hoped he could fulfill that promise today.

Wukong Squadron assembled in position next, and with a signal transmitted to all surviving aircraft, dove in. A huge storm of Avalanche missiles smashed into the battleship, multiple missiles striking the battleship every second, but they barely seemed to have an effect. After releasing their volley, the MiGs didn't break off.

"Olympia, Wukong, what are you doing?!" Ryan called to the fighters.

They didn't reply, but Ryan realized their intent a moment later. Though defenseless, the MiGs were maintaining their approach to draw the battleship's attention, which it quickly gave, downing all of them in seconds, vaporized or rendered into burning hulks by unstoppable plasma.

In those priceless seconds, Ryan and the XCOM fighters reached weapons range. Ryan and Gauthier's laser cannons went full-auto, each pulsing dozens of times in the three seconds they had to target the beast. The Phoenix cannon-armed Raptors of Pinpoint Team tore into the ship next, its hull flaring red from the impact points.

"Prepare for a second attack run," Ryan called, accelerating to top speed to avoid whatever the battleship could throw back at him. And through his rear cockpit mirror, Ryan could see the alien battleship glowing orange again, resembling a furious sun that shone across the dark, polished surfaces of the silenced city.

"Olympia, all aircraft, it's charging up!" Ryan warned, taking evasive action, hoping, somehow, that he might outrun the incoming beam of pure destruction. His point defense lasers – a handy holdover feature from the King Raptor – certainly couldn't stop whatever that was made of.

Firing in a smooth arc, the fusion lance plowed through multiple skyscrapers, erasing glass and steel and aluminum in a blink, leaving ragged, flaming burns across every building it touched. All together, the stricken skyscrapers began collapsing, hurling huge clouds of dust and further blotting out the night.

Ryan blinked a few times – so he was still alive. He didn't look to see the true scale of the damage – the obscene smoke said enough. All that mattered now was he could resume his attack run: making a two-second pass and further scorching the ship.

After finishing that strike, wondering whether he inflicted any real damage, he took the moment to notice a fresh contact on his radar – the Skyranger. For all the risk in engaging the battleship head-on, a pang of sympathy went through his dilated veins. At least he operated a fifth-plus-generation fighter with hyper-advanced weapons. The young soldiers over there had nothing more than handheld guns.

McNeil was extremely grateful there weren't any windows on the Skyranger, as Big Sky flew the aircraft like the world's most rickety amusement ride, accelerating and decelerating without rhythm. On McNeil's left, Metra started hyperventilating.

"Are you okay, Metra?" Glenn asked.

Her eyes were bulging. "Glenn, you know I hate roller coasters."

On the other end, Parnell was stone-faced, with nary more than a frown at the insane turbulence. Kwan, too, sat in silence, though with her suit's sheer mass made it hard to jostle her anyways. Jackson, Zhang, and Pavlova were crammed up ahead into the cockpit area but McNeil doubted it was any more comfortable up there.

"Parnell?" Glenn asked him.

He shrugged in his restraints, right as the Skyranger made a hard turn of forty degrees. "I'd take this over driving in California." He tilted his head forwards. "You're doing great, Big Sky!"

"Thanks!" came their pilot's strained voice.

The next minute felt like the longest of McNeil's life, and his knuckles turned increasingly pale as he gripped onto his handholds. When the entire craft shook with a particularly massive thud, he practically jumped out of his seat – Pavlova and Jackson both screamed, causing Parnell to shout something obscene even for him and Metra to yelp too. Only when they realized they'd come to a dead halt did they calm down.

"Did we make it?" Glenn asked first.

"We're on the battleship," Big Sky confirmed, his voice shaking. McNeil, less inclined to believe it, wiggled his toes to make sure he was still alive.

"Big Sky, excellent job," the Commander congratulated their pilot. "Strike One, deploy now. Bring down the battleship by any means necessary."

The hangar door opened into a piercing cold wind, moving at least forty kilometers an hour. McNeil clenched his fingers together. Kwan stepped out first, each footstep clanking against the alien metal beneath.

