Episode 9: Old MacDonald’s Factory Farm
Smith, working with Professor Matti on the analysis project, puts forward the theory that there is an alien base in Switzerland. He cites the alien’s ability to land a saucer at Swiss Base without it appearing on sensors until it was right on top of the base, he also points out that they had been able to abduct the entire "training camp" from right under XCom’s nose, and that suggested a local base of operations. Admiral Greer doesn’t like this idea, preferring the North/South Pole theory posited by Professor Tregear, but in spite of this, an epic Blackbird recon mission to both poles has a brief scan of Switzerland added to it’s targets.
The scan shows a possible site, less than twenty miles from Swiss Base itself. Mt Scopi exhibits a thermographic signature some 7° Kelvin above the ambient temperature. This massive differential could, it is suggested, simply be a symptom of geo-thermal activity below the surface, however Smith believes that the mountain was the site of one of several bunkers dug by the Swiss at the height of the cold war, much like Swiss Base was, and long since unused. The Swiss government had admitted that it had lost track of the state of some facilities, and although they can find no record of a bunker at Scopi, conceded that there may be a facility there that they don’t know about.
Greer and Tregear begin to think there may actually be an alien base there, but Greer is still highly distrustful of Smith and suspects a trap. He puts off any plans to investigate the base further. Life at Swiss Base continues.
A few days later, an Osprey transport arrives at XCom base with the latest batch of new recruits. Oberst Eric Strasse, formerly of Germany’s GSG9 and the latest candidate for the post of XCom Head of Military Division, arrives with his team of specialists. Things in Swiss Base are hectic, they are in the middle of a UFO incident over northern Europe, and no-one is there to greet them. After some minutes, Admiral Greer’s assistant arrives to show them to their quarters. Once his people are settled, Strasse heads up to C&C to report to the Admiral.
He arrives as the UFO intercept reaches its climax, and is ordered to "shut up and get the hell out of here" by a tense Greer. Realising that now might not be the right time to insist on protocol, Strasse retires to the Rec Room. While there he meets Smith, who furtively passes him a folder. This folder contains Smiths research into the hypothetical existance of an alien base in Switzerland.
The UFO incident is resolved and Greer discovers the identity of the ‘moron’ who stumbled into the command centre. He sends for Strasse and the two are properly introduced. The Admiral dislikes the clean cut German officer, for much the same reasons that he disliked Colonel Moore. "I wish someone had told me they were sending someone." he says. "it would be nice if I had some say in the matter for once." He tells Strasse that he might as well get straight to work and assigns him a watch in C&C starting immediately. Sensing the hostility, but still hoping to make a good impression, Strasse obeys.
Once Strasse is at work in C&C, Greer checks over his dossier. Although Strasse is a first rate officer, Greer is concerned that he has brought his own team of specialists to the project. Sensing that the Oberst has the beginnings of a power-bloc that could threaten his control over XCom, Greer plots to break up the ex GSG9 staff and spread them across the Ranger Division.
In C&C, a technician detects a faint trace in the area of the previous UFO incident. Strasse orders the Interceptors that are still airborne to do an about turn and scan the area. They obey, and are jumped by a UFO that doesn’t show up properly on their scopes. The pilot is also far more skilled than previous saucer pilots, and the new ship is of a radically different design, although clearly saucer shaped and powered by Gray technology it seems more suited as a warship than previous designs. XCom engineers later dub this the Predator Ship.
The Interceptors manage to get a lock on long enough to bring down the new ship over the Ardennes region. Within minutes, the alert Skyranger is airborne, with one of Strasse’s GSG9 troops, Private Funf, on board as an observer. They arrive at the crash site, a farm in Belgium, and spread out to search the area.
They encounter light resistance until they reach the site of the crashed UFO itself. The saucer shaped object has crashed into the side of a barn, and a quarter of one wing is protruding inside the building. Working on an open panel at the side of the UFO are two Slugs and a Gray. The two fireteams split up to try to outflank the aliens, and attempt to capture the Gray.
When fighting breaks out, the Gray uses psionic powers to control Private Funf, who attempts to shoot at one of the Rangers (fortunately in the confusion nobody notices.) and as the Slugs fall to the firepower of the Rangers, The Gray is forced to retreat to a farmhouse, while the Rangers drop a grenade into the open hatch of the Predator Ship, killing those inside.
