Part 1: Good Luck Commander!

XCOM Part 1: Good luck, Commander!



Two days ago, there was a “meteor strike” at a suburban town in Germany.



It wasn’t a meteor, though. It was a cluster of these strange mechanical pods. When approached, the pods began emitting green sticky tendrils.



Within seconds, everyone inside the area was trapped in a sticky green cocoon. Everyone in town was trapped this way, alive and preserved, ready for later kidnapping.



Based on video footage at the time, the abductors were not human at all, but aliens.



The Council of Nations activated the XCOM Project, the agreed-upon multinational task force dedicated to combating alien threats. We sent Delta Squad in, the best of the best. They found a lot of dead bodies, and responded to a distress call.

And then you got the initial strike squad all killed with your lousy direction. So much for “the best of the best.”

Hey!



Not to go all Monday-morning Quarterback on you, Bradford, but when you see a creepy guy holding a grenade and a shotgun standing in shadows saying “Heeeelp meeeeeeee” over and over, ya might wanna consider it’s a trap. Seriously. Have you ever seen the movie Predators?

Uh…I don’t see how a nature documentary would have helped. And I got one of the squad out!

Who is now suffering severe mental scarring and won’t stop talking about how he saw the corpse of some other guy blown open from the inside. He’s no good to us.



Councilman, who is this guy?

Your new boss, Bradford.

While your service to the Council of Nations is beyond reproach, Central Officer Bradford, we feel that your…talents…are best applied to administrative duties. The Commander has…experience…that you lack.



I have to take orders from some guy I can’t even see who’s got a hand-drawn facial portrait? *sigh* Fine…



No lip. I’ve been killing aliens longer than you’ve been alive, Bradford.

This isn’t the first time aliens have reached Earth? I wasn’t advised of this.

Consider it your first point of intelligence, Dr. Vahlen. I’ll drip-feed you more information as we get clearance to do so. For now, I’ve got a team to manage. They’re hitting Invasion Site B and I plan on getting ALL of them out of there alive.




OPERATION FLYING HEAT: COMMENCE



Okay, Calon Allen of America, Freida Wright of Germany, Ivan Zinchenko of Russia and Monique Leroy of Canada, you’re up. Fan out and keep your heads down. We know the aliens are only a few meters away from your position.

These “abduction pods” don’t go off a second time, do they? I don’t want to be turned into a green statue like these people! Or if I do I at least want to be in a better pose than “Crawling in terror.”





Intercepted Audo: “KSSSSSSKKSKS!”

Shit, they’re here! Move up to the cars and use ‘em as cover!



They're casting a spell! Something glowy from one’s head to the other!

What? Magic? There's no such thing as magic. Isn't it some kind of psychic--

BULLSHIT. Psychic powers do not and have never existed and there is no scientific basis for them. Larry Niven just wrote psychics into all his hard SF stories because even he wanted space wizards. Unless you can get a scientist or twelve out here to write a whole bunch of math that I can understand about which of the four fundamental forces of nature account for shooting glowy shit out of your head, it's fucking magic and aliens are evil sorcerers.

Morons! Argue about this later! Which one do we shoot first?

Always kill the buffer first. ALWAYS. That’s the one giving glowy shit to the other one.



Moving in closer… Shit! Almost took my head off!



I can see three more in the building to the north!

Now eat this, you bastards! Grenade out!



Nice! Killing the buffer killed the buffee! Hey, what’s this glowy orange thing over here?



Try to secure it, if you can. We don’t know much about it except that the aliens program them with self-destruct timers if humans get close. Whatever it is, it’s something aliens don’t want us to have, which means we DO want to have it. Fortunately, it seems the aliens don’t want to lose it, either, there’s a failsafe that shuts off the self-destruct. Three keystrokes and it’s safe.



Bah, we only winged the last one by the cars. This is a terrible shooting angle.

Well, we know they die to grenades pretty good—why stop now?

No, please…their technology is impossible to recover when you blow them up!

Their guns self-destruct on user death anyway, right?

But we can’t pick up the PIECES when you scatter them all over the place!

Just frag ‘em, troops. It’s fine. We’ll get more than enough fragments one way or another.



Say goodnight, sucker!



Can’t see ‘em, but I can see more of that glowy magic stuff coming out of their heads—I’m gonna frag and pray!



Oh, so that’s where you were hiding. Thanks for blowing the wall away, Wright. Now, you die, exposed little naked grey man!



I got the orange stuff! Gah, some of it got on me… and I think there’s more over there! Someone else get it, I don’t want that shit on me!



Last one’s down! Okay, I’ll get the other orange thing. Let’s drag all their carcasses into the storage chamber on the Skyranger and call it a day!



Excellent work, everyone! As your reward, I’ll let you pick out what weapons you think you’ll be most suited for…and what color armor you want too. I get really sick of identical-looking soldiers, so I encourage—

SON OF A BITCH!

AAAHHH!

What?



Alien goo turned my hair blue!!! Why wasn’t I using a Hazmat Suit?!



Oh, man…if Mom saw me like this she would never stop laughing.



Fascinating! If this…goo…can do this just from a mild contact with human skin and hair, I need to know what else it can do!



Pfft. Hair. Whatever. For my weapons, I choose the light machine gun and the disposable rocket launcher.

Both, at once? You want a sidearm to go with that, or…?

No need! If I can handle two twin teenage sons, I can handle two big boys like these!



Well, I’m picking the black armor and custom handgun before anyone else calls dibs. …and this sniper rifle too, I guess, but I prefer pistols! I’m the fastest gun in Russia! Haha!

These are the saviors of the human race? *sigh*

To Be Continued!