Chronicle 1, Episode 1, Chapter 7

The Interstell Chronicles

Episode 1 - War from Above

Chapter 7:-

Hunkered down in the hayloft of a wooden barn, peering over the edge of a glass less window Matthew Hunter gripped the handles of his AR-15 rifle more tightly. The leather of his gloves squeaking on the metal of the grip drew his attention to his clenching hands and he forced them to relax for the fifth time since he took up his position.
This sweep had gone as weel as the other five he had paticipated in over the last two months. None of his temamates were dead, or even injured. In each successive engagement, his comrades worked more and more as a cohesive unit, and as such had gotten far better at engaging alien hostiles.
A squeak of a floorboard behing him announced the return of his team partner, Squaddie Dirk Jasons. The slight built man moved up besideds Matthew and lowered his always husky voice. "All units are almost in position, the commander says go in two."
Matthew, not keeping his eyes from moving from the scene outside merely nodded slightly. So as to not alert the aliens to the presence of XCOM agents, they had maintained communications silence, and had relyed on visual signals and voice relayed messages.
Just visible from his location was the door to the gunmetal grey UFO. XCOM had detected the landing and had dispatched a twelve man team to investigate the site, eliminate hostiles and retreive the UFO and any other alien artifacts to take back to the base for the scientists and engineers to analyse. His teams succeses over the past few missions meant that they already had plenty of source material to work on, but they wanted more, and so he had been croutching here for tenminutes, unmoving, staring at a UFO entrance hatch that had not opened since he had arrived.
However, the clock was ticking till the team struck. They had already searched the surrounding area and found no aliens outside the UFO, so they had surrounded it and were setting up for a forced entry.
Hands tigtening on the grips again, he forced them to relax. Despite now having paticipated in seven hostile encounters, the only forced entry on a UFO was still back with that semi disasterous first mission when thay had lost most of the primary team sent to investigate.
Then, the time for action had arrived. Standing up on the left side of the window with Dirk on the other side, they both pointed the business ends of their weapons down at the UFO hatch.
From the left, six soldiers, half the crew they had at the landing site, made a rapid assault on the UFO, drawing up short by the hatch. The two in the lead held before them a reinforced metal place, five foot tall, three foot wide. It was just a little smaller than the opening to the alien vessel, providing them some protection while they began penetration.
In a flash, the hatch had swung in and three stun grenades were thrown through. Designed to offer a shokwave of expanding heated air, no lethat shrapnel of an explosive fireball, they were designed to knock over any of the aliens by the door while minimising the damage to the equipment inside the UFO.
A cloud of smoke blew out around the blast shield and the soldiers moved forwards. High pitched blasts that Matthew now knew were the sounds of the alien energy weapons competed in volume with the deep mechanical rattle of the AR-15 rifles. Two more of the soldiers moved up besideds the opened UFO hatch and peered around the eges, guns at the ready scanning the insides.
The sounds of two more stun grenades echoed inside and the last of the alien weapons fire died, with the sound of the AR-15’s moments after.
The soldiers by the door signaled the all clear and turned to cover the approaches to the UFO rather than the interrior.
Matthew turned from the window and grabbed his medical pack from the floor nearby. He took the stairs at the back of the barn at a running pace, before jumping the last few steps and hitting the ground stiull running for the door and the still night air.
Within seconds, he was down by the UFO and heading through the hatch. Three Mutons, the name given to the large green first encountered in America, had died by the doors. One had been riddled with bullet marks from groin up the neck. The other two had received surgical strikes to the head.
Heading to the left moving round the circumference of the UFO, he passed through an interrior door that slid open on his approach and onto the flight deck at the front of the craft. More Mutons were sprawled across the room, all dead, and one of the soldiers was sitting up against the bulkhead, clutching his left arm.
Matthew skidded to a stop infornt of the man, and was down on his knees and his hands in the medical pack in a second.
Pulling out a bandage, he force the troopers fingers appart and began to administer the wound. One of the greatest advantages of the alien weapons was, although they were very effective at penetrating kevlar and flesh, they also cauterised the wounds they made, meaning that any soldier that did not die from the initial shot was likley to survive. For a while at least.
Finishing with the soldier by putting his arm in a sling and giving him a shot of a painkiller, Matthew moved into the power room for the UFO, that sat dead center along the line of the dividing bulkhead between the flight deck and the entrance chamber.
Inside, two more Mutons were sprawled across the floor riddleled with bullet wounds and surrounded by an expanding pool of black blood.
Off to the side, lying prone on the metal deck and over shadowed by the commander, was the newest member of the team. Brought in as a temporary replacement due to a minor injury on a permanent team member. Little more than a kid of nineteen, he was the teams demolitions expert.
Moving over Matthew glanced the soldier up and down. He only seemed to have the one injury, but it was serious. A large burn mark, top left torso, just above the heart. Pulling out his combat knife, Matthew cut away the uniform from around the wound.
Underneath the charred clothing Matthew found burnt flesh, giving off an acrid odour that filled his nostrils. The energy discharge from the aliens weapon had penetrated his body, cooking flesh around the wound.
Matthew stared up at the mans face and saw a thin film of perspiration forming. Great, he’s going into shock.
Concentrating on the wound again, he noticed that the weapon had cauterised most of the wound, leaving only a few burnt ends of blood vessels oozing semi-coagulated blood. Options raced through his mind. He won’t bleed to death soon, but I still have to stop what bleeding there is. The wound on it’s own is probably survivable, but what about the heart? Matthew knew that if the heart had been affected by the heat, it could well block up from cooked and coagulated blood. In which case, nothing short of a transplant would save him.
With little choice, Matthew dosed him up with powerful pain killers, got started an intrevenous line and took out his scalpel. Pausing just over the charred flesh and offering a silent prayer, he cut.
The man winced slightly, moaned and tried to shift position.
Matthew turned to face the other soldiers around him "Hold him down!"
Three of them grabbed arms and pinned him against the wall and floor, while Matthew shifted to gain a better angle. He returned to cutting and within seconds had cut away a lump of dead flesh. Thankfully, the heat penetration had not caught the heart too badly. Although it beat weakly, it was still viable.
Knowing that, Matthew performed a quick suture to hold the flesh closed around the heart and packed the wound with gause and bandages.
Meanwhile, the combat teams support had arrived, bringing a stretcher with them, they scooped him up and carried him out at a slow run.
Matthew sat down against the cold metal wall and stared down at the pool of blood and flesh left behind. Another grusome image to be burned into his brain.