Meanwhile, XCom picks up more craft entering Earth’s atmosphere. Suspecting that this is some sort of rescue mission, Greer suggests launching more interceptors, and Strasse concurs (even to the point of launching one of the three surviving Tempests). The rescue mission consists of four scout saucers and one of the new Predator models. Three of the four scouts are destroyed (the survivor escaping back to space), but the Predator leads the XCom interceptors a merry dance across the skies of Europe, finally making it to the crash site.
The Rangers stormed the farmhouse with concussion grenades and managed to capture the Gray alive. No sooner had they completed this than the Predator craft made a strafing run on their position, wounding a Ranger. The UFO managed a second attack run before the pilot realised that the mission had failed, and that the small arms fire from the Rangers on the ground posed a serious threat. The Predator escaped into space. (NOTE: another version states that the second Pred was shot down. This report remains unconfirmed)
Back at Swiss Base, Oberst Strasse and Doctors Stahlberg and Kramer interrogate the captured Gray. They are not helped by the fact that the alien does not speak, but Dr Kramer attempts to use the Psi-Amplifier to break through the alien’s mindblock. Suddenly Strasse gets a mental picture, transmitted directly to his mind by the Gray. The Gray depicts himself being rescued by more aliens, and the people in the interrogation room being killed. Clearly a threat! Let me go, or my friends will come and get me!
Strasse sticks with it, telling the Gray (via Kramer) that the rescue mission has already been attempted and that it had failed. He continues to harangue the alien until he is hit by another mental image. The Gray transmits the image of a base on the moon, and a huge device orbiting above it. Then he shows two fleets of ships travelling through space, one Gray, one presumably Android. Back on the moon, the device produces an energy field and the Gray ships suddenly appear in Earth orbit. They descend on the Earth wiping out the humans. Then, seemingly later, the Android fleet arrives travelling normally through the fringes of the solar system, where it is attacked by the Gray ships and beaten.
(Translation: The Grays have a facility on the moon, as suspected by the US government. Both the Grays and the Androids have warfleets heading for the solar system through normal space. But the Grays have built a JumpGate on the moon, and when it is operational, they will be able to bring the fleet to Earth immediately. With Earth’s state of readiness as it is, humanity hasn’t a hope against a single alien aggressor and will fall. When the Androids arrive, possibly years later having traveled through normal space, the Grays will be sufficiently settled on Earth as to have a good chance of beating them.
Two things come from this. 1) it is not certain whether the Gray is actually appealing to the humans to let them settle in order to defeat the genocidal Androids, or whether he’s just petulantly saying "I don’t care cos this is what’s going to happen to your planet anyway, matey boy!" 2) The Gray and Android fleets are both depicted as being about equal in size and strength, and although humanity has no chance against them individually, pitting the two fleets against eachother might distract and wear them down enough to give Earth a chance.).
Admiral Greer learns of this shortly after hearing of Strasse’s meeting with Smith. Greer’s first response on hearing the news of the alien fleets is "We’re screwed", but when he hears more, and hears Strasse’s Strategic Ops Officer explain about the possibility of setting the two fleets against each other, an idea begins to form. He warns Strasse to be careful of associating with Smith.
Chip ‘n Dale, XCom’s ace hacking team, manage to break into one of Astrodyne’s secure systems. They are only online long enough to download some shipping information about a project known as Joshua. Project Joshua is described as the next step after the H-bomb, although it is not an actual explosive device (unknown to XCom, Joshua is in fact a field generator that disassembles all matter within it’s radius down to the sub atomic level, by momentarily cancelling out the weak and strong atomic forces. This liberates the matters constituent particles which free of their bonds quickly accelerate to close to the speed of light in random directions. Since this usually destroys the generator, and liberates a fair amount of energy in the process, it acts to all intents and purposes as a super atomic bomb) What XCom learns is that the prototype is being shipped to the port of Duluth on Lake Superior in two days time. After a great deal of discussion, Admiral Greer decides to snatch the Joshua Device in a deniable operation.
