Part 45: The Armada
Chapter 45: The Armada
: During the middle of July, with a month before the Hive Ship arrived, the aliens began their plot to eliminate all human resistance. They started by sending in a mere small scout.
: It was destroyed easily, of course. The intent however, appear to be in distracting Early Light's only Interceptor.
: A Terror Ship then descended over the U.S., as a large scout came in over Russia. Both heading towards Europe.
: Then a third ship, another large scout.
: Then a Supply ship, a type of UFO we've never encountered before. It all culminated in this:
: A Battleship.
: The Firestorm from Area 51 had been following the Terror Ship across the Atlantic. The two craft have similar top speeds, and the Firestorm could not catch it in time.
: It was minutes away from weapons range. There were now five UFOs over Europe, and one ship capable of intercepting them.
: TTBF started with the large scouts, dropping them over the open ocean. There was no way we would be able to recover all these UFOs before their occupants had fled or destroyed any recoverable technology, so Commander Ulysses told TTBF to get rid of as many UFOs as he could.
: The plan was working well for a while. All that remained was the Terror Ship and the Battleship. We knew the Interceptor couldn't take on the Battleship, but we could certainly deal with the other UFOs.
: So of course another Battleship appears on our radar. Muton crewed, and arrived just as TTBF shot down the Terror Ship.
: The plasma beam had never before been this drained in an X-COM operation.
: So now we had two Battleships roaming around Europe, completely untouchable.
: One landed near London, the other near Rome. The purposes of these infiltration missions were to contact the governments of these countries. Promising weapons, Elerium and non-aggression, the aliens were trying to convince these nations to stop fighting the aliens and cease X-COM funding. Having the UK leave the X-COM project would be a huge loss, much more so than losing Italy as a funding nation. However, the President of Italy, as well some of his various advisors, were the only civilians who knew the location of Early Light. We could not risk having Italy divulge the location of our base, so we geared up, and were sent to capture an intact alien Battleship...SELECTED FAN ENTRY
Torlon posted:
Encrypted File Enter Password: ********
Access Granted: Audio Playback Beginning
Man I am a moron! I've been trying the access I received as a Trainee, the access I received from Lil... Dr. Takakumi, but I completely forgot how I first joined the X-Com project. As a fucking medic! I still have medical clearance so getting access to the medical histories, autopsies, and corpses that haven't been incinerated yet, is actually very very easy. My own stupidity aside I believe I am close to a break through. First off it seems that Dr. Takakumi was right about the head of R&D being a hack, he failed to note something they teach you in middle school science class! Elerium, the alien element, is not all the same. That is to say that not all of it is the same mass, and the differences in the number of neutrons can make a huge difference in the way an element acts. Like how Uranium 235 is weapons grade and 238 is not.
I've studied the energies given off and I believe I've found out why only some people are coming back as ghosts. Basically only the weapons with mostly "Heavy Elerium" gives out the high amounts of the right type of energy to free a spirit while leaving it charged enough to not move on. With my studies on mice I've found the process needs to be very slow to remove the risk of serious damage. The alloy is only a key factor because it naturally stops the more lethal radiation given off but allows the rest of the energy to move freely. Heating the Heavy Elerium seems to produce the most of the... um... ghost energy? I can use the elerium to power the heating process but the problem is the "ghost energy" doesn't get far when it's not with other energy or matter and the temperatures required are high. So right now, to make it work, I'd have to be close enough to give my entire body third degree burns.
Fuck, well if I was injured the amount of energy required is less but still I'd rather not set myself on fire for this. I have to figure out a way to contain the heat with the alien alloy and then I can begin large scale testing but I'm not a physicist and I'm working with alien tech only a handful of people even know about. I suppose I could go to Dr. Markus but Lily would make me a ghost the normal way, I'm not sure how Lily would react but I can only guess it'd be bad, I don't know much about Zander or Ulysses but I think they wouldn't be willing to humor me with something that wouldn't really help the war.
With so little Elerium, much less Heavy Elerium, this is going to be a huge pain in the ass but unraveling the secrets of the universe will be worth it! *sigh* I think I'll just hit the bar, go to bed, and worry about the details tomorrow.
Audio Playback Halted