"It appears safe," she informed them, bringing her main weapon into firing position and approaching an alien energy 'door'. "You may follow me."

Glenn bounded out next, crouching and putting a hand on the floor.

"Holy shit!" she gasped. "We're actually on board!"

"Yeah, we're on board, lady," Parnell grumbled, walking off and loading his automatic laser's coolant tank, the weapon's triple barrels spinning a few cycles before coming to a halt. "Remember, this was your idea."

"I still feel sick," Metra muttered. "And cold."

"Let's go kill something," McNeil suggested. "That'll make us feel better."

The squad brought up their breaching formation on the energy door: McNeil and Kwan leading, Parnell and Pavlova second, and the rest in a tertiary line.

"Hey." Parnell suddenly stopped, lowering his machine gun.

"What now?" McNeil snapped.

"If we bring down this battleship, won't that take us all down with it?"

"Oh no…" Glenn groaned, as if she had just realized. Parnell kept going.

"You know how many people survive plane crashes? Almost none! Everyone always dies on impact. Or from fire. Or anything else."

McNeil cleared his throat. "Let's think about that later." With that, he hit the door, vanishing to an auditorium-like room, with side floors of varying heights overlooking a sunken center. Several power cable-like lines snaked through the room, glowing soft orange, while other blinking blue and white lights were arranged about. It was like standing on a circuit board, only the circuit board was trying to commit genocide.

"Contact front!" Zhang warned, bringing his heavy laser to bear against two Thin Men coming from the back. Pavlova's rifle spoke first, claiming one, but the other managed to evade the considerable incoming fire and take cover behind one of the 'stages' – before a rocket ignominiously blew it into smithereens.

"Gotcha!" Metra crowed.

"Forward, move up and spread out!" McNeil shouted.

As they dashed towards the ledge McNeil spied three scattering Thin Men well below them. He cut down one, and Kwan's machine gun claimed another. The third one turned to fire, or perhaps spit its poison, but Parnell handled it with a disc grenade before it could cause any trouble.

"Move, move, move!" McNeil cried out. There was no time to waste, as the transparent floors and partial walls betrayed the raging battle occurring beneath them. While horribly depleted from the opening bombardment, some GDI forces remained – scattered tracer rounds and a few missiles still impacted the battleship from below. On the sides, the streaking flares of afterburners and bursts of high-powered lasers marked the remaining jet fighters' attempts to strike the battleship.

More immediately problematic for them, four Floaters burst out of the darkness. Nobody said a word as their guns did the talking. Pavlova downed one but it kept its momentum, sailing straight into a metallic column head-first. Zhang landed successive hits on the second, and McNeil finished it off with a headshot.

The other two retreated, shrugging off some grazing fire as they returned to the same darkness that had shielded them only moments ago.

"Why did they retreat?" Glenn asked.

"Regrouping with reinforcements," McNeil instantly figured. "Get ready."

Parnell preemptively pulled his rocket launcher, while Metra reloaded hers. Kwan and Zhang stomped forwards, putting their automatic weapons on the line.

Then a full minute passed without further contact, and McNeil began to wonder where the aliens had really gone.

"Strike One," Bradford called in. "Do you see that conduit ahead?"

McNeil peeked out of cover to see a glowing blue core, about the size of an outdoors trash bin, in the center of the room.

"Yes sir," he said. "What about it?"

"It appears the battleship is drawing power from those conduits. We're detecting six signatures in total. If you can disable them all, that should bring it down."

"How should we disable them?"

Zhang aimed his machine gun and fired a long burst. The conduit exploded, and a groaning sound echoed throughout the room.

"Like that," he suggested. "Shall we move?"

"Let's go," McNeil agreed. "Metra, with me!"

The two broke cover, but at the worst moment possible, the Floaters returned – with backup. Right before he went prone, McNeil spied three Sectoids accompanying them, and while Pavlova executed one Floater, the rest of the alien pack was in cover before anyone else could respond. To his left, Metra had also gone to ground as the air above boiled with laser and plasma exchanges.

