Null Signifier

Previous: The Long War, Part VIII - The Phony War

Ogbomosho was on fire.

Home to over a million souls, the city was a funeral pyre. If it had been day a thick pall of smoke would have been visible - in the dark African night the only way to tell was when the smoke briefly obscured parts of the burning city. Sparks rose like fireflies into the darkness, wafting upwards to where solitary helicopters thumped noisily overhead. The city was screaming, a keen, wailing sound that pierced the darkness - a cacophony of human anguish, pain and misery interspersed with something otherworldly.

From the darkness a trio of black shapes congealed and materialised out of the night sky. A trio of Skyranger craft came screaming out of the east, foregoing any attempts at concealment - their mission required speed, not subterfuge. Two of the Skyrangers banked away and bled off speed, corkscrewing down to the city in elegant circles and descending towards a part of the city yet untouched by fire. Vertical jets spurted into flame, and the two birds held position vertically over the city as the ramps in the back opened and disgorged long black ropes to the city below. Heavily armed men and women - 16 in all - roped down to the streets below. They landed with practiced ease on the dusty streets, now choked with debris and soot, and spread out quickly to form a circular perimeter. The ropes were winched up, and the Skyrangers pulled out. The soldiers lay unmoving in their positions, letting their eyes and ears adjust to the new environment around them.

After several minutes one of the figures stirred. Okami swept through his perimeter, verifying with each operator that they were alone. Once satisfied, he said quietly, "Central, we're on the ground. Moving to the compound."

"Roger, Okami." Central's reply crackled with static from over 13,000 km away. "Watch your butts out there."

"Tora, ike zo," Okami whispered to his second in command.

"Ryo-kai." Tora motioned to his lead scout, Rohan, to take point, and the big Spaniard curtly nodded. He tapped his countryman Murf on the shoulder as he passed, and he rose and followed on Rohan's heels. The rest of Tora's squad moved out swiftly but silently, their plan of action hurriedly improvised over outdated maps during the preceding flight from Japan. GPS and Google maps disappeared when Earth's satellite network went down, but the caches, now four months old, could still be used to provide fairly accurate street level information. The team was tasked with extracting UN Major-General Doorn and his men from the Ladoke Akintola University of Technology to their immediate east. The group would split into two - Okami's squad would approach from the northwest, while Tora's would come in from the southwest. Once the compound was secure, the team would call in the Skyrangers holding station in the skies above and extract all survivors to Ilorin Airport 43 km to the northeast. Originally called in as technical advisors, the mission had changed mid-flight when the UN peacekeepers arriving in the city found the Nigerian army being overrun. Intelligence on the ground was shaky - confused reports of overwhelming numbers of giant insects were met with derision and scepticism. Nonetheless the UN soldiers appeared in deadly earnest, and their last report stated that they were making a stand at the university.

"It's the sectoids," Syp had said in the chaotic briefing back in Tanegashima. "They're creating illusions and putting them in the minds of the soldiers."

Most concurred. An overhead shot taken by a news helicopter earlier in the day showed a medium sized UFO surrounded by Nigerian forces. It was bigger than the scout class vessels usually encountered by X-Com fighters but surely not big enough to contain the number of aliens purportedly overrunning the city. The Nigerian report cited hundreds of aliens. The final seconds of the footage showed a Nigerian platoon about to breach the UFO, backed up by a cordon of police, soldiers and a massive throng of interested onlookers. Two Soviet T-72 tanks were part of the perimeter. An alien break out seemed impossible.

On the deserted streets of Ogbomosho X-Com's preliminary assessment felt less certain than it did 8 hours ago. The fires raging unchecked in parts of the city indicated the collapse of the city's emergency services. Even more unsettling was the occasional rattle of gunfire, the screams in the night, and the absence of civilians on the streets. Okami watched as the last of Tora's squad disappeared behind a make-shift shanty before turning his attention to his own squad. He had tried his best to memorize the route his team was to take, but down at ground level the neat cartography in his mind refused to meld with the confusing mosaic of dirt roads and corrugated iron buildings in the flickering half light. He hoped that his lead scout would not be disorientated as he was, and he mentioned for Jeromai to come up. If the Russian veteran was, he betrayed no sign of it. He passed Okami without a word, and the rest of the squad followed his lead into the night.

