X-COM (updated M-W-F)

[Lazybones]

Don't worry, the Alphas didn't forget about her.

I wanted to let my regular readers know that I've posted another novel on Smashwords. This one's called Heart of a Hero, and like my last one I'm selling it for $2.00. It tells the story of an unlikely hero named Daran who gets into all sorts of trouble. The story more or less stands alone but I have plans on eventually expanding it to a trilogy. The book is posted at Smashwords - Heart of a Hero - A book by Kenneth McDonald. As I did last time I set it up so you can download the first half free, so you can see if you like it before you dig into your wallet.

And thanks to all my readers who bought copies of Of Spells and Demons; sales have been decent and I think that's largely due to you.

And here's the update. We're coming up on the final mission, and it's going to be a big one.

* * * * *

Session 28 (November 10, 2008)
Chapter 128


Jane’s face twisted into a grimace as she fought the controls of the alien ship, trying to arrest their descent. The ship wobbled and struggled, but it leveled off, and they streaked out over the rough mountain landscape, giving up altitude with each kilometer they managed.

“Got a hull breach back here!” Hadrian yelled from the passenger compartment. Catalina tried to get a communications link open, and was rewarded as Ken Yushi’s voice sounded over the ship’s speakers. “Alpha! Where are you? Alpha, come in!”

“We’re in an alien vessel!” Catalina said. She turned to Jane. “Where are we?”

“A few klicks south of the base.” Jane frowned at the line of mountains that seemed to stretch out like a barrier ahead of them. “We’re not going to make it much farther.”

“You got that, Ken?” Catalina asked.

“I’m reading you… I had to take off, there are Frenchies landing all over the place!”

“We’ve been hit, we’re losing altitude,” Catalina said. “Can you give us new coordinates for a rendezvous?”

There was a brief pause. “Sending coordinates. Nice little valley over the Swiss border. Can you make it?”

Catalina looked down at Jane, who hadn’t taken her eyes off the alien readout screen. “I’ll do my best.”

The ship streaked forward over the rough landscape, jolting every few moments. Catalina looked back at Vasily. “Guess Vala on her own,” the Russian said.

“I’ve a feeling she copes.”

The next few minutes passed slowly. Jane wove the alien scout through the line of peaks, but every one they passed gave way to more ahead, rising ever higher above them. They crossed one ridge barely twenty meters above the level of the treetops, and continued to lose altitude as the ship struggled onward.

“Coming up on the coordinates,” Jane finally said. She banked around a peak that rose up ahead of them, then brought the ship down into a meadow where the Lightning waited for them. The landing was not too rough, and they quickly transferred to the waiting X-COM craft. Vasily lingered just long enough to toss a demolitions charge into the open hatch of the alien ship. Ken had the ship rising into the air even before he was buckled in.

“We clear?” James asked.

“A few of the French interceptors tried to follow,” Ken reported, “But we had a surprise waiting for them, in the form of Firestorm-2.”

Vasily’s eyes were drawn to the three racks holding the Elerium canisters. The LEDs along their sides pulsed steadily, indicating that each of the containers was full, their contents stable. “Next stop, Mars,” he said. The Alphas shared a look, but there was no conversation as the Lightning streaked into the darkening sky, on its way back to HQX.

 

[Innocent Bystander]

Yeah, sure. But she's only NPC

I don't subscribe to that line of thinking when I'm playing. I believe characters shouldn't differentiate because whether a character is a PC or NPC is OOC information only.

 

[Richard Rawen]

I was wondering when you'd post about "Heart". I thought the main character was a great 'unlikely hero', and am glad to hear there's likely to be more - I thought you gave plenty of 'hooks' for a continuance... where did that nasty critter get to!?
Meanwhile, back on earth, I suppose we'll have to wait to see what happened to Vala... I liked her
Too bad they couldn't cover their tracks (re: the Elerium) by blasting that base somehow... heck our Air Force boys could have dropped a mini-nuke into the site... let them know there are consequences for going to war against mankind!
Maybe I'm just overly dramatic. ok, no maybe, this is why I read and not write

 

[Neurotic]

I don't subscribe to that line of thinking when I'm playing. I believe characters shouldn't differentiate because whether a character is a PC or NPC is OOC information only.

