The Charlie hovered in the air, and her gunners providing covering fire as her platoon of Xenonauts disembarked, sending a hail of return fire at the alien outpost's defenders. The alien shooters were enthusiastic, but not particularly organized or effective. The xenonaut machine gunners went prone and started laying down suppressive fire, the marksmen scurried to find a good firing position, and everyone else advanced on the small collection of prefabricated buildings. The riflemen and shotgunners advanced under the covering fire from them and the Charlie, moving to surround the building.
X-27 swore colorfully as alien slugs flew over his head, returning fire in the general direction of where he thought the shots had come from. The alien bastards had started throwing up small sensors outposts around their larger bases after the Xenonauts started turning the tide in the air. Normally, the Xenonauts air corps would just bomb the places into slag when they discovered them, but occasionally the aliens would be dumb enough to place one of them close enough to the coast for the submarines to provide cover from low-orbital bombardment. This granted a window of time for a strike mission to be launched against it, the amount of time in that window depended on how long it took for the aliens to organize and align a high-orbital fire support mission. It was usually enough time for the xenonauts to rush in, kill every alien, and take everything that wasn't nailed down. Usually.
In this case, the aliens had deigned to drop a sensors outpost deep in the forests of southern India, perhaps thinking the terrain might give them extra concealment. Fortunately for the xenonauts, this hadn't worked, and the outpost was just barely close enough to the coast that the Ohio could provide protection. The terrain proved to be more of an advantage for the humans than the aliens, with ample cover and concealment for the advancing xenonauts. X-27 huddled behind a hefty-looking tree, switching his shotgun into high-velocity mode and sending a generous amount of slugs at the flashes of light from aliens taking potshots from within their earthworks and fortifications around the facility. A small, distant part of X-27's mind was amused at that.
Even when they're one hundred trillion miles away from home, the poor bloody infantry are still stuck digging trenches.
From what little he could see of them, it seemed that his foes were the usual suspects: Mostly Goblins, with a handful of Geeks leading (or perhaps more accurately, herding) them. The aliens seemed to be about as concerned about the lives of the goblins as they were about the contents of the underside of their boot. Perhaps it was because they seemed to have a never-ending supply of the nasty little shits. He almost felt sorry for them.
Almost.
He fired a slug at a Goblin dumb enough to be peaking his head out of a trench, and was rewarded by the site of the alien's head exploding. He ducked back behind his tree as return fire came his way. The unfortunate tree was deeply penetrated by the powerful shots, but fortunately for X-27 it was just thick enough for the shots to not punch clear through. When the sound of shots thudding into the tree stopped, he peaked around its corner, just in time to see a Geek vaporized by a shot from the precision cannon of one of the xenonaut marksmen. Targeting officers was almost always a good strategy in war, but it was especially effective against Goblins, as their cohesion rapidly disintegrated almost the instant they ran out of non-Goblin officers to receive orders form.
"They're crumbling. Fire and advance, let's end this, xenonauts!" X-1 ordered over the radio.
X-27 ejected his magazine, swapping the one full of slugs for the one full of buckshot, switched it to full auto, and then moved to obey his orders. Riflemen laid down suppressive fire while shotgun men like him rushed the enemy trenches. He ran with X-12, and the pair stopped and stood over one of the enemy trenches. The cowering Goblins inside barely had time to react before he and X-12 held down their triggers, massacring the unfortunate creatures in a hail of buckshot. X-27 didn't have time to react or process it, he just leapt over the pit full of newly-made ground meat and continued advancing with the others.
The next trench apparently was full of Goblins braver than most, as one of the creatures popped out and sent a blast from its shotgun into X-12. He collapsed, screaming in pain, but still in one piece thanks to his armor. The alien that shot him was instantly killed by one of the covering riflemen. X-27 didn't pause, he just kept advancing to the trench. He stood at the edge just like before...and then fell in as the earth beneath him broke in a tiny landslide.
He collapsed in a heap, scrambling to his feet just fast enough to slap aside the shotgun of the startled Goblin left in the trench. It went off, sending a cloud of dirt into the air, and then fell to the ground as its owner lost its grip. For a fraction of a second, X-27 stood there, face to face with the alien. Before he'd found his way into the xenonauts, before the bombs, he'd been one of the Royal Navy's best boxers. He was a soldier for humanity now, but he still had the heart of a boxer. His instincts were those of a fighter, not a soldier. So, instead of diving for his fallen rifle or reaching for his Baretta, he just belted it across the face with a right hook.
The alien was staggered, but had enough presence of mind to slash at him blindly with its claws. It did little except produce scraping sounds as the claws struck X-27's armored chest. When it regained some of its senses, it sprang forward, trying to snatch up X-27's rifle, the nearest weapon to it. It was unpleasantly surprised when the rifle suddenly caught, and the alien seemed to notice that the weapon had a power cord for the first time. X-27 grinned beneath his helmet, and punched the alien in the face again, his armored fist sending teeth and bloody spittle flying. He took up a fighting stance. He landed a blow in its gut, followed by an uppercut. He grabbed the reeling alien by the shoulders and slammed it into his knee, letting it fall. Amazingly, the little shit was scrambling to its feet again as soon as it hit the ground.
Whatever their equivalent of adrenaline is must be some wild stuff. He thought to himself.
