hell yeah I wanna be an AI
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this post has given me a hankering to pilot some digital planes. I’m gonna finally give Project Wingman a shot, I think. Great posts as always.
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god i’m just frothing the next instalment hey
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I finally caught up! I’m so excited for more!
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the people just can’t get enough of this here thread!!!
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It’s just plain good content!!!
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I heard on the phone you got something juicy coming
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who lives?? who dies??
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The crew finishes their loadout. A few putting on our newer H.E.V. suits for lack of knowing what, exactly, we’re gonna run into out there.
It has better armor padding than kevlar everywhere but the front, where it’s slightly worse.
It’s also 3:30am, so everyone’s using flashlights. These are coded in-game using grenades as a template, where you “activate the grenade” to turn on the light radius. Works well, takes one hand to carry, but it also means we have to take the time to drop them if we’re using a rifle.
Definitely… gonna take the edge off the alien-infested pitch-black wide-awake nightmare out there. Yeah.
Okay.
Goliath
Daphaknee hits the release on the dropship ramp.
First into the meat grinder are K.M., BoojIII, and a fresh-faced new recruit with the callsign Shahczyk. He is a young, dumb, full of cum, and boy shucks howdy determined to take point to prove to the gang he’s got what it takes to be a real agent of X-Com. Taking the FIGHT to the ALIENS, for the MOTHERLAND BABY!!
There is absolutely zero time between the moment Shahczyk’s foot hits that ramp and the moment he explodes into a shower of viscera as three streaks of boiling plasma plaster the area surrounding the ramp.
Oh!!
What floats before us is a big, sleek, metallic Tylenol disc with energy flowing from the Earth itself, up into the ring. Like the drone, we have no clue how this is possible.
BoojIII, and Daphaknee go down on a knee and start plastering this thing with fire from their alien laser rifles. It is utterly unphased, continuing its slow, steady, forward advance as bolts disperse along its hull. The energy seems to be pulled to the ring of the disc, where it collects into plasma globs that fire back as reaction shots. One catches BoojIII bad in the gut, boiling through his webwear.
K.M. gains some altitude with his floaty new bot bod and licks shots with his built-in alien weapon, some kinda blue beam we haven’t done much research on yet.
Well, it flickers red on hit, which means it actually takes noticeable physical damage to the hull. The disc stops and regards this, whiffing on a few reaction shots.
Taking advantage of the brief distraction, Daphaknee wipes the Shahczky from their eyes and keys the timer on a high explosive. They press the big red “0-turn fuse” button - notably the only button on this thing because what psychopath would ever set an explosive to go off at any other point in time - and manages to lob it onto the face of the disc, where it slowly slides off the brim and onto the ground underneath.
The explosion tears open the circuitry like a firecracker and the next round of concentrated laser fire is enough to bring it down for good.
Cania stuffs BoojIII’s guts back in and applies cryptid slime to the boiling wound, sealing it up. A few hits with the stim pack and the Boojster’s back in the game.
Gary signals for TacoTaskForce to scout ahead, and the for the rest to move in line with her. If the E.T.s are still getting their shit together in there, speed might be only advantage we have.
The battleship is just over the hill, sitting in a shallow, smoldering crater. This goliath had more of an uneasy landing than a genuine crash, the vast majority untouched.
The power is dead, but the ship is teeming with activity, like a coke can full of wasps. An open door at the center pylon says to Gary that we most certainly got aliens out here.
From his scouting location on the west-side hill, tacotaskforce spies the dim shimmer of a personal shield. It’s got a big head.
Taco goes prone, lines up an aimed shot, and domes this dude, painting the tundra with bright-green brainmatter.
A smattering of plasma shots come out of the pitch black, missing Gary by a country mile. Definitely fired while moving.
Gary keeps her rifle to her shoulder and steadily advances on the center pylon. With a flicker of purple from the dark, she goes down on a knee and caps two 'toids scurrying back toward the door.
Another, very different creature slinks through the doorway, barely visible.
Gary catches the dim pulse of its personal shield as it sails through the air, completely weightless.
Gary is far too stunned by the sight of this thing to do anything but gawk as it disappears into a rectangular slot in the hull.
As the rest of the team moves in, we start taking fire from the pitch black to the northeast, causing everyone scramble for cover behind rocks and shitty little hills.
Morale is not great.