"Stay down, Metra!" Jackson shouted. "Stay down!"

Metra tried to scoot, but two bursts of plasma boiled away the wall she was behind, leaving her completely exposed. It only took one burst more to strike her directly, and she went limp almost instantly, her rocket launcher rolling away.

"Metra!" Glenn gasped.

"Suppressing fire! Now!" McNeil roared.

Two streams of rapid-fire lasers burned away the aliens' positions, as Parnell and Zhang abandoned all pretense of accuracy. Kwan lined up an accurate shot and the last Floater was torn apart, before Torres raced to reach the downed rocketeer, the other three Sectoids since picked apart.

In fifteen seconds, McNeil and Zhang were at Metra's side too – and McNeil realized it was already over. While Metra's chestplate had absorbed some of the plasma, her neck had been struck, leaving her fatally gasping for increasingly-short breaths.

"I knew…not… to trust…" she croaked out, staring directly at Zhang.

Zhang averted his eyes, and Metra closed hers for the last time.

"Is Metra okay..?" Glenn asked, approaching with an atypical slowness in her step. Torres pulled Glenn close as she burst into tears, weakly pounding a fist against Torres' shoulder.

"I'm sorry," Torres whispered, again and again. Parnell, with audible regret, picked up Metra's remaining rockets and loaded them to his kit.

With that, McNeil rose, Zhang right behind him.

"Squad, form up," McNeil said. "We're not done yet."

The next zone was composed of three "watchtowers" that made superb defensive positions for the aliens holed up there. At least, until Zhang and Parnell blew them all up, leaving fading green clouds where several Thin Men had tried to snipe them. Zhang took a hit but wasn't fazed in the slightest. He even volunteered to lead the way into their next arena: an broad, auditorium-like room with little in the way of cover, but plenty of murderous aliens to give them trouble.

A large pack of Sectoids engaged first. Kwan shot one into at least eight discernable pieces. Pavlova split open two in quick succession. And as McNeil's eyes blazed gold and Zhang's reflected the red of his laser machine gun, the two destroyed nearly all of the remaining aliens. A single fleeing survivor nearly ducked behind cover before Parnell dropped it.

"Like shooting skeet," Parnell growled. "Come out and keep dying!" he shouted to the darkness, which answered with two grenades, gouging burning craters into the deck as Glenn, furthest ahead, nimbly rolled away. Parnell barely escaped the worst of the blasts, which scorched his armor's leg plates and sent him sprawling.

Zhang's machine gun went cyclic, suppressing the two incoming Mutons, and Pavlova claimed yet another alien for her notched rifle. The last one charged ahead, shooting wildly and its mask emitting gas, but didn't make it more than three meters before it was shredded by every single squad member.

"Good work," McNeil told them, taking the opportunity to shoot another two power conduits. The same echoing screams sounded through the battleship with their destruction, though it remained on a steady flight path. "We're not done yet."

He shouldered his laser rifle, and headed to the end of the auditorium, where two energy "doors" on opposite ends some twenty meters apart blocked the way forward.

"Strike One, split up," the Commander ordered. "McNeil, Kwan, Zhang, Torres on the left. Parnell, Pavlova, Glenn, Jackson, take the right."

Before they moved, Jackson raised a fist.

"You all hear that, right?" Jackson said. "Something flying?"

Zhang nodded. "I don't like it," he admitted.

"Don't worry. I'll kill it," Kwan said.

McNeil certainly hoped so, reaching the next door with enough trepidation to fill a swimming pool.

"Parnell, we go on three!" he shouted to his friend, hoping his nervousness wasn't showing, though it most definitely was.

"I'm ready!" Parnell shouted back.

"One, two, three! GO!"

McNeil and Kwan charged through their side as Parnell and Glenn pushed the other. A single entity greeted both teams: a floating silver disc flat on its side, about seven feet wide, emitting the same hum he'd heard from behind the door and a weird golden light around its edges. McNeil had no idea what it was, but he had no doubt it was hostile.

