Part 47

Tynam's health has recently been improving. He still is hallucinating, but he's beginning to make a lot more sense out of things.

So as it turns out, this "fusion" reaction that happens inside a star is really powerful. We think we can make some kind of fusion weapon in the future to destroy heavily armed targets.

We didn't really need better lasers, we just didn't want to waste time downloading something huge at my base while we wait for the new comlinks to be built.

Speaking of my new base, we've determined that we now have the range to reach the closest solar system that the aliens are mining.

I'm going to go take out an ore processing plant!

You can see the OPP off in the distance. It has a few defenders that need to be taken care of first.

Now that that's done...

CRY HAVOC!

AND LET SLIP THE DOGS OF WAR!

The first run nearly destroys the OPP.

So I'll have to break off for another run.

I get far enough away, recharge the shields a bit...

...and come in for one last attack.

Time to sit back and watch the highly detailed explosions.

You down with OPP?

Yeah you know me.

Here's our cold fusion research finally finished. It only took a couple of days to figure out once the scientists really put their mind to it.

OH FUCK YEAH one of these missiles can destroy pretty much anything in one shot.

But right now we're stuck with X-Winder missile runs. The OPP will slowly be rebuilt, so to eliminate the aliens from this system, we need to destroy the outpost. This one will be a little harder.

Luckily we've got some new bits to add onto our ships. The damage control computer will automatically repair any damage. Now we can turn our attention to the newest alien transmission we received.

On route to the outpost, we launched a large number of probes to all the nearby systems.

Some of the probes didn't make it.

But others detected many things. A handful of systems owned by the aliens, and one alien base. We've been building our new bases in a straight line towards the direction the aliens have been coming from, so it's no surprise to find an alien base along that line. Blowing this base up would be a huge victory, so I can't wait to get our fusion missiles!

In the meantime, we'll have to settle for destroying outposts.

The outposts seem to be less defended than the OPPs.

However, they're much harder to destroy.

These three arms are heavily armored, so I needed to adjust my attack strategy.

I changed course and began firing at this eye thing.

Stay on target! Finally, right when I have to pull out...

DESTROYED!

I love this side mirror.

For my awesome performance, I've been promoted to Commander! Next time I see Mindfish, I'm going to make him shine my shoes, simply because I can.

Pfft, I don''t know what the big deal is. Portals 62 still works fine on my computer. I wonder what they're talking about when they say only one game was ever released on time?

During one of the countless random dogfights, we encountered something new and terrifying. Phantasm class vessels. And the pilots?

Ethereals. From inside their ships they used psionic attacks on my wingmen.

And to top it off, they're immune to Gravitas! Until I get a better ship, I'm going to stay away from these guys.

So then we detected YET ANOTHER freighter convoy, but this one had a very unique escort.

Another new alien fighter, called the Shade. I started firing my tachyon pulsar at it...

...but it cloaked!

I couldn't see it anywhere. Fortunately the shade didn't seem to be able to attack while cloaked.

I haven't been commenting much on these recent reports because for once everything is nearly accurate (except for that cold fusion bit, that took scientists decades to figure out). I'm quite impressed that Tynam correctly recalled the image of the Eta Carinae star.

When the Shade uncloaked, I was able to disable it. The pilot was of a never before seen species, the Aereon. We'll perform an autopsy as soon as we can to learn more about this creature.

The Shade has a huge amount of new technology on it. Some of it looks pretty cool.

BRING DA NOISE!

With the Phantasm and Shade, the aliens are rapidly getting better ships than we are. We're now going to try to download the specs for a new, better fighter.

As for the probes, we've found no way to prevent them from showing up at negative zero kilometers so we don't have to battlecheat and alt-tilde to destroy them

Maybe I was hasty in my assessment that Tynam has been improving, and largely making sense...

The Shade vessel uses a unique weapon that looks really cool. It fires a continuous stream of energy at light speed. I'm going to want one. But first, my fusion missile!

NOOOOO!!!!!! I need a better targeting system now? Jesus Christ. We have so much alien tech to download, we've started building bases specifically for that purpose. We need to do a lot of research catch-up.

In the meantime, we've finally been able to decipher some of the alien language. The video we received is of a datapad and certain items flashing by. From correlating the speech to the item on the screen, we've figured out a few alien phrases. However, we've only so far been able to translate a few words:

"Fusion ball torpedo"

"Plasma cannon"





"Doomsday project"


WARNING - 45000 TERAQUAD FILE!

Video

You can see the speaker in the reflection of the datapad. It's a bit hard to make out, but it's clearly an ethereal.

The third alien message scared X-COM and Earth governments like never before. Remember that we had destroyed Cydonia and T'leth. We were fearful of alien reprisal. In the first two wars the aliens had taken care to not use weapons of mass destruction, as they needed humans alive for their many nefarious purposes. X-COM has always been worried that someday the aliens might consider us too big a threat to continue on existing, and return to simply eradicate humanity. This alien message confirmed these fears, but also gave us some knowledge of the alien verbal language. Diplomacy could be an option. One thing we never expected though, was for the aliens to contact us first.