I also think that OOC should be kept OOC, but in the case of survival, I'll abandon NPC over PC any day. You can find some justification IC for that, there is no player behind the dead in.game person that could think or feel bad about it.

 

[Smart Alec]

We never did find out what happened to Vala Night. Shame, alas, but you gotta stick with the mission, we didn't have a way to get back (there were tanks outside the mansion!) and she wasn't really part of X-Com. Bros before hos.

 

[Vanya Mia]

Hey! Who're you calling a "Bro" ... oh, wait a minute.

 

[Lazybones]

I was wondering when you'd post about "Heart". I thought the main character was a great 'unlikely hero', and am glad to hear there's likely to be more - I thought you gave plenty of 'hooks' for a continuance... where did that nasty critter get to!?

Thanks, I started out making him a real rat bastard, but he sort of grew on me toward the end. The sequel will be entitled Soul of a Coward, and should be the second of an eventual trilogy if all works out as planned.

Regarding Vala, we will see her again before the very end.

The Mars mission begins this Friday. I made some editorial changes to the narrative here and there to suit the story, although I still kept the majority of the dialogue as it happened in-game. James's player also missed the first session of the Mars attack, so I had to come up with a way to bring him in mid-mission.

* * * * *

Session 28 (November 10, 2008)
Chapter 129


The Alphas didn’t get much of a chance to rest when they disembarked from the Lightning, seven hours after they’d lifted off from the base in France. Battered, burned, and overall exhausted, they nevertheless existed the craft under their own power, a certain pride in their eyes as the unit teams rushed forward. The engineering team had pride of place, as they accepted the three heavy containment vessels that held the precious Elerium-115. Stan’s medical teams were quick on their heels, though, helping the injured Alphas. The medicos knew better by now than to bring gurneys to the hangar deck, but some of the Alphas looked like they could have used them.

Vasily laid his plasma cannon down on a rolling cart that sagged under its weight. His eyes were on the last figure waiting near the hangar exit. Catalina saw as well, and she shook of the medic trying to ease off the pressure bandage covering her right arm, and came forward to stand beside him.

“Agent Drake,” Catalina said.

“Don’t get too cozy,” Drake said. “Get cleaned up, get your wounds treated. Briefing in thirty minutes.”

She turned and walked away. Mary shuffled up to join them. “She can’t be serious,” she said, running a hand through her lustrous black hair, now sodden with sweat, dirt, and ash.

“I not know her to be unserious. Ever.”

The Alphas were clean and in fresh clothes when they arrived at the briefing room, but they otherwise looked like candidates for intensive care, with bandages visible on most of them. They arrived in the midst of an argument, which continued unabated as the tired X-COM operatives shuffled into the room.

“I’m telling you, seven weeks is too long,” Drake was saying, punctuating her statement by slamming her fist onto the table in front of her.

“We can’t change the rules of physics, agent Drake!” Grace countered.

Garret turned as the Alphas entered. “Ah, good, Alpha. Sorry to keep you from your rest, but we have to make some decisions. And they are likely going to affect you.”

“Likely?” Doctor Wagner asked.

Counselor Beauvais spoke up from the far end of the table. “They should have more of a say than anyone else at this table.” Drake glared at her, but Joan met her gaze without flinching.

“The cryo units are ready,” Stan White said. “That won’t be the issue. Seven days or seven weeks… but any longer than that, and we could have tissue damage.”

“Have they been tested?” Joan asked.

“Sure,” Stan said.

“Yes, I saw the rabbits,” Drake said.

The Alphas shared a dubious look, but Garret held up a hand to forestall them. “Here’s the situation. We now have enough Elerium to get to Mars and back. The Avenger tests out.”

“Still haven’t done a test outside of atmo,” Ken Yushi said.

“Sure,” Drake shot back. “Send our one copy of the ship out on a joyride…”

“This is a war, not a flight test program,” James said. “We have to take some chances if we want to win.”

“Please, everyone,” Garret said, cutting off the incipient argument. “Mars is not at its closest right now, but we can’t wait. All of our intel suggests that the alien dreadnought will be completed in a matter of months.”

“If not sooner,” Drake added, under her breath, but loud enough so that everyone at the table could hear her. Garret glanced at her, but continued, “The commander…”

Drake cut him off with a slap of her palm on the table. “Did you ever stop to think that maybe it was lying? Christ, Garret, do you know what’s at stake here if you’re wrong?”

