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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Lazybones" data-source="post: 4948196" data-attributes="member: 143">Thanks. While my players always post in the forums between sessions, I came up with the idea of the "strategic game" to allow them to feel like they were part of the larger planning/building part of X-COM. It worked really well and I codified into a more organized system in X-COM 2 (which my group is playing right now). * * * * * Session 5 (May 12, 2008)Chapter 12Jane sat numbly in a chair in the lounge.  She was staring at her xPhone, which showed a scene from the medical bay.  Buzz had shown her how to patch the device into the base’s security cameras.  It probably wasn’t an intended or authorized use for it, but at the moment, she wasn’t particularly concerned with security regulations. The screen showed Vasily lying on a bed, surrounded by a forest of dangling tubes, wires, and machines that occasionally chirped of flashed briefly, as it to remind everyone that their charge was still alive.  He was still in a coma.  Her gaze focused in on one of the drip lines.  The bag fueling it was only about half-full, and she imagined that she could see a green tint to it, even over the limited resolution available from the xPhone’s screen. She shifted her thumb over the screen, and the image changed.  There was Catalina, grimacing as a nurse assisted her as she struggled through a series of basic movements.  She started to change it again, but stopped herself.  She’d already looked into the morgue countless times.  She didn’t need to see the stainless steel tombs where Carson and Sandoval lay.  She realized that she didn’t even remember Sandoval’s first name.  The thought made her sit up, access the X-COM personnel directory through her xPhone.  It took her a few moments to find it; Sandoval’s file had already been moved to the inactive category.  Jaime, she read.  Jaime Sandoval.  She resolved not to forget it. Leaning back again in the heavily padded chair, she switched the phone back to viewing mode.  As Vasily’s limp form reappeared on the screen, her mind wandered back of its own volition to two days ago, when the wild klaxon of the base alert siren had summoned the members of Alpha Team to Skyranger-1…* * * The Skyranger bucked as it flew through turbulent air over the Rocky Mountains, following the long track of peaks north toward the United States-Canadian border.  The ship was flying heavy; not only was it weighed down with fuel, but every seat in the cargo compartment was full, even the two jump seats that pulled down from the wall over the long cylinder of the cryo-storage unit.  Stan White was there, looking a bit green.  Across from him, next to Jane, James was talking eagerly with Catalina about the potential of the new medical discoveries that the research team was uncovering.  Stan’s medical research team had found that some of the complex molecule chains within the alien substance that they’d recovered from the Utah mission had the added property of accelerating the natural regenerative properties of a living organism.  “With sufficient research, we may be able to develop a battlefield application for the technology.  A compact medikit that would make the stuff in our current battlefield kits obsolete,” James was saying. Jane didn’t hear Catalina’s response over the noise of the engines.  She looked across at Carson and Sandoval, the new additions to the team.  Brett Carson had come via the United States Army, a sergeant from the elite Rangers.  Sandoval was from NATO, and looked to have been cut from the same cloth as Carson; both men were big, muscled, clean-cut, and dangerous-looking.  They’d only been with Alpha a few days, and had only participated in a few training exercises with the team, but they seemed to know what they were doing. She looked over at Vasily, who had one of the new stun rods propped up off the floor between his knees.  The thing looked like an oversized cattle rod to Jane, but supposedly it would leave an alien helpless for up to an hour, if Grace and Stan were right about their claims. Ken’s voice came to them over their com units.  “Have the bogey on my radar,” he said.  “Linking to Interceptor-1, I’ll patch you through.”Another voice sounded in the tiny speakers in their ears.  “…ceptor-1, thirty seconds to contact.  Damn it, that bastard’s moving fast.  Weapons are hot.  Hope these new missiles are all you said, Command.”“Wonder what kind of defensive weaponry this ship has?” Buzz asked.  “Flares and chaff not so good against alien blaster,” Vasily said.  The interceptor pilot came on the com channel again, his voice tense.  “Target is shifting course.  Evading… no, it’s turning… energy discharge!  I’m taking fire… Launching missiles!  It’s…”  The voice broke off into static.  There was a long pause, then Ken’s voice came back onto the com.  “We lost Interceptor-1, but he might have got a lick in before he bought it.  Radar shows the alien heading away to the north, but losing speed and altitude.”“Are we going to follow it?” Carson asked. “That why they pay us,” Vasily replied. “Wait, they’re paying us?” Catalina quipped, drawing out a weak but cathartic laugh from the group.Ken reported back, “The alien ship is continuing to lose altitude.  It’s passing over the border, now in Canadian airspace.  It looks hurt, but seems to still be under control.”  They heard a burst of static as Ken engaged an external channel, but after a few seconds he came back onto the shared comlink.  “It looks like the alien is landing.  Four Hornets from the Canadian Forces Air Command are en route, but we have been cleared to go in and recover the alien craft intact, if possible.”“Our lucky day,” Buzz muttered; he started slightly as he realized that his throat mike had caught his words and broadcast them to the rest of the team. “We’re heading down, hang on,” Ken said.  The Skyranger continued to buck and shake as it descended through the rough air, its arc growing closer to vertical as the pilot switched the engines to VTOL mode.  “I’ll see if I can find us a landing,” Ken began, then the Skyranger jerked suddenly, slanting hard right, and the pilot yelled, “What the HELL?  Somebody’s shooting at us!”While Alpha Team held onto their armrests, the Skyranger lifted almost up to vertical, shooting back away from their initial approach vector.  “Moving around to the south, I’m not getting paid for a combat drop here.  I’ll try to put you down as close to the alien as possible.”After a few more seconds of thrust, which in the back of the craft felt like being kicked hard in the seat, the Skyranger skewed back to level, and eased off into a more or less straight descent.  “Okay, I’ve got a landing site,” Ken said.  “The alien craft is northeast of the LZ.”  The engines gave a last heavy surge, then the Skyranger came to a stop as it settled down.  This time Sandoval and Carson, who were closest to the rear hatch, were the first ones up and out. The air was cold enough to pack a punch.  They were in a long canyon valley, the walls rising up sheer some fifty feet all around them.  To the south, the canyon extended into a wide bowl maybe a half-mile across, while to the north, the canyon narrowed until it was maybe thirty or forty yards across, a relatively narrow corridor between the sheer walls to either side. “Valley, is classic ambush,” Vasily pointed out. Jane had her binoculars out and was scanning the area.  “Smoke, northeast,” she reported. Catalina had joined the two soldiers, who had moved out to secure the area ahead of the Skyranger.  James was helping Buzz disembark; Stan was remaining inside for now, following them on the medical readout display that maintained a link to the biological sensors each of them wore. Catalina caught a hint of movement further down the canyon, where the wreckage of what might have once been a hunter’s cabin could just be seen.  “Is that one there?”Sandoval fell into a crouch alongside one wall of the canyon.  “Two of the sectoid aliens,” he reported, lifting his rifle to his shoulder.  “I see them,” Carson said.  The Ranger knelt behind a boulder in the center of the canyon that gave him a clear range of fire; he too held his rifle at the ready.  Jane, still behind the Ranger, started forward to find a firing position.  “Targets are not moving in our direction, but they have to know we’re here, the Skyranger’s far from quiet.”“No easy way around this direction,” James said.  “No easy way,” Vasily agreed, pulling out a grenade.  “Ready?” Sandoval whispered through his throat mike.  Jane, moving into a slot in the canyon wall about twenty paces back from him, motioned with a thumb’s up.  “This our fall back—” Vasily began, but Catalina interrupted him with a shout.  “Up above!” They looked up in time to see a sectoid move into view along the top of the cliff ahead to the left, in a position that gave it a clear field of fire along the whole length of the canyon.  There was a second one just visible among the rocks behind it.  But even as Catalina’s yell warned them of the ambush, the sectoid fired his weapon.  The plasma bolt struck Carson in the face, and his head exploded into a cloud of red droplets, splattering Vasily and Catalina with gore before the Ranger’s carcass collapsed limply to the ground.</blockquote>

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