It was the early hours of the day when, after spending the past four housr staring at the plain grey ceiling above him, Matthew rose from the barraks he shared with the rest of his team and got dressed into his uniform. Combat trowsers, black t-shirt with green piping around neck and sleves and a combat jacket, XCOM patch over left arm, sherwood green medical bands around cuffs and collar.
Sliding on his boots, Matthew exited the living quarters and roamed around the underground base. Everywhere, mostly blank grey walls surrounded him, proviging no relief from the depressing thoughts that had accompanies him since the completion of his last mission. He still could not get the image of his squadmate, slumped against the wall, shoulder charred almost beyond recognition, wall stained with ichor and black alien blood creeping across the floor.
The analyitical part of his mind thorised that he was suffering a degree of Post traumatic Stress Disorder. But the other part of his mind, he stubborn part included in it, rejected that idea. He was partaking in a covert war against a superrior race. The fact that, so far, they were winning, did, by no means guarantee that they would continue to win, and it was certain that, unless he was killed, he would see many more horrible sights.
Then it hit him. He had been insulating himslef from his comrades so that if they died, he would not feel their loss as much. It was something that he had done when he started his nursing carear. He had not gotten attetched to many of his patients while he was learning as they left his care fairly quickly. When he had graduated though, and moved onto a Paediatrics ward, maintaining a distance from the children was impossible. So he had grown close to some, allowing his colleagues to grow closer as well. Then he had left his job to help save the world, and he had gone back to his old habbits.
It was actually a habit that ran deeper than that. Back during his school days, he had been relativly unpopular among his peers, and so had developed a high degree of independance. It had allowed him to devlop a razor sharp wit to retort to their insults, and had given him an inhuman patience level.
That was something that would have to change. Friendship menat that he leart who he could trust, and in combat, trust helped keep you alive. Besidees, without friends, what was the point of living? If he died tomorrow,
His wonderings had taken him down to the technical labs. Staring around at his surroundings, he moved into the nearest lab out of curiosity.
Inside, the walls were satcked with equipment from floor to ceiling. Even at this late hour, the lights were still up and technicians were working hunched over benches dotted about the floor. This room was dedicated to the research into the alien had weapons. One bench, near the door, had two technicians discussing components of one of the larger hand weapons that had been designated a Heavy Plasma Rifle. The shell of the weapon was sitting discarded to one side, with oddly shaped componenets spread over the bench, all sitting on pieces of papaer with notes on.
No one looked up as he passed, glancing at the notes about a ‘discharge capacitor’ sitting under a cylinder with a pair of metal prongs at either end, filled with a dark green liquid.
Moving towards the largest bench in the middle of the room, Matthew looked over a weapon that he haden’t seen before. It did not look of alien origin. Shaped like a pistol, it had a slightly padded handle and a short, round barrel capped at the business end with, what appeared to be a concave crystal dish. Looking closer, he glanced at a small engraving down the side of the barrel, proclaiming it to be a ‘LASER Pistol Mk 1’
"What are you doing there?" Matthew started at the owner of the voice. The owner was not a tall man, nor was he physically impressive. He was as round as any merchant gourmand, and he possesed exaggerated bandit-style mustachios, suggesting a vanity streak. He was in a one piece body glove, cut along the lines of a mechanics, but it was scurpulously clean. He held in one hand a tool that looked like a spanner, but contained some sort of display screen in the handle.
"Just looking" Matthew’s response was the sort you would give a shop keeper that had decided to try his sales techniques on you.
"I would appreciate it if you wouldn’t!" Though the grammar of the sentence said it was a request, the tone that accompanied it made it clear that it was anything but a request.
Matthew indicated the pistol sitting unpright on it’s stand on the bench. "Your handywork?" Soliciting no response from the man, and noticing that he had drawn quite a lot of attention, he decided he had better either extracet himself, or change tact in the conversation. "It looks very impressive. Is it really a laser?"