Garret’s expression didn’t change. “I think we all know what’s stake, Inise.”

Vasily rose half up out of his chair. “Please, what is problem?”

“Yeah, fill us in, please,” Jane said, “since we’re next on the list of rabbits.”

“Doctor Wagner,” Garret said. “Can you bring up the map?”

Wagner touched her screen, and a map of the solar system appeared on the big screen, with a series of dotted lines connecting Earth and Mars. “Here is the problem,” Wagner said, highlighting one of the trajectories. “With a small margin of error, we can arrange for a successful flight of seven weeks each way. Forty-seven days, to be exact. As Stan noted, we would keep you in cryonic storage for most of the flight.”

“Preserve muscle mass that way,” James said, nodding.

“Necessary to keep you healthy,” Stan said. “The Avenger’s a marvel, but its life support systems can’t sustain eight people for that long in such a crowded space.”

“Plus you get to avoid the pleasant sensation of high-G burns at both ends,” Ken added. “Man, I am not looking forward to that.”

“So what is problem?” Vasily repeated.

“The problem is the timeline,” Garret responded. “Our interrogation of the alien commander indicated that the alien dreadnought would be ready for launch within a window of forty-one to fifty-three days.”

“If he wasn’t lying,” Drake reminded them.

“Ech,” Vasily said, “But… you saying there is way to get there faster?”

“We could go with a more powerful burn,” Wagner said. “Accelerate to 3.4 Gs, double the length time that the engines fire.”

“I need this in dumb soldier talk,” Vasily said.

“One way trip,” James said. “She’s talking about a one-way trip.”

Vasily blinked. “It means you fly faster if you burn up all your fuel on the way there, you big Russian,” Drake said.

Wagner nodded. “If you fire at a full burn for sixteen hours at the start and finish of the trip, travel time is reduced to thirty-two days.”

“You could find fuel there,” Grace said. “I could rig up an Elerium injection matrix, plug and play.”

There was a moment of silence around the table. “This is a decision that cannot be made for you,” Garret said.

“I’m in,” James said. “One way mission or not, this is our only chance.”

“I half thought we’d be in for a one way trip anyway,” Catalina said. “Queen and country and all that, never was truer, really. I’m in.”

“Earlier’s better, greater chance of surprise,” Hadrian said.

“Well, if we face facts,” Vasily said. “We going further than any human ever gone before, into base of most hostile, dangerous things we ever known. Is kind of likely we going to die there, so guess it not a problem if we go fast.”

Garret nodded. “We launch in three days. It will take that long to prep the ship. In the interim, we’re going all out, a last-ditch effort on research, manufacturing, everything. Alpha, you’re in for seven hours of sack time, and then check your schedules. Every hour of the next three days is spoken for. As of now, everything in X-COM goes to the support of this mission. Any more questions? All right. This is it, people. Dismissed.”

 

[Lazybones]

That's weird, I posted this yesterday, but I guess it didn't take. Well, here's a rare Saturday cliffhanger.

* * * * *

Session 29 (November 17, 2008)
Chapter 130


Within the cargo compartment of the Avenger, there was utter silence. The seven cylinders arranged at a sixty-degree angle in a “U” formation dominated the available space, while every other inch seemed to be taken up with racks of gear and banks of heavy machinery that gave the tiny compartment the look of some mad scientist’s dungeon. Other than the tiny LEDs that flickered on the sides of the cylinders, the compartment was dark. A rime of ice crystals covered the small windows of armored glass visible on each of the cylinders, obscuring the faces of the men and women inside.

A black display screen flared to life, covered with columns of scrolling data. A line of white lamps came alive along the ceiling a moment later, accompanied by a faint rumbling noise, like an avalanche heard from a great distance away. A hiss came from one of the cryonic pods, then another, and then the room was filled with noise, as an alarm klaxon sounded, and the white light was joined by a red strobe that sent violent red pulses through the crowded space.

The cylinders slid open, accompanied by plumes of air that flared visibly as they crossed dramatic gradients of temperature. Added to those were the exhalations of the Alphas, who groaned as they stirred back to consciousness.

