PmWiki | XcomAcademy / Mission40a

EN ROUTE TO OPERATION

"Skyranger, return to base immediately."

"Roger that Central, but we're doing a suborbital hop to Italy. We will have to lower our apoapsis, land and take off again. Aborting to Toronto Pearson, and returning after a refuel."

"Acknowledged. Safe flight."

That wasn't Bradford on comms. None of us recognize the voice. "Thanks for the save, Heidi."

"No problem. Why are you doing this, though? X-ALT are pulling back, they wouldn't be a threat anymore even if the war was continuing. And you've told everyone that your friends were fine. You've told everyone... quite often... kind of obsessively actually... oh."

"Yeah."

"What makes you think X-ALT has them?"

"Complete lack of communications. If they had been detained by a government, Bradford would have found out for me."

"You know... they may not be..."

"I'd have known. This whole mess never got so bad that deaths stopped being reported. Bradford would've told me."

Jonny and Heidi look at each other.

"He would have, right? Right?"

A cough.

"Okay, what has Bradford not told me? Other than the extent of my brain damage. I've seen him hide x-rays. And honestly? I've seen my hand shake. Now when aiming a gun, that's normal, but when soldering?"

They tell me that as far as they know, that was it, the big secret.

"All right, here's the deal. I'm going to drop you on the helipad - it's reinforced enough for us to be able to drop the SHIV a few meters without making a hole in the roof. Their headquarter is in the penthouse. I guess do your worst."

"Are you going to be okay? You'll have to explain why we're not here to be dismissed."

"Oh, Bradford already has a cover story for that. Jonny, you were never on the books anyway. As for you... Well, as far as everyone is concerned you took your gun, your armor, a rubber dinghy, a bunch of xenocloth made into a sail, and went off in a huff."

Heh. I got to admit, that's realistic.

We are going to rappel down and quickly catch the SHIVs; Heidi is going to fly over to Pearson and drive the SHIVs while the Skyranger is refueled, then put them into sentry mode when she gets out of range.

We can see the lights of Toronto slowly coming off in the dawn, when I get a text message. It's from Riley. "If you're receiving this, you are in range, why are you in range?"

I wonder if SMS is logged - I think it is. Even if it is, anything anyone wants to do about will be too late. Heidi tells me that answering is bad OPSEC... in retrospect, she had a point.

"Aliens surrendering. Disbelieve that. Got fired. Was going to bust X-ALT. Thought they were holding you. You OK? Stephen?"

"All good here, been working on research and being productive civilians. If X-ALT means what I think it does you'd better be hitting them right now, because this channel is monitored."

"Landing in 10. Doubt they're reading this." We're actually landing in five minutes, and them reading this isn't terribly far off; if anything they've sinned by excess when it came to information control.

"Government manpower + alien tech? You'd be surprised. They can't reinforce that fast but they sure as fuck know you're coming."

"Got it. If I butt dial you, record and publish, if warranted. Will call when we're out."

"Got it. Good luck. Glad you're alive, stay that way."

OPERATION

The original plan was for Jonny to get to the roof and wire his stuff into the building. I'm considering pardoning X-ALT, until he points out that all I know is that I got some text messages from a number I know; who knows if that's even Riley holding the phone. So, the plan stays - he'll see what he can find out, while I cover him. The SHIVs are going to roll through the door or, actually, the windows next to it - what we can see from the helipad is a pretty luxurious lobby. Guess the helipad sees a lot of official use.

"Attention: unauthorized access detected. Security breach in progress. All personnel, report to security stations."

Well, this hasn't been a stealth operation for long. We climb up a drainage pipe while the SHIVs place themselves in front of the door; Heidi can't drive four of them at the same time, so she's going to move them in a cluster and let them auto-aim. Holding fire to stay hidden was never in the design parameter; one X-ALT agent gets to the lobby desk and is almost cut in half by the drone tanks.

We keep climbing. There's a huge skylight that we can probably shoot down from. Jonny yanks a plug from one of that ceiling HVAC units, and puts in a repeater - our HUDs come back to life.

"Impressive. They've managed to replicate our Hologlobe" Shen comments as soon as he gets a video from our helmet cams. I peek down the skylight; that they have. Theirs is red, though.

The SHIVs follow the left-hand wall and bypass the lobby desk; the office they enter looks like something Ayn Rand might design after reading too many 1990s cyberpunk novels. Huge flat screens in text mode, mahogany flooring, even a tiger-skin rug. The three agents inside get blown to pieces.

From the main room, one X-ALT agent fires a carefully aimed beam at one of the SHIVs. "I can still drive it, but he got the self-repair system." We don't risk handing SHIV control over to Central, since we're relaying the high-bandwidth stuff using X-ALT infrastructure. Jonny points at a satellite dish on the other side of the building. "I bet these guys were all set to broadcast all over the world, in addition to receiving." New plan; move the repeater there; we're going to jump down the roof on the other side, whichever of us knows that particular protocol better will do the wiring, and the other will cover.

"Arright, ready to jump!" Looking down, it seems that X-ALT has left that side of the building undefended; the drone tanks are doing their jobs being loud and destructive. Jonny follows.