As he fired, the disc shifted its position marginally. Rather than beaming the alien, his lasers intersected with a storm of other missed shots from his squad, quickly joined by an equal number of curses and astonishment. Not a single one of them had hit.

"Hey, what the fuck?!" Parnell cursed loudest. In the fading smoke of their failures, the disc suddenly opened into something McNeil could only describe as a dragon: a cyborg, alien dragon, with a single glowing yellow eye, jagged metallic "wings", and two huge cannons.

Nobody had time to even scream as it fired upon Kwan, sending lances of golden light into her chestplate. To her credit, she didn't flinch and coolly retaliated, her rounds ripping through its guns and "eye" alike.

After being hit, it rapidly closed up into its disc form, but even closed, the damage Kwan inflicted was obvious, as it profusely bled bright orange liquid. Was that thing alive or not? That didn't matter, because McNeil didn't miss his next shot. Neither did Glenn or Jackson, and their three lasers combined finally caused the alien disc to collapse onto the ground, sparking and hissing. McNeil ducked as it exploded.

"Scratch one dragon," Jackson declared, with a vehement pride. "That was for Shiva, you son of a bitch."

"Kwan, your status?" Torres asked.

"I'm fine. It didn't penetrate the armor."

She rose to full height, and led their advance through the still-separate halls. Not even five steps later, three Thin Men dropped from both sides.

A storm of sabots, lasers, and plasma rippled through, lighting the floor and walls up with a mosaic of fire. From the corner of McNeil's eye, he spotted Jackson collapsing. Torres, bless her, was already running for him.

"Chryssalids incoming, high!" Parnell shouted. Did the battleship mean to drop the monstrous insects on the city below? The thought incensed McNeil, and he redoubled his efforts to kill them.

In his periphery, he saw Torres beginning to treat Jackson – then a Chryssalid leaped down and caused Torres to fall backwards, her scream lost to the battlefield's chaotic shooting.

In response, McNeil leaped out of cover. Cover was pointless against those bug aliens, anyways, and he advanced towards Torres' position with a rising fury. He had lost too many of his soldiers already.

The Chryssalid slashed again at Torres, producing a fresh spray of blood and an audible scream. That was a problem, and the solution lay in his hands: he shot it twice. Despite burning off huge chunks of its body, it managed to turn around and lock eyes with McNeil, who pulled his trigger again.

Empty. The Chryssalid charged him head-on, reaching out its demented little hands and blood-soaked legs. His friend's blood.

McNeil threw his rifle away and drew his bayonet. As it swung its blade-legs high, trying to cut his head off, he ducked underneath it and drove his blade up into a chink between its chitinous plates – then stabbed again and again, and again. It tried to bite him, but he punched its head away and drove his bayonet into an eye, next twisting the blade and popping the eye out, along with most of its connective tissue.

With that, the alien fell down and laid still. Not pausing for a second, he sprinted towards Torres.

"Medkit… medkit!" she gasped, a shaking hand pointing to the deep gash in her torso, the wound already turning an awful slime-green color.

McNeil hurriedly unbuckled a medkit and pressed it against her wound, emptying its full contents. That was only for catastrophic wounds, but McNeil was not taking chances.

"Are you okay, Torres?" he asked.

She slowly nodded. "You saved my life." As color returned to her face, she reached out a hand for McNeil to help her get up. He did, but out of the corner of his eye, he spotted a Thin Man poking out of cover. With his free hand, he unbuckled a disc grenade and pre-empted the threat.

"Torres, can you fight?" he asked.

"Yes. But Jackson…" she pointed to the fallen soldier next to them. The plasma wound to his leg might've been survivable, but the deep slash across his neck wasn't. It likely hadn't even been intentional on the Chryssalid's part: just a casual swipe, a single movement of its blade-legs, and Jackson passed from living to dead. McNeil shook his head right as Glenn turned around to look. She instantly understood.

"No, no, not Jackson too…!" Glenn cried out, dropping her weapon and falling to her knees.

"Wait, no, get up!" McNeil shouted. "Get back up now, goddammit!"