Add to that the fact that everyone has the feeling of a piercing, crushing dread, endlessly pressing down on them. Gonna assume that’s just some hot new flavor of fear we’re just now experiencing. Maybe we got “fear of alien squids” buried in the lizard brain somewhere and we ain’t used it in a few millennia.
8128 takes off barking at something in the shadows. It’s humanoid. The team trades fire with a few sectoids before downing two and moving in to catch up with the struggle. DaleNixon gets one in the shoulder. There is the sound of inhuman screeching and tearing, the silence.
Tegiminis finds 8128 covered in blood - red blood - happily chowing down on a dripping severed throat. He kneels down over the corpse below and gives 8128 a scritch behind the ears.
Alien Diplomats
Hybrid Diplomats are essential to diplomatic and business activities of ADVENT. Typically they reside in countries where policies are heavily influenced by the aliens. They are cunning, insidious and eloquent, and are supported by advanced psionic abilities. They often possess key information about alien ground activities in the region.
The fuck…? Hybrids?
Everything we’ve gleaned from our alien interrogations has pointed to the simple fact that every alien services a clear, established, inbred purpose. They’re grown into them, from the moment they’re spat out of their incubation tube. To have a half-breed serving on a battleship… it’s a surprise.
(Also: Red blood?)
Aside from their weapons, the sectoid and hybrid corpses alike are all carrying the same thing.
And some - the hybrids in suits - are carrying these as well.
A cursory check of the markings on the sectoid’s neck indicates these are, as you’d expect, sectoid engineers. The hybrids are a random mix of diplomats and infiltrators, however, tasked with helping with the repairs. It normally wouldn’t seem significant, but aliens do not do tasks outside of what they’re specifically grown for. But hybrids can?
8128’s ears perk up and he takes off to the east. Cuba rallies a team to follow.
To the east, Cuba, GherkinForce, 8128, and Felix encounter another alien cyberdisc, and this time they’re able to avoid blowing it completely up, using a combination of rat bites and taser sticks to bring it down. If we survive this, might be some valuable tech in there.
They also encounter two hulking pink monstrosities that take a pretty unsettling amount of punishment to drop. They are both armed with the largest plasma weapons we’ve yet seen.
Aliens bred the donger clean off this dude… pretty fugged up…
Back at the center pylon, Gary rallies the rest of the troops - Schroeder, tacotaskforce, Cania, Geoff, Daphaknee, DaleNixon, BoojIII, Meauxdal, K.M., and of course Tagiminis.
The dread has not passed, even with the ground they’ve gained. It’s the feeling of a piercing sound nobody can turn off, without the sound, or any discernible source. It sucks.
The gang engages in a daring 11-way isosceles lock of a rock-paper-scissors match to determine who’s gonna dive into this shitstorm first.
Meauxdal proceeds to lose eleven times in a row with their daring “just rock” stratagem. BoojIII almost overthinks it but nah they go paper.
Mannnn…
Meauxdal slinks through opening in the pylon, readies their rifle, takes a breath, and steps into the elevator field. They’re very gently carried up to the next floor and set safely onto the floor of deck 2.
They look ahead.
Nothing. Eerily silent.
They turn around.
NNNNNNAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA
Meauxdal’s comm channel goes dead.
The team stares at each other in stunned silence.
Schroeder bolts through the door and jumps into the elevation field.
His first sensation is that of electrified alien tendrils wrapping about his thicc ratty barrel and shocking him for a shit-ton of damage. He lets out an absolutely horrific rattly screech, sending further worried glances about the team downstairs.
Daphaknee says quote “y… you alright?” unquote into the elevation field.
Schroeder bites down hard on the tendril, gnawing through until the hold goes slack. He slurps it up like a pisghetti noodle, spins around, and goes for the eyes, chowing through a big jelly peeper to what maybe might be this thing’s brain.
Takes quite a lot to get through the personal shield, but once that drops, it’s like grubbing down on squid. It looses an absolutely harrowing shriek as it’s consumed alive.
Gary signals for DaleNixon, Meauxdal, Tagminis, and Cania to move up, finding Schroeder a bit roughed up and overstuffed but altogether alright.
Tagminis gets some cryptid juice on him.
Absolutely no sign of Meauxdal’s corpse. Did it… eat them? Did Schroeder eat the alien that ate Meauxdal, thus eating Meauxdal?