A team of Rangers led by Jackson and Zakalwe is dispatched in a modified Elektron spaceplane. The plan is to splashdown in Lake superior miles away from the freighter carrying Joshua, and make the final approach underwater (this is made possible by the Elektron's retrofitted grav drives). They are then to capture the device and return by suborbital hop to Swiss Base.
The operation goes smoothly, despite fierce opposition from well armed guards on the freighter. Deep in the hold, the Rangers are delighted to discover not one but two Joshua devices. They capture both and blow up the ship. Back at Swiss base, the Joshua devices are studied at length, but XCom's finest minds are only able to guess at how the devices work. For now, these are the only two doomsday bombs that XCom are going to have.
Episode 11: Love thy neighbour
Admiral Greer is finally convinced by the evidence his analysts are presenting him. Mt Scopi definitely hides an alien base, merely a few miles from XCom Swiss Base. But he's still worried about the possibility of an alien base on the moon as indicated by the psychic message from the captured Gray. He tasks Oberst Strasse with the task of taking out Scopi, but sends the Xr71 Blackbird on a recon mission to the dark side of the moon. Meanwhile, the XCom Defender (still patrolling the South Atlantic) picks up a very unusual distress call. On international distress bands, but using three month old XCom codes, the signal is a request for a pickup from hostile terrain from a downed flyer. No XCom pilots are reported missing, the signal must be a trap, however...
Back in Switzerland, Strasse orders Ranger teams to take up observation positions all around Scopi to try to pinpoint the exact location of the base. After a couple of days, one team spots a doorway opening in the side of the mountain to allow a UFO to leave. The team narrowly escape an encounter with a Slug patrol, but manage to get word back to Swiss Base.
The operation is a combined arms one involving all the XCom arms. Intercepters and Tempests fly Combat Air Patrol and engage and neutralise the UFOs launched by Scopi to defend the base. Once air superiority is achieved, all of the XCom Harriers empty their weapon racks into the cliff face where the hidden door is located. In a maelstrom of molten rock and steel, the door is blasted open. As soon as an opening appears, three Skyranger VTOLs descend to unload teams of Rangers and Infantry (plus one team of powered armour) right into the very heart of the alien base.
The fighting inside the base is fierce and deadly. Defensive systems and booby traps take their toll of the XCom teams who advance and cleare the complex, room by room. The powered armour surges ahead and manages to capture the Gray commander of the base before he is able to escape from a hidden hangar bay.
Meanwhile, the XCom Defender manages to get a fix on the distress signal. It is coming from the Falkland Islands, still a colony of the United Republic of Great Britain. Since the UR's withdrawl from the XCom project and that nation's apparent defection to the Grays, the the Falklands isdefinitely considered hostile territory. However Greer decides a limited rescue attempt would be worthwhile. Pickup co-ordinates are transmitted and acknowledged and a Skyranger scrambled to make the pickup, with a Tempest in support.
On making the rendezvous, the pilot is revealed to be none other than "Ace", the pilot lost in the mission against the Gray's orbital platform some months ago. But there's no time for chit-chat as a quartet of light saucers swoop in to attack the bulky transport. The Skyranger gets low and fast, sprinting for the safety of the Defender at supersonic speeds, while the Tempest engages the saucers. Thy Skyranger makes it back within the Defender's defensive perimeter, and both sides break off the combat.
In debriefing, Ace has a remarkable story to tell. The last thing he remembers is punching out of his crippled Tempest as it was overwhelmed by saucers during the big space battle around the alien station. The next thing he's aware of is waking up in a deserted cottage on the Falklands two weeks ago. He's spent most of his time avoiding UR patrols, but he does report having seen saucers operating in very close proximity to the British troops, almost as if they were cooperating. Finally he'd managed to make it to a transmitter and send out the distress call that resulted in his pickup.
Ace is returned to Swiss Base where he is examined extensively. He appears in good health with no abnormalities or implants detectable. But their remains no reasonable explanation as to how he was able to survive re-entry with no more than his flight suit for protection. Admiral Greer is highly suspicious and grounds Ace until further notice. (GMs Note: This was especially funny, since Greer and Ace were both played by the same guy. Carl had played Greer as paranoid and untrusting from the word go, so he was forced into grounding his favourite character. CJ)
Finally the Blackbird returned from its Lunar Mission, and XCom's worst fears were confirmed. There was indeed an alien base on the dark side of the moon. A big base. A VERY BIG Base, with a large structure in a geostationary orbit above it. Strasse is shocked to realise that the structure resembles the stargate from the Gray's vision.