Glenn was a brave soldier, but if she kept cracking like this, she couldn't be trusted on any squad, lest her panic get others killed. Yet as more Chryssalids stormed their position, skittering over edges and vaulting five-meter high encampments like they were nothing, Glenn cried as if she was utterly alone.

Kwan bounded over to her, and smashed aside a Chryssalid about to rip Glenn in half. Another one of the bug aliens jumped towards her, but Parnell blew it apart, his automatic laser tearing its front legs and head off in an impressive display of marksmanship.

"Glenn!" McNeil shouted, his voice becoming hoarse. "Get the fuck back up!"

Kwan repeated the yell, and Glenn grabbed her shotgun, holding it like one would cuddle a toddler, before finally aiming it properly and engaging an alien less than five feet away, blowing off a third of its head. But the Chryssalid kept advancing, and would've turned her into mincemeat were it not for Kwan stepping in the way, absorbing the blow.

For the first time McNeil had heard, Kwan cried out in pain, stumbling to the side as the wounded alien leaped on her suit and tried to claw open her helmet.

Just as quickly, Parnell and Zhang together poured rounds into the alien, blowing it to pieces. They formed a wall with their focused fire, the duo utterly decimating the remaining aliens around.

"Clear!" Parnell shouted, his voice hoarse, the air steaming with weapons discharge. "Kwan, are you alright?"

"I'm… I'm okay…" Kwan murmured, but McNeil didn't believe that for a moment. He pushed his way forward and saw her MEC suit was torn open, sparking, and slashed several times so deeply McNeil could see her black-blue undersuit. Her helmet had fallen off, too, revealing a deeply strained face and shocked eyes.

"No you're not," Parnell determined. "Kwan, take it easy, we can handle this."

"I can still fight. That's all that matters."

She hoisted her machine gun back into position, but her weapons arm shuddered with visible sparks. Pushing through the obvious discomfort, she fired upon the next two power conduits in the room and blew them out, sending screaming pulses howling around the still-flying battleship.

Torres gently eased the arm down, whispering faint words of reassurance. McNeil, for his part, surveyed the carnage. At least fifteen aliens lay dead, most of them Chryssalids. With another two conduits down, that left only one. But Metra and Jackson were dead. Torres was barely in shape to fight. Kwan was being held together by prayers. And the mental strain was tearing at everyone else.

Could they still finish the mission? As if reading his mind, Parnell cleared his throat.

"We have to go on," he said. McNeil remained silent.

"Parnell, please. Look at us." Torres weakly gestured to the other wounded rather than her own injury.

"You look here. I'm not expecting to walk off this fucking thing alive. Which means the only thing left to do is ensure this ship comes down with us."

Kwan coughed, then took several halting breaths. "Parnell is right. We have to go on."

McNeil stared at the dark halls that awaited them. How many more aliens were down there? How many more soldiers might he lose trying to down this monster?

He didn't come to an answer, because he heard a most unexpected sound: helicopter blades. Pavlova picked up on it too.

"Hold it, is that a Chinook?" she said in amazement, pointing to the right. He caught sight of the ungainly craft approaching the battleship on an intercept course. He was both stunned and relieved.

Then the Chinook exploded, downed by a single, gigantic plasma stream that looked nearly the same size as the helicopter. Not a trace was left.

"Oh my God!" Torres gasped.

"There's more!" Pavlova pointed out. Four more of the helicopters were gunning for the battleship – and then there was only one left, as the others were rapidly shot down in all-consuming explosions that left no doubt to their crews' fate. The other approached close enough for McNeil to see the pilot's visor, but the whole craft was nicked by another plasma burst, igniting most of its body.

"Shit, scatter!" McNeil shouted at the top of his lungs.

The burning helicopter plowed into the battleship's deck as McNeil leaped away, narrowly avoiding a flying rotor blade that could've taken his leg off. He spun around, half-expecting some novel threat to emerge, but instead, five soldiers ran out its back door.

"Who the fuck are you guys?" Parnell shouted, a little undiplomatically.