The two squads advanced on the university like two prongs of a pincer, each picking their way through the streets as quickly and quietly as they could. On the southern wing the route chosen by Rohan was simple. The squad cut southeast until they hit Ogbomosho Road, and then they followed the road northeast. The road was a main traffic artery bisecting the town, and the university was situated right on it. Tonight it was crammed full of abandoned vehicles of every make, a testament to the panicked attempts at flight by the inhabitants. Some of the cars were burnt out wrecks, consumed in conflagrations hours earlier. Most were simply abandoned, and in some cases, still occupied by the dead. The blackened holes in the corpses told the tale of how they died. Plasma fire sliced through almost anything, leaving perfectly cauterized holes the size of a man's fist wherever they passed. Something about the angle of the holes discomfited Rohan, and it took a moment for the thought to clarify.

"These people were shot from above."

Murf understood immediately, and swept the surroundings for high vantage points from which the fire could have originated. There were none. "Drones? Maybe they outfitted them with plasma weapons."

"Perhaps." Rohan sounded doubtful. They continued their advance along the road, alternately moving then covering for each other. The Spaniards were even more cautious now, heads on a swivel, scanning both the vertical and horizontal planes for threats. Moving alongside an abandoned vehicle Murf saw a circular pool of red on the side of the road. He assumed that it was the remains of someone who had bled out, and steeled himself as he approached. What he saw puzzled him. The blood had soaked into the dirt, leaving a dry crimson patch in the soil. There was no body within - only the shredded remnants of what appeared to be a floral Hawaiian shirt, jeans, and shoes.

"Jewel, I need you up here."

The Australian medic was up in less than a minute.

"What do you make of that?"

Jewel dropped to one knee and surveyed the scene. Upon closer inspection she made a grim discovery - along with the ripped clothing and torn shoes she found human hair, teeth, parts of the skin and fingernails. Here and there, small scraps of human flesh and skin.

"Where's the rest of him? Organs, heart, brain?" Murf asked.

Jewel shook her head. "I don't know. Maybe something ate him?"

Greatly discomfited, the squad continued moving. Occasionally they would come across more torn fragments of clothes, shredded shoes, jewelry and watches. Murf and Rohan were baffled. There was blood at each scene, but no body, nothing to indicate the fate of the victims.

"It's like they were torn apart from the inside." Jewel said in disbelief.

Half a kilometre from the university they came across the remains of a massive firefight. The cars were pockmarked with bullet holes, and several were blackened wrecks. Shattered glass lay everywhere. The place was streaked with dried blood. It stained the ground and was smeared and spattered over vehicles, barricades and walls. There were bodies here, but not the kind the squad were expecting.

"What the fuck is that?" Izlain breathed.

It looked like a gigantic purple praying mantis, as big as a horse, six limbed as far as he could tell, covered with vicious barbs and protrusions. It looked dead, but Izlain was not about to take any chances, staying a healthy distance away and keeping his weapon trained at it at all times. Eldaeriel, the team's scientific liason, showed no fear and sat beside the corpse. She put her weapon down, and strapped on a pair of surgical gloves.

"Careful!" Izlain hissed.

The Argentinian nodded, but nonetheless began to push and prod the corpse, articulating its limbs, and examining the creature's anatomy. Gunfire had shredded it, shearing away limbs and destroying what appeared to be its head. Seeing a wound in the creature's abdomen she noted several round spherical jelly like balls oozing from the opening. Some had burst open from the bullet's impact, but quite a few remained intact. They were the size of tennis balls, and in the middle of the clear membrane surrounding the spheres something black and many limbed twitched and stirred.

"Eggs?" Cider asked in disgust.

"Looks like it." Eldaeriel grimaced. She picked up an egg in a gloved hand. The embryo in the centre writhed towards her palm, and she dropped it with revulsion.