Vasily grabbed onto the edge of his pod, ignoring the bits of skin that clung to the icy metal. “What is wrong?” he asked, as he tried to get up. “He grabbed his communicator and jabbed it into his ear. “Ken? What is status?”

“Sitrep?” Hadrian echoed, pulling himself up out of the cryonic chamber.

“Not know yet.”

Vasily got up out of the unit, but nearly fell onto his face when his legs buckled under him. “Take it slow, everyone,” Mary warned them from her own unit. “Give your muscles a chance to remember what they’re for.”

Ken’s voice came from a speaker near the ceiling, drawing their attention. “Welcome back, sleepyheads. Better hang on, we’re going to have a bumpy ride in a minute.”

“Are we… are we there?” Catalina asked, still groggy.

Jane leaned over and touched the controls of the display unit. An image appeared on the screen, the massive red orb of Mars, looking close enough almost to touch. “We’re there,” she said.

“What’s wrong with James’s pod?” Catalina asked. They all turned toward the one unit that hadn’t opened, and Mary, still clinging to her cylinder as she gingerly tested her legs, quickly crossed over to it, opening the small display unit built into its side. She tapped the tiny buttons, and frowned.

Vasily staggered over to her. “What… he okay?”

“I can’t bring him out. He’s alive, but the controls are frozen.”

“That’s not good,” Catalina said. She joined Hadrian and Jane, who were already slipping into their armored suits, but stumbled and nearly fell as the ship lurched under them. All of them looked up toward the speaker unit.

“The aliens seem to have noticed we’re here,” Ken said.

There was nothing they could do but get ready. The rumbling continued, as Ken altered his trajectory and the Avenger continued its rapid descent toward the Martian surface. Two alien cruisers had appeared in far orbit near Phobos, and were moving to intercept, but the X-COM craft was faster, and it tore through the thin Martian atmosphere like a bullet. Mary was unable to fix the problem with James’s cryo pod, and they had no choice but to leave him inside, and hope that they could recover him later. She left the onboard computer running a full diagnostic, but it looked like it was going to take more time than they had.

The ride got rougher as they descended, and the Alphas were shaken about despite the restraining cords attached to their armor. They checked each others’ suits as best they could, and waited. “Not reading any ship activity from the planet’s surface,” Ken said. “They must be building the dreadnought somewhere underground.”

“We coming in a bit fast, yes?” Vasily asked, as the ship continued to buck under them.

“We’ve got those cruisers on our tail,” Ken said. “It’s fine, she can take it. Okay, there’s our target.” They looked at the display screen, which was still set to show what the pilot was seeing; in this case, it was a large cliff mass that rose up from the surface ahead. “I’ll set you down right on the front doorstep,” Ken said, “Then I’ll draw off those cruisers.”

They felt themselves press hard against the restraining cords as Ken fired the braking thrusters. “Ah, looks like they’ve got a welcoming committee,” the pilot said. He zoomed the display screen, and the base of the cliff jumped into sharp focus. They could see the dark opening there now, but also the small gray forms of sectoids, accompanied by the familiar glimmering shapes of cyberdisks.

“Get ready!” the pilot said, as the alien group drew steadily closer. “Down in thirty seconds, sorry for the drop and run!”

Vasily hit the power feed on his cannon. “We could use warmup,” he said. The ramp at the back of the ship began to open, and they could see the red sky of Mars, followed by the crumbling red soil below as the ship touched down. Dust and dirt flared around them as they filed out, fast, and then the Avenger was lifting back into the sky. Bright flashes flared around it as it ascended.

“We’re under fire!” someone yelled, as the glowing streaks of plasma bolts started to flash past them. Vasily took one last look up into the sky, just in time to see the weak light from the distant sun flash off a squat oblong missile that shot up after the Earth spacecraft. He had just enough time to feel a cold feeling clench in his gut before the blaster bomb exploded into a bright fireball that blinded him in the scant instant before the concussive force threw him, along with all of the other Alphas, down to the ground.

 

[Lazybones]

Session 29 (November 17, 2008)
Chapter 131

Vasily’s ears were ringing as he pulled himself up. He was dimly aware of flashes all around him, and bright streaks as plasma bolts streaked past. His eyes focused on the plasma cannon lying at his feet, and he bent to pick it up. Something kicked hard against his shoulder, and he felt a surge of heat against his neck, but the experimental heavy armor held up against the impact, and within a few moments the heat dissipated.