Matthew injected enough of curiosity into his voice that he hoped would attract the vanity of the man. The man stepped forward and took a closer look at Matthew, and the unit patch on his arm, followed by his name over his left breast. "Yes it is. You are the one responsible for bringing us many of these itmes aren’t you."
Again, going by the tone in the mans voice, it was more of a statement than a question, but Matthew nodded anyway, and gained a grunt in return.
The engineer held out his hand, which Matthew took. "The names Steve Cubbers, everyone calls me Cubber. I’m the head engineer of the HHWP." Matthew knew that, from his intelligence briefings, the letters stood for the Hand Held Weapons Project, and that it was tasked with adapting alien technology to improve earth’s own weapons, and replicating the aliens to use against them.
"Pleased to meet you. I’m Matthew Hunter."
"I know. I get intellignece briefings about your missions."
Matthew stared at Cubber for a moment, before breaking the unsettling silence. "So, is it really a laser? Cause if it is, how have you solved the inherrent problems in previous attempts?"
Cubber smiled and moved round the bench so it seperated the two men. "You will be receiving a briefing on it soon. We have a half dozen ready for field testing."
Matthew leaned forward and put his hands on the smooth metal surface of the bench. "Then what harm will it do to tell me about it now?"
Cubber gave a sly smile. "I do have other work to be doing you know. We still have several plasma rifles to reverse engineer before the week is out."
Matthew returned the smile. "You weren’t doing that when I walked in. You were filling out reports. Most engineers I know hate filling out reports!"
Cubber smiled again and nodded. "So you are interested in engineering, or just weapons?"
"I have always had an interest in technology. Besides, knowing how these things work might help me in the field. You never know when I could need to use one of their weapons."
"Ok. Youve convinced me Hunter!"
"Call me Matthew."
Cubber began pointing to various parts of the weapon as he descruibed it’s functions. "The Laser Pistol Mark one is the first succesful hand held military grade weapon. It has a liquid power cell containing thermite gel. It holds enough energy for fifty shots, and is rechargeable. It feeds into the primary capacitor that holds the energy charge that is then used to make the shot. When you pull the trigger, it flash discharges the capacitor into the primary focusing coil, that bounces it of the crystal lense at the rear of the barrel. The shot then travels down the barrel, through another five focusing crystals, before reaching the end of the barrel, where it passes through the emmitter."
"Whats thermite gel?"
Cubber turned round and picked up a rouned cylinder from the bench behind him. It looked very similar to the alien discharge capacitor he had seen only minutes before, but instead of being filled with green, it was yellow.
"Well, as you mentioned earlier, previous attempts at military lasers were big. Thermite gel is a highly complex mixture of chemicals and biological matter that holds a considerable charge for a long time. It is the main secret behind the success of the prototype laser you see before you."
"How effective is the discharge?"
"You mean the beam?" Matthew nodded. "It depends upon what you are shooting at. The destructive part of the beam is really quite small. It is only a millimeter across and four hundred milimeters long. At a range of fifty meters, it has a good chance of penetrating flesh. Beyond that, the beams destructive power drops of considerably."
Matthew nodded at the approprite places as Cubber continued to describe the functions and results that had been tested so far. The fact that it had a fairly limited range did not concern him too much. According to Cubber, the weapon had a fifty percent chance of penetrating Muton skin at fifty meters. However, according to the xeno-biology reports and briefings that he had had over the past week, it had been discovered that they wore a biologically grown body armor. The green coating they all seemed to wear had actually been grown up over their skin, leaving only their faces free. The covering was very good at deflecting bullets from internal organs, and seemed to be excellent at repelling flames. Combining that with their indredible strength, excellent eyesight and superrior weaponry, made them formidible warriors.
The fact that Matthew had gunned down so many over the past few weeks, especially during their staged raid on a ghetto in Washington D.C., seemed to be more to do with luck, than superrior skill.
The lasers however, according to Cubber, should be able to burn through the body armor with less trouble than a standard bullet. By the end of Cubbers mineature lecture, Matthew found himself eager to try one of the test models in the field.