"There's another one over here," said Rohan quietly. The Spaniard motioned to a similar corpse on the other side of the street. "And over there - and there." He walked over to the cadaver and prodded it with his rifle. "Shot with 5.56 mm rounds, probably with a Belgian FN. Nigerian army weapons."

Murf nodded. "I think they came up along this street from this direction, and the army made a stand over there." He pointed to a make-shift barricade straddling the width of the road to the northeast. The barricade was in tatters, and abandoned. The remains of a technical - a small jeep with a machine gun mounted in the back - lay overturned nearby.

"Lots of shell casings - bullet holes - look, I've got a UN helmet here." Jewel held a blue helmet aloft. "But no bodies. Unless..." She looked at the ground near her and noted the torn blue scraps of khaki, the scraps of boot leather and red chunks of gore. She swallowed. "Unless that used to be him."

Eldaeriel finished her examination, casually rolled up the gloves and threw them away. "Should we bag one? Dr. Vahlen would love to get her hands on one of these."

"You want to haul one of those, be my guest. I'm not touching them." Izlain growled.

"What are they?" Cider asked, eyes wide in the crimson night. The Nigerian translator was born and raised in Abuja some 800 km to the northeast. She had spent some time here in her youth, and the enormity of the disaster which had befallen Ogbomosho was starting to become apparent. Her mind was forcefully rejecting it, however. Perhaps if she didn't believe it then it wouldn't be true, it whispered.

Rohan placed a reassuring hand on the Nigerian's shoulder. She slapped the hand away brusquely. The Spaniard cocked his eyebrow, but made no comment.

"Tora? What do you want to do?" Eldaeriel asked.

The small Japanese soldier also appeared to be having problems coping with what he was seeing. "Let's keep moving," he said finally.

"Dr. Vahlen would want a sample," Eldaeriel insisted.

"You heard the sarge," said Izlain. "Move out."

Eldaeriel ignored him. "Our brief is to research and investigate the visitors. We need to know more about this thing here."

"Lady, are you deaf? Can I remind you that our mission, right here, right now, is to rescue the Major-General?"

The operators were on the verge of a shouting match when they were interrupted by a transmission from Chestnut. The Mexican had taken point position while the squad inspected the site of the firefight.

"Chestnut here. I have a civilian approaching."

The squad burst into action, relieved at being in motion at last. Eldaerial and Izlain exchanged final glares before moving out in line. They found Chestnut standing atop the bed of utility vehicle, weapon resting on the cab and trained at a solitary figure shuffling along the road some 50 m away. "He hasn't seen me yet."

Cider was hustled to the front. The civilian was a middle aged man, wearing jeans and a white shirt. He walked in clumsy, faltering steps, and seemed lost and disorientated. Cider walked forward slowly, and hailed the civilian in English. When that failed to elicit a response, she tried Hausa then Yoruba. She was completely ignored.

"He's wounded." Eldaeriel observed. pointing to the streaks of blood pouring down his jeans. The remainder of the operators emerged from the shelter of the cars. Cider inched closer, with Izlain following close behind. She put her weapon down and waved her arms slowly to get the man's attention. This gesture seemed to work, as the man suddenly turned and looked at her, revealing a gaping, gory wound where his abdomen used to be.

"What the fuck...?" Izlain said. His startled exclamation was enough to get the man's attention, and he suddenly lurched forward in his direction. Izlain backed up instinctively. "Tell him to stay back!"

"Tsaya!" Cider shouted. "Ba ta motsa!" The man ignored her, seemingly fixated on Izlain. She tried again, in every Nigerian dialect she knew. The man kept stumbling forward.

"Stay the fuck back, I'm warning you! I will shoot!"

The man kept advancing. Izlain dropped his sights, and fired a bullet into the man's leg. He aimed at the outer thigh, erring on the side of caution - a bullet through the femoral artery would kill a person just as well as one to the head. His aim was good, and the bullet grazed the man's outer left quadricep. The man stumbled and fell, but made no sound as he crumpled to the ground. Within seconds Murf and Rohan were on the man. The two Spaniards were big burly men, but their attempts to subdue the civilian met fierce, crazed resistance.

