Hey all. The next chapter is going to jump forward in time slightly, skipping some of the "early game" of Xenonauts. By the time we seem them next, the Xenonauts will have already had several missions to learn from, and even attempted to take an alien captive. The skip was necessary because I'm planning to diverge pretty significantly from the narrative model of the games in the next chapter, and thus that's where the "meat" of the story will really be. These Xenopedia entries are just a few quick paragraphs to fill in the blanks for a few things. If you haven't been a fan of the Xenopedia aspect of the story fear not, the next chapter will have significantly more non-xenopedia substance to it.
XENOPEDIA: ALIEN SCOUT CRAFT
The alien UFOs we have seen so far do not seem to be dedicated military craft, but neither are they dedicated scouting or reconnaissance craft. Indeed, they don't seem to share a uniform design at all. Thus far, we have encountered two distinct "categories" that we can place the various designs into. We call them "dependent" and "independent". Dependent UFOs are craft that are almost certainly operating from some sort of mothership, judging by their on board equipment and accommodations (or lack there of). They have only a small set of mass-effect assisted engines for propulsion, which, while vastly superior to anything we could hope to build, are woefully inadequate for any kind of significant interplanetary travel (nevermind interstellar). We suspect that these UFOs travel from lunar orbit to Earth, perform their mission, and then immediately return to their mothership to refuel.
Independent UFOs, as the name implies, are much more robust and flexible in their mission profile. These craft seem to be essentially a light utility vehicle, ferrying passengers and cargo to any destination necessary. For the handful of direct military actions that the aliens have attempted thus far, all were done using troops ferried in UFOs of this type.
Regardless of category, the tactics utilized by every UFO we've seen have been essentially the same: They travel at extremely high altitudes, well beyond the range of any interceptors, descending only when they are nearing whatever point of interest they are observing. This descent gives a brief interception window, one that we have exploited several times to reasonable success, though their admirably paranoid sense of information security means that every one of the wrecks had its core systems sabotaged.
Unfortunately, the enemy has stopped underestimating our air combat capabilities, and their increased caution has caused the interception window to shrink more and more. Once our new "Foxtrot" design rolls off the assembly line, we will hopefully have the raw speed necessary to grab targets of opportunity more reliably, but until then we're stuck playing it by ear.
XENOPEDIA: ALIEN AUTOPSY-"GEEK"
The unfortunate nickname of this subject is an extrapolation of the previous nickname for the subject's species: "Four-Eyes". This was itself a play on words of the most obvious fact about this species: it has four eyes. While the cadavers your men left for me leave much to be desired in terms of how intact they are, I can still conclude with acceptable confidence that this species is one of the two encountered during the Iceland incident.
Other than its eyes, the species is relatively unremarkable, physically speaking. Indeed, it is almost uncannily similar to a human. If we include the Frogman, these are two species surprisingly similar in basic shape and skeletal arrangement to our own. Hypotheses for convergent evolution among alien species gain more legitimacy with every cadaver we encounter.
The eyes themselves are somewhat hard to decipher. It's unclear what the purpose of the second set of eyes is. An initial hypothesis was that they enabled Geeks to see in some other visual spectrum, such as infrared. However, there doesn't appear to be any significant physical differences between the two sets of eyes that would be indicative of that (other than size, of course). Other hypotheses have been forthcoming (Increased Redundancy? Enhanced Depth Perception? Non-verbal communication?) but evidence for them is difficult to accrue. Were we to capture a live specimen, it would potentially both satisfy my team's curiosity and allow us to develop specialized tactics for fighting this species.
XENOPEDIA: ALIEN CAPTIVE
While I must commend your men on their success in capturing a live specimen for our labs, I fear it was mostly in vain: the subject has expired. We'd scarcely begun to establish rudimentary communication before the subject suddenly fell dead. An autopsy discovered the cause: an incredibly advanced biological machine embedded in the alien's neck had completely overloaded its nervous system. Once we knew what to look for, we were able to find these incredibly tiny "biochips" embedded in every cadaver we've recovered so far. It seems our foe is even more ruthless about information security than we thought.
Most interesting of all was the subject's demeanor prior to its expiration. While its difficult to be certain when it comes to an alien psyche, it did not appear to be alarmed or anticipating the chip in any way. I would hazard a guess that it wasn't even aware that it had the chip in the first place. Of course, it is an alien, possibly with a completely different psychological behavioral model to our own, so it's not impossible that it was aware of the chip, and simply didn't care. Personally, I find this unlikely. Regardless of the answer, one thing is certain: until we can find a way to circumvent the chips, any captives we take will have their brains turned to mush before we can extract any useful information from them.
Just a few quick entries, like I said. Next chapter we will diverge from the game's story beats significantly, uncovering the aliens motives, plans, and possibly even their identities within the context of the Mass Effect universe. Until then, thank you for reading!