After saying goodby to Cubber, Matthew returned to the barraks room he shared with the rest of his squad. After his musings earlier that day, he decided to try and get to know them.
By the time he reached the barraks, his comrades had already moved off. Gritting his teeth, Matthew moved off to find them, and so headed towards the mess hall.
He found them sitting round a table towards the back corner of the well lit room that served the base. There wer four of these big tables at the back of the room, one for each of the twelve person teams that the base housed. Moving through the crowded room, he passed by smaller tables with scientists and engineers talking excitedly about the metals that made up the hulls of the ships, and stopped behind the empty chair that would have been his had he been more sociable with his team.
The converstation died down as they began to stare at him, and Matthew began to feel like he would prefer to be out battling Mutons bear handed rather than do what he was about to do.
The two women in the squad flanked his empty chair. Lora Leister on the left, Jamie Aston on the right. Loar looked up into his eyes, seeming to peer into his very soul, and then, smiled. "Have a seat."
Matthew smiled nervously down at her, before sitting down, One of the men furthur down the table, Matthew recognised him as Tyler Dowan, glowered at him, while the man sitting opposite, Howie Gardener, spoke out. "Well well, look who has decided to join us. I thought you were too good for the likes of us."
Jamie scowled back at the comments while Lora broke out with a retort. "What, you mean you actually think Howie?"
A small amount of laughter rolled round the rest of the group, many deciding to return to their own conversations. Lora and Jamie however turned to engage Matthew in conversation while he helped himself to a glass of orange juice from the jug nearby.
"So why are you here? You normally eat at one of the smaller tables and are surrounded by books."
Matthew glanced at Jamie and met the look in her big brown eyes framed by a slender face and shoulder length brown hair. "I’m sorry about how iv’e behaved. It’s just that, well, you are all trained soldires, and I’m a converted civillain. Iv’e spent so much time going through as many rescources as I could find that I’ve neglected to put into practice what I already know."
"Which is?"
"That, no matter how much military procedure you learn, it should not prevent you from rising above it and making friends."
Lora frowned. "So you though that we would not accept you because you didn’t know how to march in formation?"
Matthew smiled weakly at her little pun, and it hit home again as to how much he had ignored his fellows, despite being on base now for six months.
"I know it sounds silly." Lora nodded.
"There is something more though?" Matthew turned to face Jamie, who could only be described as the blonde with legs. Thick blonde hair in a pony tail, and long shapely legs gave her a figure many women would kill for.
Matthew nodded. Although his admisissions would be on the embarrasing side, once they were out, it would mean a stronger bond with his fellows. "I was also afraid to get hurt."
Jamie nodded, apparently satisfied with the response, and both she and Lora appeared to gather the meaning behind the words.
"I find that hard to believe!" Matthew looked up to Paul Smith, the youngest member of the group next to himself. He had eternally youthful features and startlingly green eyes and the muscle tone of a climber.
"Why?" Matthew’s question seemed to catch him by surprise and he paused to consider his options.
"Well, you have killed more of the alines than the rest of the squad put together, and so far youv’e come away with not a single scratch."
Matthew thought to make light of the situation, but a hand was laid upon his shoulder by Jamie nad she lowered her voice as she responded to Paul. "That is not the sort of hurt he meant Paul, he menat he didn’t want to get too close to any of us in case any of us died."
Paul glanced at Matthew and nodded sagely, as though it all made sense to him at last. "Well, im glad you changed your mind!"