"Lieutenant Dan Weaver, GDI!" the lead man yelled first. "You're GDI too?"

"Yeah, we are!" McNeil said, lowering his laser rifle.

"Okay! We saw your aircraft land on the ship. Our captain decided we could board it too with our Chinooks. We were getting slaughtered down there anyways."

"Is there anyone else left?" McNeil asked.

Before Weaver could answer, the Chinook's wreckage slipped off the battleship and vanished from sight. The sky was left with continuing flashes from the indiscriminate bombardment of Shanghai.

"Lieutenant…" one of the new soldiers said. Weaver shook his head.

"The captain was right. We were all going to die down there anyways." He looked at McNeil's squad. "If you're alive, then we have a fighting chance to stop this thing."

McNeil decided against mentioning Metra and Jackson, or pointing out the grievous wounds all around him. "Alive" wouldn't have been the first or tenth word he'd use to describe the state of his team. But with the unexpected arrivals, maybe he could salvage something.

"Then follow me," he said.

Only a few steps later, they were at the exit to the hellish hallway. Two of Weaver's soldiers pushed ahead for point duty; none of the XCOM soldiers questioned the choice. Kwan and Weaver took the next places up.

"Any tips?" one of Weaver's point men asked.

"Hold nothing back," Kwan replied. "Kill them all."

"Can do."

The first two soldiers charged in, only to be wiped out by accurate plasma fire. But their sacrifice gave Weaver and Kwan the space to move in.

"Four Mutons, split right and left!" Kwan reported.

Zhang and Parnell fired their last rockets, then tossed away the useless launchers as McNeil and Pavlova ran in next. Together, they shot down a Muton still reeling from the rockets, then finished their run for cover.

McNeil glanced ahead to see Kwan grappling hand-to-hand with another Muton. Its fellow, already wounded by gunfire, was angling its huge plasma rifle around, trying for a clear shot, which Pavlova denied with a headshot. Kwan threw her enemy off before slamming her foot onto its head, flattening bone and brain to a layer no thicker than paper as the rest of the scratch squad stormed the room.

The last Muton primed a grenade and hurled it towards Kwan. In her armor's weakened state, it'd be more than sufficient to kill her. Except, unbelievably, one of Weaver's soldiers caught it midair. Then his entire upper half vanished in a spray of vaporizing green energy and scattering black flesh, stumped legs falling aside.

McNeil didn't even flinch. Neither did Kwan, who hurled her gun at the Muton, knocking it over as Weaver and his last soldier pumped bullet after bullet into its huge body, shuddering with every impact. It weakly raised its head, but Weaver stormed over to it, drawing his pistol with the most murderous intent McNeil had seen yet.

"I hope your leaders can hear me: you're all going to die," Weaver said before executing it.

"Is it over?" Torres said.

Zhang aimed his laser and dispatched the final power conduit in the room.

"Now it is," he said.

An echoing screech rang through the entire vessel. McNeil felt a chill roll through his shoulders, as if his dead teammates were calling to him... there were many voices.

The battleship began to pitch low, and its lights began to flicker off one by one. But as McNeil raced to the front, his heart dropped to see the ship's terminal trajectory: it was losing altitude fast and heading straight into a giant Tiberium field, the same one dooming Shanghai. There was no way they could run all the way back to the Skyranger in time.

"Oh my God," he said, unable to believe it. "We're fucked."

This was outrageous. Unfair. Against all odds, McNeil's team had brought down a battleship crewed by dozens of aliens, and now would be splattered on a bunch of crystals.

"I told you so," Parnell grumbled. "Any last words?"

"Fuck this shit," Weaver offered, taking a seat cross-legged.

McNeil nodded. "Couldn't have put it better myself."

Torres closed her eyes. Zhang stretched out and popped his knuckles. Glenn looked ready to cry, but no more tears came out. Pavlova stared dead ahead, a rare flash of anger tightening her expression.

And Parnell took Kwan's right hand, lifting it with a softness McNeil never expected from his ferociously violent best friend. In any other circumstance, McNeil would've laughed. Instead, he desperately wished he had someone to hold, too.