The alien lunged wildly. X-27 seized its head, then smashed it against the side of the trench, once, twice, and then did it a third time, but against his armored knee. This time, the alien stayed down. The heat of the moment faded, and X-27 heard X-12's screams of pain, and was brought back to reality.
"Medic!" he called, scrambling out of the trench, only to stop as he saw X-12 was already being attended to .
It seemed that the battle was over, as xenonauts were scurrying around, snatching up the charred remains of enemy tech, and any other resources they could carry. He almost laughed when he saw a second Charlie come swooping in, dropping cargo cables which were quickly fastened to the fried remains of the alien sensors equipment, before it was unceremoniously hauled away by the powerful helicopter. He noticed a group of xenonauts standing around the trench he had been in, and wandered back over there. He looked inside the trench, and was surprised to see the bloody and bruised form of his impromptu sparring partner there, its chest rising and falling.
"Well, I'll be fucked. Little shit's still alive." He remarked aloud.
One of the other xenonauts, X-19, went to put a round through its head. X-27 held up a hand.
"Wait."
The other xenonaut cocked his head at him. "Why? Poor bastard's gonna have his brain cooked pretty soon anyway, might as well put him out of his misery."
X-27 shrugged. "I suppose. But at least this way, the corpse will be fresher. Don't worry, I'll take responsibility for guarding him."
The xenonaut scientist examined her latest specimen brought in for an autopsy, then raised her eyebrows in surprise. She keyed her intercom.
"Hey, would someone let the geniuses in recovery know that this 'corpse' is still alive?" She said in exasperation. "Honestly, how does this-"
Someone grabbed her from behind and through her to the ground. She let out a startled yelp as she saw the alien standing over her.
"Help, he's loose!" She screamed, stumbling clumsily as she tried to find her feet. She backed away from the alien, which gazed back at her with a confused, almost delirious look on its face. She found herself pressed against the wall, praying that the alien remained in this dazed state.
The door slammed open, and the scientist shouted. "Don't kill him!"
The guards subdued the creature with stun batons, with it offering little in the way of resistance. One of the guards stared down at the alien, confusion on his face.
"Wait, if it's still alive..."
The scientist stepped forward, grinning wide. "...then that means the chip didn't work!"
XENOPEDIA: Alien Captive (Non-Expiring)
Commander, we're still not entirely sure how, but we've managed to get our hands on an alien prisoner whose brain will not melt after a few hours. Our current hypothesis is that the Goblin's brain was damaged from the beating it took from X-27. This triggered its natural regenerative abilities, which - like always - repaired the damage, stronger than it was before. Our best guess is that its newly-reinforced brain matter is somehow able to resist whatever effect the alien chips induce in the brains of their victims.
We had no idea how long it would last, so we immediately set to work on interrogating it. Naturally, the language barrier made things difficult. It's hard enough to extract information out of an unwilling subject when they actually speak your language. We tried damn near everything, anything that might to get it to react positively to any stimuli we could think of, when finally on a whim we brought in X-27 to see how it would react. To our surprise, it seems to treat X-27 with a kind of...deference. It was completely cooperative, as long as he was in the room. I don't know if this is psychological, cultural, or simply a fear response, but whatever caused its cooperation, it was a boon for our efforts.
Regrettably, even with a cooperative subject, interrogation has not borne nearly as much fruit as we had hoped. For a creature from an interstellar civilization, it has a shockingly miniscule level of education. It knows almost nothing beyond the functioning of its equipment and the identities of its comrades and immediate superiors. Its lack of education also appears to go beyond a simple lack of knowledge. It is barely able to form complete sentences. It was able to teach us a very rudimentary understanding of the alien's language (Which it refers to as something that roughly translates to "the trade tongue", suggesting it is not the native language of its species). However, it is completely illiterate, and thus we are still unable to read the aliens' written language.
In terms of knowledge about our invaders and their identity or motives, it had very little to offer. As our interrogation progressed, the reasons for this (and for it's apparent lack of education in general) became quite clear: If we are understanding it correctly, this alien was born only a few weeks before the beginning of the invasion. Considering the fact that it is younger than most infants, I think it's lack of knowledge can be forgiven!
Most of what it was able to tell us was information regarding its own species, whose true name is "Vorcha". It seems they are effectively little more than slaves, used mainly for labor and as cannon fodder infantry by our foes. This lack of status would explain the very cavalier attitude the alien leadership seems to have regarding their lives. Their apparent ability to mature into adulthood so rapidly would also help explain this attitude: they can breed an entire army in a matter of months! We thought at first that it might be a case of some kind of artificial breeding or growth, but our guest speaks of having a parent, and some sort of family or clan structure, so we have reason to believe it was bred "naturally". Of course, that doesn't rule out the possibility of them having been genetically modified to be this way, but as we have no catalogue of the Vorcha (or any alien) genome, it's difficult to say for sure.
Regardless of how, their breeding and maturation combined with their status in alien society has disturbing implications: We have effectively been gunning down enslaved child soldiers. Not a pleasant breakthrough, but it does present some interesting new ideas. If not all aliens are equal, then perhaps there are fractures in their ranks which we can exploit. Without getting new information from a more educated captive (or, failing that, deciphering their written language) it's difficult to say how feasible that is, but it is still worth considering.