Half an hour later, after putting away a double helping of breakfast and getting to know some of the rest of the squad, they all headed to the briefing ampittheater where they received daily reports on the various projects that were within their classification level, which surprisingly were quite a few. The command staff had dedided to inundate their staff with knoweledge.
Stepping into the room, it was shaped like a traditional ampitheatre, with the seats rising up the wall in a semi-circle from the floor, with a podium center of the main floor, infront of a table where the bases command staff sat, backed by a large flatscreen monitor displaying the XCOM-Europe logo of a black X with gold trimming, with a black bar, again gold trimmed across the middle, with the words X COM in gold inside the bar, backed with a map of Europe.
Standing at the base of the room was Cubber, looking nervous as he waited to give his briefing on the laser pistols Matthew had seen in the technical labs little less than an hour ago. Several of the weapons were lying on the table at the base of the room, and off to one side, a manequin had been set up, covered in what looked like an old fashioned suit of armor.
Most of the seats had been taken up with members of the other soldier teams, and some of the support staff had lined across the back of the room. The conversation died down as the commander of team two, Ian Finch, rose from his seat and started the briefing.
"Ok, lets get down to business. We have several itmes on the adjenda today. First, as you may know, we have been operating missions for the past few months, but the government had us listed under the prototype phase. Command is pleased to announce that, due to our successes, the organisation is now operational, and they have finally sanctioned us to formally adopt the title of XCOM."
A cheer passed round the room at the news, but soon subsided so the briefing could continue. "Secondly, after the eh, creative actions of a member of the Europe team." Many eyes in the room turned to focus on Matthew and he slid a little further into his seat and riveted his attention on the Commander. "America has finally decided to finalize support for the operation, and has declared the American base operational. This means that we have a significant portion of the northern hemisphere covered between the two of us. Also, the president has persuaded the senate to increase their support by more than double, and has prompted Australia and the UK governments to follow suit. It is thanks to the additional resources that I can now present to you Mr. Cubbers, the head technician to give you a technical briefing on two new pieces of equipment that some agents will be field testing over their next few missions."
The commander stepped back from the podium as Cubber gathered his notes. The briefing was mostly what Matthew had heard earlier that morning, and his thoughts began to drift.
Darkness surrounded him. Hang on, I was in the briefing room a moment ago! He was floating through the perfect darkness. In fact, it was so dark, he could not see his own body.
Then, he could see pinpricks of light moving towards him and suddenly he was surrounded by them and he could see something round approaching him fast.
Realizing he seemed to be floating in space, he suddenly recognized that the orb approaching him was actually the Earth. He continued to get nearer, and then he was rushing down through the atmosphere. But no the air he knew. It was thick with pollution. Soot and dirt hung suspended in the air, and he recognized below him the outline of Britain. But where he should have seen the lights of cities, he saw flames, or nothing at all.
Still closer and he could see huge craters where towns had been. Then he was over London, and watching in absolute horror as he saw a black wave shimmering across the cityscape. As it rolled like a thin line over structures, they seemed to almost melt down leaving nothing but piles of dirt to be picked up by the wind, revealing craters where foundations had once stood. People were alive down there. He could feel their horror and fear. But the line did not dissolve them. Indeed, it seemed to only dissolve man-made things, but left animals, trees and people alive. But many died as the buildings sank into the black line, crushed by the collapse of their structural integrity.
A voice was speaking in the background. A male voice talking about lasers. Matthew refocused his attention and listened to the voice, and suddenly the world swam before his eyes so fast that he nearly felt sick, then he was back in the briefing room listening to Cubber talk about the effective ranges of the Laser pistols that were being passed round the room.
Jamie looked at him out the corner of her eye, obviously thinking something was wrong. Matthew shook his head slightly and surprised the fading nausea and began listening to Cubber talk again.
"So, all in all, the laser pistol should provide you with more power than a standard issue handgun, and more ammunition as well. Any questions?"
No one raised their hand. If Cubber had used the same speech that Matthew had heard earlier, then the questions would have already been addressed.