"Looks like X-ALT prefers form over function... not what I would call a winning strategy." An agent fires at the fourth SHIV, but hits a taxidermied big cat of some sort instead. The robot follows the light emission and melts the man.

Jonny jumps down to find three agents having gone out the other way -- one is fast enough to shoot him in the back. The armor does its job. Up in front, the SHIVs have been left in sentry mode in the leftward office - did Heidi have to leave already?

He returns fire to cover me while I also jump down; this side of the building has huge windows, and I get a glimpse of the main room. It looks like a cross between our mission control and a Victorian gentlemen's club. There's also five guys staring at us having come down. "Heidi! Move the tanks in! NOW!"

The closest was just about to go check on the satellite dishes; it's this big blonde guy with slick hair and yellow Tron lines all over his face and arms, wearing what looks like our carapace armor if it had been redesigned by Apple. I tell myself it's just another kind of slenderman. He looks like an action figure. I shoot. The lines on him activate, and Meld-infused flesh starts to grow in the hole in his belly. I shoot him again, in the head this time. Death becomes you.

"Attention: hostile forces have breached the facility, repeat: hostile forces have breached the facility. Enact security protocol: Alpha."

The tanks roll into the grand room - the damaged one plants itself in front of an enemy sniper and drills through him before he has a chance to react; another gets on the Hologlobe dais and falls down on the floor, breaking the wooden guard rail. A X-ALT agent shoots Jonny again. "I'm good! Laptop's fine!" I don't see blood, but laser cauterizes....

There's two agents left outside of the big room. "Jonny, get to the dishes! I got it from here. ALL RIGHT YOU PRIMTIIVE SCREWHEADS, LISTEN UP!"

I climb a HVAC duct. "THIS! IS!"

I find myself next to the guy who just shot Jonny. This one looks slightly more human. Still looks like he's got a toupee on though. The alloy cannon fires as soon as he flinches. "MY!"

The third agent takes aim at me - he's fairly close, hiding behind what I hope isn't the wiring box for the antennas. I shoot. Nice jagged hole in both. "BOOMSTICK!"

"Okay, cover me WHOA Easy!" I find myself aiming at Jonny. Calm down. Stop. Same team.

Behind what's left of the window, the drone tanks are shooting at anything that moves and isn't one of them; I see steel plating boiled off by laser fire. "Heidi, take them out of sentry mode! I'm going down there!"

I jump down to find myself between two agents that were taking cover behind a column. These guys are unnaturally beefy, they almost look like orks. Then there's an explosion, and my head hits the wall.

I come to - Jonny's thrown a rocket at the three of us; Bradford must've told him what was going on through my helmet. My armor held better than theirs. I shoot both of them.

".... Enact security protocol: omega."

The sprinklers came on as soon as the tanks' plasma bolts started setting off small fire, but a moment after we hear that, they stop -- when they restart, they do so with a familiar smell. "Alcohol! Let's get out of here!"

I grab the closest laptop to me, and run outside.

I rejoin Jonny on the ledge where the antennas are; we hear sirens below, but we're fairly sure firemen will get in here before police or other security. One SHIV made it out, not bad.

We finish wiring the repeater to the antennas - looks like they're on another power supply - and watch the X-ALT headquarters burn.

"We didn't find any executive types. I was rather hoping to. So what's the plan now?"

There's a fire ladder behind the satellite dishes. "Get inside the normal portion of the building and split. I'll page you if I need you. Best if we don't know where the other went."

I shake hands with Jonny on the ladder -- I'm carrying the packed SHIV on my back. We'll get out from different exits. He says he has people to talk to; I hand him the laptop after copying what looks like the juiciest files on my phone. Who the heck is Annette Durand?

Looks like the rest of the building is some sort of bank... the evacuation is disorderly enough that I manage to steal a pair of overalls from a maintenance closet, and put them on over my armor -- there's rips in fifteen places, but I hope nobody will look too close during a fire. The packed SHIV goes inside a cardboard box.

By the time I'm at the ground floor, police has shown up - they ask me what the thing in the box is. I guess they're worried about looters. I explain that it's a small battlebot, show off the parts that don't involve being a plasma gun, and start going into great technical details about the NAVCOM on it. I give the guy my business card. "By the way, I sell these, is your department interested?"

The cop's eyes have clazed over. "Not now, go talk to city hall maybe. Move along now."

Heh, it works at customs...

"Infestation clear. No queen ant found. See you in a couple of days." I hope the message actually got to Riley, I'm on Rogers -- the page should've gotten to Bradford, at least.

The cabbie is all too happy to take me to a hotel. The radio actually report on us: "Our local affiliates at WFXS indicate that a minor electrical fire was reported near the upper floors of a large office building downtown. Sources indicate that first-responders were on the scene within minutes, and so far there have been no reported injuries. In light of the recent events taking place around the globe, it's certainly reassuring to know that our emergency services personnel are still putting their lives at risk to deal with these situations as they arise."

I take a shower, put the armor back on, lose the battle for staying awake until I know how the orbital mission went after five minutes of sports news on CBC, and splat on the bed.

(OOC NOTE: This mission actually ended sooner than I thought it would!)

OPERATION AVENGER