"I don't want to hurt you," Murf said in the man's ear as he struggled to keep him pinned. "We just want to ask you some questions." The man jerked his elbow backwards and caught Murf square in the face. White pain exploded in his eyes, and he felt a sticky metallic liquid drip from his shattered nose.

"You asked for this," Murf hissed angrily. He pulled the man's elbow back and up behind the man's back, applying pressure on the shoulder joint. The man continued to struggle and kick and writhe, and Murf kept cranking the hold in response, until an audible pop marked the dislocation of the man's shoulder. If it hurt the man he gave no sign - if anything it merely provoked him further. The man continued to buck and writhe like an enraged bull with a rider, and one particular convulsion sent Murf flying into the dirt.

Rohan cracked the man across the face. He grabbed a fistful of the man's shirt with his left and started raining blows down with his right. The man seemed impervious to pain. A sharp pain in Rohan's left hand made him stop. A bony protrusion had erupted from the man's body, and the jagged edge had made a savage cut across his knuckles. Near the knees and elbows the man's skin ripped and tore open, releasing fine welters of blood - hooked claws burst out and grew, scrabbling and searching for purchase on the ground. The man's body was changing in front of their eyes. Even the face was changing - the bones were shifting impossibly but perceptibly beneath the skin. Blood sprayed from the man's face as the eyeballs ruptured and burst, spraying into Rohan's eyes and mouth. Frantic thoughts of the ebola epidemic which swept through West Africa raced through his mind, and he flung himself off the man, spitting frantically. He rolled on his back, and saw the shattered remains of a man performing what looked like a wrestling bridge - arms and legs thrust backwards and pelvis arcing up into the air. From the ruins of the man's face glowered two alien eyes.

"Get out of the way!" Izlain shouted. "Get clear!"

Rohan rolled away, and several assault rifles barked in unison. The alien-human pupa collapsed in a heap, yellow ichor pouring from the holes in its side. Even as it died, it completed its transformation. Whatever parts of the human host not consumed or appropriated by the metamorphosis was being shed by the organism, falling in bloody heaps to the ground, sliding off the sleek carapace emerging from beneath. By the time the creature stopped twitching there was nothing human left about it - the chrysalis which had fuelled its transformation was nothing more than a pile of torn clothes and ripped skin on the dusty streets of Ogbomosho.

Next: To Be Continued

Previous: The Long War, Part IX - Ogbomosho

Contact

At approximately 6 am local time on 7 April 2016 a medium-sized UFO touched down in the Nigerian city of Ogbomosho. Its arrival grounded nearby air traffic, and prompted a swift response from Nigerian security forces, who surrounded the UFO with a cordon to keep away the growing throng of interested onlookers on their way to work that Thursday morning. This was the first time a UFO had been seen in such close quarters by most people, and its arrival touched off a media frenzy as more and more people arrived and pressed in to take photographs and video footage of the historic event. Several attempts were made to communicate with the crew of the vessel, all to no avail, and eventually President Muhammadu Bahari gave the authority for the armed forces to go in and secure the UFO. Elements of the 2nd Division of the Nigerian army either drove or were airlifted from the divisional headquarters in Ibadan, some 100 km to the south, and took charge of the perimeter from local police.

The floater was first sighted in Ogbomosho.

At 9 am elements of the Nigerian 72nd Special Forces Battalion assaulted the UFO. Upon breach a dozen or so unidentified flying aliens egressed from the craft, and began firing and hurling grenades into the crowd. The aliens employed plasma weapons already seen by X-Com, and the grenades used by the aliens were particularly destructive, more akin to anti-armour satchel charges in their explosive power than conventional human grenades. Most were eventually shot down and killed, but a few escaped into the city, sowing terror and confusion wherever they went. Some of these "floaters" were heavily armoured and exceptionally difficult to kill. Their speed and manoeuvrability made them difficult targets. Glancing hits by small arms usually ricocheted off their armour, and even the impact of direct hits only served to knock them backwards or spin them around rather than put them down. The floaters also avoided exchanging with large groups of soldiers, preferring instead to use their superior mobility to move to undefended locations. It seemed to all observers that the floaters' sole aim was to kill as many people as possible. They did not try to escape or return to their craft, but instead shot unarmed civilians who posed no threat to them. Such wanton cruelty enraged the Nigerians, and the floaters were aggressively pursued all over the city. Most were eventually cornered and killed, but one or two would remain a deadly nuisance for days after the crisis.