The electricity burns on the Schroedster points towards “vaporized by lightning”. A painless way to go possibly!
DaleNixon immediately spots another one of these unholy things on the other side of the hallway.
Dale brings his rifle to bear and joins Gary in gunning it down.
Eugh.
Cerebral
This specimen is not your typical alien: its genetics are completely different than those of both Earth and most alien species, and it seems even stranger than most other types of alien life.
Most of its body mass is neural matter, and the rest is almost exclusively advanced cybernetics to keep this enormous ‘brain’ running. It seems unable to use hand weapons, and it has no significant natural means of defense. There is little else we can say about this terrifying creature.
The gang is quick to notice their brains don’t feel like they’re being wrung out by a space squid no more. Whatever it was, it died when we fried that calamari.
As the team presses on, Tagminis theorizes it might be quote “like Havana Syndrome but for real” unquote. Everyone nods sagely.
Combat is fierce in these hallways, packed with mutons, hybrids, the occasional 'toid, and a whole lot of squids. The way the squids sail through the air continues to be extremely unsettling
As the team pushes forward, K.M. and Geoff happen upon a particularly weird room, containing nothing but a dazed muton, just standing there, non-existent dick-in-hand, staring at an orb on a stick. The fucking spaceship he was standing in having plunged to the Earth was not enough to phase him from this evidently dope-ass orb.
Geoff waves his hand in front of this muton’s slack face, snaps his fingers a few times, shrugs, and drives his taser stick into this thing’s neck until it falls unconscious.
He scopes out the orb. 
They are big orbs on sticks, pulsing with subtle color shifts, rhythms, and shifting patterns. There is sound - a droning ambience of unearthly animal chitters and whines. It somehow makes Geoff nostalgic for a place no human has ever been. It’s really quite fascinating, this orb. Really starting… to ah… to get the appeal…
K.M. is utterly unaffected by the Symphony of the Orb. He rams into Geoff’s shins like a roomba until the man snaps out of it and keeps moving.
There are control stations and some sort of red, pulsing power relays packed into room after room.
The middle section of the battleship seems to be mainly engineering.
Although a good deal of real estate is devoted to these pattern rooms. There are notably not any seats, the muton from earlier simply standing in front of the sphere.
Gary, Cania, tacotaskforce, and Daphaknee continue to carve through the western wing of the battleship. Their advance stops dead at this hallway as they are absolutely plastered with plasma fire.
Alien Light Plasma Turret
This stationary turret is a powerful plasma weapon, widely employed to protect alien bases and large UFOs.
Gary’s right arm is blown clean off by the third blast. She shakily beholds her stump for a moment before succumbing to shock.
Down, but not dead.
Cania and tacotaskforce take the opportunity to return fire. They score a few clean hits on the large, pulsing plasma turret jutting out of the floor.
It sprays out a few reaction shots, then finally frizzles out.
Daphaknee rushes over with the medpack and slathers Gary’s bleeding stump with cryptid juice. The wound seals, and the bleeding stops. Nothing but the pure sweet slime of the megaworm.
They dump every stim in the pack into her bloodstream, and she bolts awake. An absolute fuckload of morphine later, and she’s pretty okay with the missing arm thing. She picks up her rifle with the other arm.
Hey gang quick morale check???
Crew is feeling: bad
Down below, Cuba takes BoojIII, GherkinForce, 8128, and Felix to the third floor. They’re joined by K.M. at the elevation pad.
Felix and K.M. tango with two cerebrals to the south. Both are unarmed, floating in place, pulsing with a diffused yellow energy. It has no effect on either the bot or the rat, to the aliens’ apparent horror. K.M. blows a hole through his target, and Felix feasts on the other.
BoojIII engages another plasma turret around the northeast corner. Taking note of Gary’s screams over the comm earlier, he primes another high explosive and tosses it to the turret. With a flash, flaming chunks of this thing skitter across the floor, and BoojIII motions for the group to advance into the next room.
It is not pretty in here. Lotta turrets, a couple mutons, a couple hybrid. Add to that the constant, sharp mental spikes of pain seemingly from nowhere.
8128 takes a mean electro-tentacle lash in the neck by a cerebral, which Cuba quickly downs. He stomps its big squiddy eyeball with his boot and FOLKS: It’s a gusher!!! Lot of slime here!!! We got slime!!!