Sparing a glance at his watch, it showed he had been sitting here for nearly an hour. "Now. Another glaring shortfall demonstrated in the high casualty rates sustained so far has led to the development of an improved body armor. As you all know from previous technical briefings, the Aliens have based their weapons on highly charged and accelerated particle streams that are very effective. Existing materials like Kevlar were simply not strong enough to withstand a hit. Initial examinations of alternatives was discouraging. Steel for example had a high enough tolerance level to help deflect the blast, but massed too much and would have seriously hampered movements. The same goes for titanium and over a dozen other materials we tested. We solved the problem by adapting the Aliens own technology against them."
Cubber stepped back from the podium, and the recessed flatscreen monitor had it’s current logo fade, to be replaced with the exterior picture of a UFO.
"UFO’s, you’ve all seen them by now. Well, they have a hull and structure made out of highly complex alloys. Thanks to the assistance of a military lab in America, we have now finished analyzing this material. They are extremely light and durable and are molded using a complex electro-magnetic method. They also appear to be very good at resisting the alien hand weapons."
Cubber pointed at the suit in the corner. It had a dull blue sheen, and consisted of various molded plates that overlapped to provide excellent coverage over the body while minimizing the hindrance wearing it would cause.
"I need a volunteer?" Cubber looked around the room, and Matthew noticed that many of the technicians smirked, like they knew what was coming. "Mr. Hunter?"
Matthew started and looked back down to the front. "If you would be so kind?" Cubber smiled almost malevolently up towards him while gesturing down to the front.
Standing from his seat, Matthew trotted down the stairs and gave Cubber a sidelong glance while muttering about you actually have to volunteer to be chosen when a call is put out for volunteers. But as the room had been sculpted to carry sound well, many of the soldiers sitting in the front few rows tittered.
Cubber maneuvered Matthew next to the mannequin and a technician came down the stairs holding a metal crate. Opening the crate when she reached the table, she pulled out a black padded jumpsuit with small metal plates located over it’s surface.
"Please get into the body glove Mr. Hunter." Slightly nervous of the fact that the room was packed with over forty people, fifteen of who were female, Matthew stripped down to his underwear and quickly slid into the body glove.
"The body glove is padded in crucial areas, across the chest, shoulders, back, especially the spine, arms, legs and feet. The padding has a layered system designed to give extra protection, especially at the joints in the armor, and has several heat resistant layers."
Cubber pulled from the metal trunk a part of a different armor suit and carefully attached it over Matthew’s left thigh. "The body glove also has these attachment points that connect to matching points on the underneath of the armor. It means that they can be easily replaced in case of damage."
Ten minuets later, Matthew was standing there decked out in a complete suit of armor, including boots and a head piece that left only his face un-armored. A transparent visor could be lowered from inside the helmet, and it had an inbuilt radio and earpiece with an aerial rising from behind the left ear. Brackets on either side of the helmet allowed a set of night-vision goggles to be attached.
"Now to demonstrate the effectiveness of the suit." Matthew started at that statement and held up his hands as though to ward off the shot. Cubber stepped back and Matthew saw the technician that had brought the suit down to the table bring up one of the laser pistols from the table and pull the trigger.
The room filled with a high pitched blast and a beam of intense yellow light blasted from the end of the gun and hit Matthew low on the stomach. Folding around the shot, he could feel the impact, like a championship boxer had hit him with a gravel filled glove, and the heat that was transmitted through the metal was like touching a halogen light that had just been turned off.
But the armor held, and Matthew straightened up and mumbled about no warnings. Glancing down, all he could see o indicate that he had been shot was a blackened mark over the stomach armor plate. The commander stepped forwards and up to the podium. "Well, thank you for a most impressive demonstration. To forestall the inevitable question, the armor suits are in production as we speak, and a suit will be issued as soon as it has been tested. The same goes with the laser pistols. You might like to know that the technical staff are also working on an improved laser weapon already. I believe it will be in the form of a rifle with drastically improved range and power, and a heavy version of the rifle that has five times the power. If any of you have any questions about any of the briefing, contact the technical department liaisons. Dismissed!"
The soldiers throughout the room stood to attention, turned to their right and filed from the room. Matthew just stood there looking at the shiny blue sheen of the arm plate, dozens of thoughts racing though his mind. Now they had the weapons and the protection, they could start to meet the aliens on their terms, and the real fight could begin!

COMING SOON - EPISODE 1 CHAPTER 8 -

The War escalates as different alien species enter the fray, each with their own unique strengths and weaknesses, and the number of landings increases dramatically, especially during the daytime.

ALSO COMING SOO - XCOM TECHNICAL REPORTS

A short project crammed with of some of the stats of aliens, weapons and such that I wrote in order to provide continuity between chapters!