Part 7

Monday, March 13, 2084, 00:01

*BEGIN RECORDING*

A day has gone by since my last entry. In that time our research team has had some success in analyzing brainsucker pods.

Their conclusion puzzles me - how could these aliens bio-engineer a weapon such as the brainsuckers unless they already knew about humans before they came here? I doubt they created a weapon such as this in only a few days. Someday we'll capture an intelligent alien and be able to interrogate it. Until then, the intentions and history of the aliens will remain a mystery.

Hatched from the pods we researched, I told the team to begin analyzing a living brainsucker. We will need a defense against these creatures.

We received our weekly income - 80000 seems like a lot to a civilian, but we spent 60000 of this money in one shot resupplying our base and equipping our troops. Of particular note is our order we placed with MarSec last week - most of it arrived.

The plasma pistol and heavy launcher bring us some serious firepower to bear against the aliens. We've informed our troops that any who wish to use the new weapons are allowed to. Coolswa and Zap Rowsdower called dibs on the two rocket launchers in stock.

MarSec armor can directly trace its history to the flying armor of the first war. Stronger and lighter than Megapol armor, the MarSec torso armor also contains a flying apparatus. My only complaint with this armor is that we don't have enough to outfit the whole squad.

We've also been allowed to purchase the Hawk Air Warrior. The ultimate human built combat ship, one Hawk Air Warrior can turn the tide against a dozen ships. These ships are expensive however, and based on our previous successful encounters with alien UFOs, I'm not convinced it's worth the current cost.

*END RECORDING*

Monday, March 13, 2084, 2:00

*BEGIN RECORDING*

I should have known better than to write the last sentence of my previous entry.

From a dimension gate that appeared directly over our base a huge alien ship came through. Strangleglove believes there to be a limit on the maximum size a ship can be and still fit through the dimension gate.

These purple ships are "gate-max".

Two other gate-max UFOs appeared across the city, and with incredible speed flew to meet up with the purple ships.

Our ships left the hanger guns blazing. The amount of firepower aimed at this ship was three or four times the firepower needed to outright destroy the previous class of UFOs. Each weapon impact caused a small blue ripple to emanate just above the hull of the UFO - we think they have some kind of shielding.

Finally, one of the ships gently fell out of the sky. Before anyone had any time to celebrate, one of the green ships fired and connected a shot with the Valkyrie Interceptor.

That one shot disabled half of the Valkyrie's systems. We're clearly outgunned here, so I ordered our ships to retreat back to base.

The purple ship deposited a group of alien into, ironically enough, a factory that produces Hawk Air Warriors. The exact ship it appears that we desperately need.

The two green ships appear to be some sort of escort for the purple ship. Once the purple ship dropped its cargo, the three UFOs returned to their dimension.

The damage to the Valkyrie was severe. (Perhaps the ship needs a name? I remember an old sailor's legend of how it's bad luck to have a ship without a name. I've asked our soldiers once again to come up with good suggestions for a name for our ships.)

Despite the damage, I ordered the Valkyrie to investigate the crashed UFO. Unlike the previous two types, we suspect this one to be manned.

I remember my first mission to capture a crashed alien ship. January 18, 1999. A medium scout ship that was shot down over southern France.

The ship was small, no more than 9 meters in diameter. Typical crew was four, five max. For a month or two in the first war, it was the most frequent ship X-COM encountered, and many soldiers had their first combat experience in a medium scout. God forbid you be the first person to open the door though - those poor kids almost never survived.

Late in the war we had to capture very large ships - the alien battleships. Thirty meters wide and three stories tall. Only the most experienced soldiers had a chance of coming back from a battleship alive. Inside were dozens of aliens, terror units, and even a powerful psionic commander or two. These were not ships you sent a green squad to capture.

The story is similar in the Second Alien war. The largest sub was about 30 meters in diameter, and was death for rookie soldiers.





It's so much worse for us.

This ship is simply enourmous. Almost fifty-six meters in diameter, nearly twice that of the largest recorded UFO. Eight stories tall. I can only imagine being one of our soldiers and looking up at this hulk, trying to picture the horrors that lay inside.

The ship was so large that as it crashed it carved a huge scar in the earth.

And it's only the first.

*RECORDING TEMPORARILY INTERRUPTED*