The heavy version of the floater. It was more durable and heavily-armoured than its regular counterpart.

In the confusion the status of the breaching team was momentarily forgotten. Given the order to continue the breaching team proceeded inside the craft, where they encountered the lifeforms now designated by X-Com as "chryssalids". The Special Force soldiers put up fierce resistance, but were hampered by the inefficacy of their weapons and the cramped confines of the UFO. Several soldiers were badly wounded and mauled by the creatures while the rest of the squad fell back in disarray. The surviving chryssalids pursued them out of the UFO, and ran amok among the already panicked crowds outside. Out in the open the chryssalids were easier targets, and were eventually put down, but not before they had maimed, injured and killed dozens of bystanders.

Outbreak

What the Nigerians did not know at the time was that the chryssalids impregnated their victims with an embryo that attached itself to the host's central nervous system. Once the embryo was attached it assumed control of the host until at some point a transformation was triggered in which the host organism was devoured from within to fuel a horrific metamorphosis that turned it into a chryssalid. Unaware of the ticking time bombs on their hands, the critically wounded were immediately placed in ambulances and rushed to hospital, while the injured were treated onsite in makeshift medical tents hastily erected by the soldiers. Some of the impregnated victims struggled and fought but were subdued, in some cases being forcibly strapped to gurneys. Other victims appeared dead or unconscious. About 5 to 10 minutes after the last chryssalid had died the Nigerians surrounding the UFO were privy to the horrific sight of seeing the dead and wounded transforming into chryssalids before their eyes. The spectacle caused wide spread panic and terror, but in spite of this the Nigerian soldiers were able to rally and put down the newly hatched organisms. In the process, however, several more people were wounded and impregnated, which began the cycle anew. The only way to stop the transformation was to kill the embryo, which was usually implanted in the abdomen of the victim and attached itself to the victim's spinal column. The embryo grew quickly to the size of a grapefruit, and acted as the new brain of the creature. Destroying this embryo-brain halted the process, but the Nigerians had no way of knowing this at the time. Furthermore while destroying the embryo was the rational answer to the problem, most people found it difficult to mutilate the remains of their former friends, family and comrades-in-arms. The price they usually paid for their humanity and empathy was death at the hands of the newly hatched chryssalid.

The chryssalid was also first sighted in Ogbomosho, but they would become horrifyingly familiar in the months ahead.

While the Nigerian soldiers at the landing site were able to offer organized resistance to the chryssalids, unarmed civilians in other parts of the city fared much more poorly. Some of the ambulances carrying the stricken made it to the hospital, while some crashed en route as their erstwhile patients transformed inside the vehicles and attacked the paramedics trying to treat them. The fastest ambulances only succeeded in bringing the impregnated victims into an environment where the newly hatched chryssalids could run rampant. Patients, doctors, nurses and visitors were helpless fodder to such a creature. Security personnel armed with handguns were no match for a single chryssalid, whose armoured carapace could shake off small calibre fire. Hospitals became the unwitting vectors for the spread of the chryssalids, and one private hospital, Bowen University Teaching Hospital, was completely decimated after throwing open their doors to the wounded and dying.