It was time for XCom to take the fight to another world.
A great deal of planning goes into just how to assault the moonbase. The facility is clearly far too large for a ground assault to capture - even if all of XCom's Infantry and Ranger forces could somehow be equipped to operate in a vacuum, they would not be enough to hold a tenth of the moonbase against counterattack. No the mission is not going to be to capture the base & stargate, simply to destroy it.
The space capable XCom craft are outfitted for the mission. The 8 available Tempests (Interceptor IIs) are the main line of offence, fitted with enhanced Avalanche missiles (fitted with small grav drives for use in space). The Elektrons are modified to carry and launch a number of missiles - unable to dogfight as well as the Tempests, their job is simply to make it within range of the stargate, launch their missiles on a Fire-And-Forget program, then bug out as quickly as possible. Finally the XR-71 Blackbird is equipped with a single weapon, a missile incorporating one of the captured Joshua devices as a warhead. This missile is painfully slow compared to the hypervelocity Avalanche missiles and requires a steady run at its target much like an old WWII air-launched torpedo. With no idea of how wide the blast radius of the device would be, the XCom boffins fitted the warhead with a sixty second timer, allowing friendly pilots time, in theory, to reach safety before detonation.
Before the launch, Ace makes a final desperate plea to be allowed to fly with the mission. He's the best pilot XCom has (true) and wants some payback for being shot down. (GMs Note : By now I'm howling with laughter here. Carl has his two characters going head to head - Ace wanting to fly, Greer irresolutely refusing. It's moments like that that make GMing worthwhile. CJ) Finally someone comes up with the suggestion of fitting a "fail safe" device in Ace's cockpit. Should he start behaving erratically (i.e. under alien control) then a remote signal from one of the other pilots could detonate a small nuclear device just behind his seat. Ace rather nervously agrees to this.. anything to get another crack at the Slugs.
The armada launches into the night, and with them go the hopes of the world.
Twenty hours later, and the XCom strike force enters Lunar orbit. The XCom pilots are appalled at the site.. the stargate measures at least ten kilometers across, and the base on the surface at least three or four. How can they hope to take on such a huge base? And what is more, the stargate shows signs of being powered up. The Grays are surely close to activating it, unleashing the full fury of their fleet. The Tempests hit full thrust and go in hard and fast.
As ever the aliens are slow to respond, but as soon as the Elektrons launch their volleys of missiles, defensive saucers are scrambled. To the dismay of the XCom pilots, the stargate is actually fitted with a number of highly effective point defence systems, which take a toll on the incoming missiles. Ace orders the Tempest pilots to focus on suppressing the point defence rather than trying to damage the stargate itself.
The space around the stargate is turned into a maelstrom of fiery death, as XCom Tempests turn and burn with Gray Saucers, while snapping off missile volleys against the point defence stations. Finally, just as it seems that no amount of firepower is going to do more than dent the stargate, a lucky shot takes out a central power distributing station and a whole array of point defence stations go down. Switching their targets to the power distributors, the Tempests manage to cripple most of the point defence stations, but by now there's only one weapon capable of destroying the Alien base.
The Blackbird makes its run, and the Joshua missile is deployed, aimed straight for the heart of the alien Moonbase. Not knowing the blast radius of the device, the surviving XCom pilots disengage from the dogfight and sprint for safety. All except one.
One of the Tempests, pilot callsign "Wolfman", had taken a few hits from enemy flak that damaged his grav drive. Down to half power, Wolfman was dogged by a couple of saucers when the "Fire in the hole" was called. Now they're pursuing him as he tries in vain to coax more speed from his crippled fighter. In desperation he takes his Tempest down towards the Lunar surface, skimming a matter of meters above the regolith. But try as he might, he just can't shake them.
Just as it seemed all is lost, another Tempest appears as if from nowhere to jump the two alien ships. It's Ace, who has turned back to try to help the crippled Wolfman. One saucer bursts into a radiant fireball as his lasers find their marks. The other turns and flees.