He didn't get one, but saw an aircraft's shadow appear overhead, and that made him smile, too – made him smile more widely than he had in years.

"Big Sky, you came here?!" McNeil cried out. "You sonuvabitch!"

Despite the battleship's accelerating fall, the Skyranger pilot ably guided the aircraft to enable the all-too eager soldiers' escape, scraping the edge with the open bay door. The wounded walked on first, quickly followed by the new arrivals and then the old squad, with McNeil making sure to get on last, despite the rapidly approaching ground.

"Everyone's in!" he shouted, punching the side for emphasis and grabbing a handhold just in time: the Skyranger took off instantly, surging upwards as the battleship finally plowed into the glistening green below. The tremendous grinding and shattering sound of the ship against Tiberium crystals echoed for several moments before the Skyranger gained enough altitude to put it behind.

For his part, McNeil slumped over, already falling asleep.

As the Commander could admit, the news on every media channel in the world was technically true:

"TWO ALIEN BATTLESHIPS DESTROYED BY GDI AND CHINESE FORCES IN STUNNING JOINT OPERATION…"

But the Commander winced at how the mission had gone from spectacular success, to total disaster, to some kind of success. Glenn's idea to board the battleship had worked, albeit at great cost: a GDI regiment nearly wiped out, swathes of Shanghai destroyed, and serious casualties among his own troops.

That, for two destroyed alien vessels: the first, designated as a supply ship given its extensive cargo, and the second, confirmed as the battleship, armed and armored beyond anyone could have imagined. That so-called 'fusion lance' – so named for its nuclear bomb-like effect on anything it struck – was perhaps the most fearsome of all.

Even more interesting than the felled leviathans, the encroaching Tiberium field in Shanghai had virtually disappeared, as if something in the battleship's armor could repel the crystal. That discovery alone had set the scientific community aflame, with every major university clamoring for samples of the alien ship's hull. Could this invasion be their salvation from the other extinction?

The Commander thought much more critically. How many more battleships did the aliens possess? Did they have even larger vessels, and if so, when would they be deployed? What if Nod somehow acquired parts of the battleship or its weapons? As bad as Tiberium spread was, it was estimated to take around five years to become an extinction-level hazard. The alien invasion and Nod's reawakening were problems now.

An alert at his door caused him to halt his reflections. Only three people on base save for himself could bypass the standard locks like that.

"Commander," came the most recognizable German accent on base as Dr. Vahlen stepped through.

"What is it?"

"Nothing too urgent, Commander. I merely wanted to extend mine and my team's gratitude for the successful operation today."

"Successful," the Commander quoted. "Um, don't take it the wrong way. By any metric, it was a success, even accounting for our losses."

Vahlen winced. "I apologize, Commander, if my words caused offense."

"No offense at all. I'm just re-focusing on what matters. I understand salvage teams are on their way to XCOM HQ," he said, trying to move on. "Is your team ready?"

"We are more than ready to begin our analysis."

"You'll have a full plate once they land. You'd best get some rest, Doctor. "

"As you say, Commander." She turned to leave, clearly understanding his intent, but the Commander cleared his throat. There was one thing he wanted to say out loud for someone to hear.

"Yes?" Dr. Vahlen asked.

"I want to repeat this: today was a success. Because I can answer a question I couldn't answer honestly before: Can we win?" The Commander paused, and allowed himself a smile, finally. "Now, I think yes."

Author's Note: Apologies for the delay. In between travel, work, and gaming, I've gotten been behind on writing. My apologies for keeping you all waiting.

I came up with the central premise out of the blue – what if the aliens tricked the Gangplank operation? – and I'm extremely happy with how this turned out. I always thought it strange that the aliens reacted so passively to obvious bait, so with this twist, I hoped to present an even more dangerous and dynamic enemy than before. Only thanks to the plucky courage of the XCOM squad and GDI pilots has humanity salvaged an unlikely victory.

Stay tuned for what happens next!