The first couple weeks of February were an interesting reminder that I had been working with the project for over a month, and had not even particularly noticed it. Attempting to divide time between training at the firing range, studying alien devices in the lab, and running over the various logs and reports sent to my office was proving to be even more hectic than I had ever expected. And finding the time to squeeze in basic lifelike tendencies such as hygiene or socializing was a rare luxury.
I suppose I simply didn't have the time to think about how long I had been working there. For all the chaos, there was a rhythm underlying it, and that rhythm kept us from thinking too much about the outside world. And even ourselves, to an extent...
But February had its own surprises...
"Sir! We've just gotten this report in from our external sources. Recife is getting attacked by unknown terrorists, and they're killing everyone in sight!"
"Reci-what? And what do we have to do with terrorists?"
"The report states that the terrorists are wearing monster costumes and speaking in an unidentifiable language. They're also carrying large and brightly-colored guns that local officials haven't seen before, and that are capable of knocking down building walls."
"Shit, aliens. Get Jimmy, tell him to gather the team in sub pen one with full combat gear. I'll be down in a second."
It was only while I was sitting on the sub did I consider the fact that it was February 18th. Not only had I gone through half a month without even noticing it, but I'd also forgotten my cousin's birthday. I made a mental note about sending him something, but then considered the absurdity of making a reminder of something like that when my life was about to be thrown into mortal danger fighting against an alien race with vastly superior technology.
We touched down on an open helipad, the several thousand pounds of flying sub settling down comfortably in the midst of a conflict we were by no means equipped for.
a few moments were spent in silence as we prepared ourselves for the fight ahead... Then the doors opened.
Barely out of the sub before an alien is spotted. Luckily he was looking the other way, so I managed to get our fearless leader in there to skewer the beast and score a much-needed kill. He-she's the commander of this team, and the frikkin'
clone is ranked higher? Disgraceful...
Two more are spotted shortly thereafter and neutralized. How the heck do they even get up there?!
Zangi scouts ahead, and finds a gillman hiding inside this little makeshift bunker. Time for some burst--fire harpoons...
...all three of which completely miss the target who is standing SIX FEET AWAY. Way to go Zangi. Shall I also mention how you managed to hit a different gillman three times without killing the sucker? (Note: this pic is from an alternate reality in which Zangi is stun-bombed by the alien and then killed after his/her own grenade dropped on him/her and detonated.
In the REAL reality, Zangi manages to safely escape, prime a grenade, toss it in, and then stand perfectly still as the high-powered sonic pulser completely destroys the whole building (no more TU's).
...all except for the one piece he was standing behind. He survived a sonic pulser going off two squares away from him, with only minor scratches and three open wounds. Here, Metal Militia is patching Zangi up (our very first use of a Medikit! Congratulations!)
All in all, not a bad raid. We've gotten exceedingly lucky with civvies so far, so our points have been looking pretty durn good with these terror missions. I am NOT looking forward to our first ship mission though, as maintaining equipment is hard enough on ONE mission with these stupid harpoon launchers... Two parts might just have a lot of people coming up dry.
Spartan, meanwhile, has been loaded up with a full array of sonic pulsers.
Damn is he effective, and we'll be getting so many of the things we won't know what to do with them. Seriously, it's getting a little scary... He's like our very own artillery cannon, just nonchalantly walking out of the sub, tossing two primed 'nades at opposite corners of the map, and then pulling out a couple more in anticipation of more blastifying. I can highly recommend the use of dedicated grenadiers... This guy managed to save J.C. by shredding two different aliens with pulsers. One of them had a building between him and Spartan, another was behind a fence.
Fence got blown to bits, building-hider was nuked by having the pulser tossed just to his side.
No promotions, but some more people got kills and that's always nice. Brutus Maximus still has yet to see ANY action yet though... Why the hell does this thing shove all the dudes with gas cannons to the back of the boat? I'll have to shuffle things around next mission so we can get the boom-booms out where they can do some damage. Gang Bai is proving to be highly useful, as ever. Bai has now added sniping to his/her (y'all oughta tell me which gender you prefer on your characters... Otherwise, I'll just assume you're all male so I don't have to do the he-she thing except when comedically viable) list of accomplishments, firing a harpoon between the close-set supports of a tower and poking some new holes in a gillman who had its eyes on fresh Aquanaut for supper.
As an aside, I think we ended up knocking out a couple Deep Ones by accident... This means that all the dangerous stun-jousting done on the previous assignment was effectively unnecessary.
But, hey.... Always nice to have extras. Also, we just finished research on gauss weaponry, for all the good that'll do us... Currently researching sonic cannons. We currently have enough to supply the whole team with cannons and at least one or two sets of ammo. With any luck we'll get some higher concentrations before long... If not, we've got tons of sonic pistol ammo. But I think I'd rather put my effort into working out some gosh-darned ARMOR first...