Ace pulls in alongside Wolfman and urges him on, but Wolfman knows his fighter isn't going to make it. For all his combat experience, Ace is forced to watch helplessly as Wolfman's main drive gives out, and his fighter plunges towards the rocky Lunar terrain. Knowing all is lost, he punches it and races for safety.
Wolfman, struggles to keep control of his craft during the downward plunge, and with seconds to go before the Joshua device detonates, he slams his Tempest into the ground. For a moment it looks like a good crashlanding, but the nose of the fighter catches a rock and the Tempest starts to roll. Over and over it goes, kicking up a huge dustcloud, until finally it comes to rest, upside down, in a rocky depression.
Wolfman is luckier than he realises. As the timer hits zero, the Joshua device activates. The nuclear damping field is generated in a kilometre sphere around the device. Within that volume, every atomic particle is suddenly released from the bonds that hold it to its neighbours, and every scrap of matter simply ceases to exist. Near perfect conversion of matter to energy. E equals em-cee squared balances the books, and an incomprehensible burst of energy is released. Fortunately for the survival of the Moon itself, the hole gouged out of the Lunar surface by the disappearence of billions of tons of rock (and incidentally a significant chunk of Alien Base) forms an almost perfect parabolic reflector, and 80% of the released energy is focused directly upwards towards the orbiting stargate. In an instant the stargate is gone, an immense feat of engineering consumed by the most intense burst of coherent energy ever generated by man.
The remaining 20% of the energy either leaked off along the lunar surface, or was absorbed by the Moon itself, enlarging the blast crater to four times its original size (astronomers noticed a distinct wobble in the satellite's orbit for years to come, and estimated that it had come within a hair's breadth of shattering under the energies released.) A wall of destructive energy rippled out from ground zero along the lunar surface, towards Wolfman's crippled fighter. As the very rock melted around him, the downed pilot found that the site of his crash landing was sheltered from the firestorm, and combined with the Tempests heat resistant underbelly (which in his inverted crash position stood between him and the primal energies of the blast.) he was able to survive.
***
Admiral James Greer, USN (ret), Commander in Chief of Earth's Extraterrestrial Combat Unit, tried hard to suppress a smile as he entered the command centre at Swiss Base. It seemed like the whole of XCom had turned out for the celebrations. Dinova had flown in from the Defender, Colonel Moore had shipped in from China. Even Wolfman was there, fresh out of sickbay. Tregear was there, as ever surrounded by his clique of boffins, sipping from a cup of extra strength java instead of the champagne everyone else was sampling. Strasse stood chatting with a group of Tempest pilots, who were animatedly miming the details of the recent dogfight. One of the pilots kept reaching up to his flightsuit to touch the flight wings newly re-stitched there - given his performance during the battle Greer had no option but to re-instate him to full flight duty.
Over there, in another corner of the room, the Rangers were "fraternising" with the command deck operators. Selected from the biggest and toughest troops available to XCom and trained for the most intense combat missions, now they seemed for all the world like a college football team celebrating making it to the play-offs. Zakalwe, the Angolan ex-mercenary was leading the toasts with what looked like a gallon pitcher. Andrew Jackson watched his troops at play, like an indulgent parent watching his children frolicking. Which in a way he was.
Yes, everyone was there, celebrating the victory. Behind everyone, the command centre's main screens displayed the footage from the Blackbird's post mission recon. The film showed absolutely no trace left of the alien base, either on the surface or in orbit. It was as if the Joshua device has scoured the alien presence from the face of Moon, leaving only a four kilometre wide crater. But nobody was paying attention to the screens, everyone had already seen the footage and was concentrating on partying intensely.
Totally against regs, Greer thought to himself. No-one's watching the sensor displays. If the Grays invaded right now the first we'd know would be when they knocked on the door to ask the revellers to keep the noise down. But then again, his people deserved to celebrate. Humanity had won possibly the most important battle in the history of the Earth, averting the danger of all-out invasion by the Grays. But they would reach Earth eventually, travelling sublight through space. So would the Golden Androids, the machine enemies of all biological life. When that day came, then who knew what was going to happen?
Greer knew. He'd be there waiting for them. And so would XCom.
The End.