By noon, three hours after the breach, analysts had concluded that there were more than a few hundred chryssalids roaming the city, and that their numbers were growing at an exponential rate. If a single chryssalid could double its number every hour then in 28 hours there would be more chryssalids than the entire population of Nigeria, which numbered over 173 million people. Fortunately for Africa, the spread of the chryssalids was limited by geography and the availability of hosts. This number was still significant - Ogbomosho had an estimated population of over one and a half million, and the worst case scenario envisioned over a million chryssalids spreading out from the city into the rest of the continent. The heroic actions of the Nigerian army fighting desperate and scattered actions throughout the city kept their numbers in check, as did organized police units who were able to arm themselves with rifles and shotguns. Everywhere else the chryssalids spread like wildfire. At the landing site nervous tank commanders, unnerved by the sight of more chryssalids emerging from both inside and outside the perimeter, decided unilaterally to destroy what they thought was the source of the infestation. They pounded the UFO with armour-piercing rounds from their 125 mm guns, until one shell hit the UFO's power source and triggered a cataclysmic explosion which destroyed the UFO, levelled the surrounding area, and started a number of fires in the city. The explosion severely crippled the Nigerian command element, most of whom were present at the landing site. Reinforcing units from the 2nd Division arriving from Ibadan found themselves arriving in a city in chaos and being attacked by seemingly endless horde of nightmarish creatures bereft of any effective leadership and without any knowledge of the capabilities of their foe.

Arrival of the UN

It was at this point that the lead elements of the UN brigade led by Major-General Peter van Doorn arrived in Ogbomosho from the northeast. Originally earmarked for deployment in the Central African Republic (CAR), their transports had landed in Ilorin Airport as a precaution when the UFO entered Nigerian airspace. When notified of the unfolding crisis the UN Secretary-General ordered the blue helmets to intervene and render whatever humanitarian assistance they could, despite technically not having the authority to do so. UN resolutions created very specific task forces from scratch on a per resolution basis, each with their own clearly defined mandate and rules of engagement (ROE). Forces earmarked for peacekeeping operations for one region were not readily transferable to another. In spite of this, the Secretary-General decided to act after an impassioned plea from President Muhammadu Buhari of Nigeria. According to President Buhari the crisis in Ogbomosho coincided with a massive push by the Islamic Jihadist group Boko Haram in Nigeria's Borno State. The offensive, which was unprecedented in scale, diverted much of Nigeria's armed forces assets to the northeast, leaving precious little to allocate to the growing crisis in Ogbomosho.

After intense discussions with the Secretary-General, Doorn decided to commit his brigade and worry about the possible ramifications under international law later. His troops arrived in Ogbomosho in dribs and drabs, having had to plead, persuade and cajole Nigerian authorities into providing them with motorized transport. Most of the UN's heavy equipment had preceded them to the CAR, leaving the soldiers with nothing but their rifles and grenades. Nonetheless Doorn was a resourceful and stubborn man, and his advance units drove down Ogbomosho Road in commandeered trucks and jeeps to find a city in convulsion as civilians tried to flee the city. Three companies - one third of the UN's total strength - were able to make it to the city while the remainder either waited at Ilorin Airport for more transport, or started the long 40 km march on foot.

The interior of the city during the early hours of the crisis.

Doorn's first action was to try to link up with Nigerian forces near the UFO and ascertain their status. He sent one company to push towards the landing site, but their advance was hampered by the chryssalids and the fires burning out of control in the vicinity. They were soon recalled. With the Nigerian army scattered and leaderless Doorn took it upon himself to collect whatever elements he could and rally them together. He chose Ladoke Akintola University as a rallying point and ordered his soldiers to create a perimeter around the university grounds. He then sent out several aggressive patrols whose goal was to find and bring back civilians to the safe zone. These patrols were initially very successful, and soon the grounds of the university began to fill with frightened civilians. Ogbomosho's cellular network and emergency broadcasting system still functioned, and civilians were advised to either make their way to the university, or to barricade themselves within their homes. Civilian helicopters repeated the same message over loudspeakers overhead. Doorn's patrols were discontinued when they began to run into more and more of the chryssalids. Like the Nigerian army the UN's ignorance of the chryssalid's life cycle proved to be a massive liability, as they brought wounded and fallen members back into their perimeter with the same disastrous results. Doorn's initial scepticism of the stories being told by civilians and soldiers were quickly laid to rest when he witnessed a transformation first-hand. The wounded were hastily segregated outside and covered by shooters on all sides. Soldiers given this duty compared it to a ghastly game of whack-a-mole, in which squads of soldiers would converge on a luckless victim convulsing and writhing on the ground, and putting them down before the transformation could be completed. Even the dead were fair game to the chryssalids. An implanted cadaver would rise and walk around and try to attack people, much like how zombies are portrayed in popular culture, before finally transforming into a chryssalid. It was the wounded that suffered most. While it seemed that the chryssalid embryo could co-opt a dead person's central nervous system and use it to move the cadaver around, a living person suffered a state akin to that of paralysis, as the human and alien mind vied for control of the body. Only by killing the embryo brain stem, usually located lower down the abdomen, could this process be halted, and this procedure usually ended with the death or paralysis of the host as well. There was a famous story of a particularly strong-willed African man who struggled against and overcame the conflicting signals being sent by the parasite, and cut it out of himself with a knife. Whether the story was genuine or apocryphal is open to debate, but it did point to a genuine moral conundrum amongst those struggling to keep the wounded alive that day. Most people found it difficult to callously abandon the people they loved to the transformation, and went to great lengths to try and save them, even at the cost of their own.