When the team is ready, Felix pushes into what we’re assuming is the control room.
He leaps onto the first thing he seems: some sort of fucked-up plasma-shooting mini-UFO, piloted by a half-formed cerebral.
The creature makes weak attempts to lash out at Felix, but his rat teeth are already plunging through its eyeball, and it can do little but loose an unholy screech. As Felix’s chompers hit paybrain, the little craft instantly loses power and clinks to the floor like a hubcap (covered in squid goop and a giant blood-soaked rat).
The team pushes in. This is it. We’re not letting up this pressure.
A brutal spike of pain hits GherkinForce square in the bean. He clutches his head and falls to his knees, rifle clattering to the floor. His eyes roll back, and he turns to Cuba, a slack expression across his face. Cuba is quick to kick the rifle out of his reach as GherkinForce makes a go for it.
Gherkin doesn’t respond to anyone’s yells, just desperately trying to get a hold of his weapon. 8128, sensing an enemy, mauls Gherkin until he’s bleeding out. His senses seem to snap back. Cania gets a medpack on him.
Cuba and BoojIII breach the final door, immediately faced with another cerebral floating front and center, locked into the same stationary, flickering pose as the ones in the hallway. Cuba charges, striking it with the butt of his rifle repeatedly, breaching the shield and knocking it to the floor. He starts a-stompin’.
A second, larger one moves its tentacles in a decidedly “I surrender” motion, and is met with a barrage of taser prods from BoojIII.
Cuba and BoojIII proceed to take turns kicking these things while they’re down until both stop moving.
The nightmare ends. The pain lifts, everyone can think clearly again.
It’s done.
Fallout
The team sweeps the rest of the UFO and rounds up their prisoners at ground-level.
Russian Ground Forces arrive within the hour in a long caravan of armored vehicles. They ask few questions, and start the process of transporting the recovered UFO to the Red Forest. Unsurprisingly, Councilman 03 seems to own these people.
An Mi-26 Halo shows up to haul the surviving members of X-Com and the writhing zoo of alien monstrosities back home.
The airfield outside of the missile silo is set up to disassemble the battleship and research the everloving bajesus out of it.
It’s a productive month.
First, the technology is utterly beyond us, in a lot of ways. This thing’s gonna be our whole-ass Q4, I can tell you that right now.
This gives the grunts in manufacturing some ideas about what our next intercept craft might look like. God forbid we ever have to fight another one of these battleships again.
The bio-research is… as usual… unsettling.
COOL.
This gives some pretty good motivation to the proud men and women of the Red Forest gulag, which is now packed with an insane mix of farmers, prisoners of war, genetic experiments, and literal space aliens.
Placing his hand gingerly on Meauxdal’s memorial plate, tacotaskforce dons his stretchy surgical gloves and picks up a lead pipe.
Using the same tech we recovered from Black Lotus, the lab is able to determine that what we felt and saw were unrelenting psionic attacks from these nightmare squids. Gherkin got straight-up mind-controlled out there, like the Golden Lady mind-wiped her witches.
Fucking alien mind control is possible.
“Ethereals”? We open a file next to the Nephilim and the Golden Lady. Going to assume there’s a connection.
The muscles of these things are of particular interest to the medical research team.
Considering what we just survived, I am liberally using the big red “Approved” stamp on my desk. I don’t blink at the “Request to Harvest Muton Synthmuscles for a Battlesuit Woven from Alien Orc Yoke” form, that shit gets stamped post-haste.
click “Hey Janice? Yeah, can you put them in the rat pit please? This is some truly weak shit we’re getting right now in these reports. Thaaaanks!!” click
The screams heard throughout the base are grotesque and haunting. We hear them in our brains.
Now we’re getting somewhere.
God and I thought the Dilbert guy was depressing.
So. Mars.
Just… gotta get to Mars.
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Fantastic.
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absolutely frothing for gary’s jacked up alien arm
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God this rules. Worth the wait
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Meauxdal
07
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Highly approve of this recent shift to stomping-based tactics
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Can’t wait to do donuts in the parking lot with this captured flying saucer
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really happy with my late entry as a little fella who bites
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I wouldn’t mind being the next redshirt who gets turned into a fine red mist in the DZ on his first sortie
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what more could i ask for in life
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really curious what all this gross stuff smells like
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I’m havana good time on this mission!
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