He lifted the cannon, scanning the landscape ahead. The mass of sectoids and cyberdisks were still a good hundred meters off, if drawing closer, but he ignored them, searching for a specific foe.

“Magnify, four times,” he said, and his VDU responded, focusing in on what he thought he’d seen, toward the back of the enemy line.

The sectoid specialist was reloading the bulky blaster launcher; as Vasily watched, the alien snapped the chamber in the rear of the weapon closed and lifted it to its shoulder. The Russian lifted his cannon, already feeling a sense of dread as he took aim, knowing he’d never get the shot off before the sectoid, especially since the alien only had to point the blaster bomb in their general direction…

But even as the alien popped up in his sights, there was a flash, and its head exploded. Vasily glanced over at Jane, who was on one knee, her plasma rifle with its long-range sights at her shoulder. But before she could fire again, two plasma bolts slammed into her chest, and she was flung over onto her back once again, wisps of superheated gas rising from the black smears on her armor.

Vasily opened fire, hitting the closest cyberdisk. The plasma cannon bored a hole in the hull of the alien machine, which spun wildly for a few seconds before exploding.

A grenade arced over the battlefield, flying some eighty meters before it landed, bounced high once, and then exploded in the midst of a cluster of sectoids. The aliens were flung in every direction, and Vasily blinked in surprise before he remembered that both gravity and air resistance here were a small fraction of what they were on Earth. Then there was no time for any thought, only a blaze of plasma bolts and bright flashes that seemed starkly bright against the dull reddish landscape.

The entire battle lasted barely a minute. Vasily looked over the landscape of broken metal and blackened alien bodies as he loaded a fresh cell into his cannon.

Catalina trudged over to the alien specialist, and picked up the blaster launcher. “Still functional,” she reported, after checking its mechanism.

“Did anyone see what happened to the Avenger?” Mary asked. “I’m not getting anything on my radio.”

“All I saw was a bright flash,” Jane replied. “Still, if it had been destroyed, wouldn’t we see the wreckage?”

“Not if it made it over those hills before going down,” Hadrian said, pointing at the ridges along the far horizon.

Vasily looked back at the members of the team. All of them bore black marks on their armor, either from the airburst from the alien blaster launcher, or from hits sustained in the subsequent battle. But thus far, they all seemed to be intact. Mary was tracking their bio readouts on her VDU, and had an extra control pad to meter the injection of the medikit material into the bloodstreams of the team members. Vasily felt a slight flush as the alien biomaterial worked its way through his system, purging pain and weariness, but leaving him feeling a bit jumpy.

“Either way, we can do nothing about it now,” he said. He pointed to the cave mouth that the aliens had been guarding. “Mission that way.”

The cave became a ramp that descended deep under the Martian surface; their VDUs indicated that they’d covered a good two hundred meters before it began to level out, and another fifty before it opened onto a cavernous interior. The place seemed to be of natural origin, or at least it looked that way, with irregular walls, and a ceiling that varied in height from as low as three meters to as high as ten at its apex above them. Natural pillars linked floor and ceiling, in some cases thickening to subdivide the cavern into distinct chambers. The place seemed eerily empty. The Alphas made their way deeper into the complex, their lamps brightening a circle around them. Their helmet beams probed into the side tunnels they passed, but none of them seemed to go anywhere, at least as far as they could see.

They came to a natural staircase that descended along several broad tiers to a gallery ringed by a small forest of pillars that ascended to a broad dome some twelve meters above. Faintly luminscent specks were visible on a number of the pillars, but there was no clue as to whether they were caused by organic entities or just some sort of chemical reaction. Catalina, scouting along the edge of the chamber, pointed toward a dark opening. “Looks like a tunnel there,” she said. She took a step in that direction, but stopped as the motion sensor on her hip clicked softly. It worked much less effectively here, as the minute distortions in air displacement that it detected were almost invisible in the thin Martian atmosphere, and she immediately realized that for her to get a signal here, the movement had to be close…

“Aliens!” she warned, but even as she moved the others saw the sinuous forms that slithered out from between the pillars, plasma rifles in their hands.

“Cover!” Vasily yelled, as both the snakemen and the Alphas opened fire.

 

[Innocent Bystander]

I'm really going to miss this SH when it's done.