UN forces are depicted in blue, Nigerian green. Doorn's pocket, consisting of three UN companies, two X-Com squads and numerous civilians, is the red spot in the centre.

Doorn's problems were only just beginning. Two of his companies were spread out in a perimeter surrounding the university, while one was stationed inside keeping order and acting as a mobile reserve. They were fighting an enemy that was heavily armoured and required a lot of firepower to put down. Their numbers were increasing exponentially while UN reserves of ammunition were being depleted as time went on. The nature of their enemy also terrified and unnerved the soldiers. No one wanted to become one of these monsters, and this thought either galvanised the soldiers to greater efforts, or hollowed out their bravado and replaced it with will-sapping dread. The chryssalids were fast - not a large concern in open spaces with large fields of fire, but the stuff of nightmares in an urban environment where line of sight is usually measured in metres. The chryssalids possessed tremendous strength in their limbs, demonstrating the ability to jump one or two stories or to punch through plate steel with equal ease. Close quarters combat (CQC) against such a foe was tantamount to suicide. To add to Doorn's woes, the remaining two-thirds of his brigade (another 4,000 soldiers) were stalled outside Ogbomosho and strung out along the highway due to the congestion on the roads and the lack of available transport. One company entered the city on its own, was cut off by the chryssalids and completely wiped out. After that disaster the 2nd and 3rd battalions concentrated on creating a line northeast of the city to prevent a chryssalid breakout. In the meantime Nigerian troops from the 2nd Division coming up from the south made a similar line to the southwest of the stricken city, and worked on extending this line eastwards as more and more troops arrived. The eastern tip of the Nigerian line would eventually link up with the UN line in a U-shaped cordon around Ogbomosho. The only avenue for escape for the chryssalids would be at the top of the U, to the northwest.

Next: The Long War, Part XI - Crisis in Africa

Previous: The Long War, Part X - Terror in Nigeria

Insurgency in Nigeria

The developing crisis in Nigeria coincided with a massive Boko Haram uprising already underway in Borno State in northeast Nigeria. Boko Haram was acknowledged as one of the most brutal and vicious jihadist groups of the early 21st century, eclipsing even the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria (ISIS) in the number of people killed in terrorist attacks. The group was responsible for the kidnapping of 276 school girls in a raid in Chibok in April 2014, and they routinely employed women and children in their ranks to act as soldiers and terrorist bombers. In March 2015 Boko Haram openly declared their allegiance to ISIS, creating an alliance between two of the world's most deadliest terrorist groups. By the early months of 2016, however, it was widely believed that Boko Haram was on the run. A coalition made up of the nations of Chad, Nigeria, Cameroon and Niger launched a series of offensives into Boko Haram territory in 2015 and 2016, destroying militant strongholds, freeing hostages and driving the jihadist group underground. In December 2015 President Buhari boasted that Boko Haram was "technically defeated".

Members of the Islamic fundamentalist group Boko Haram pose for a photo for distribution on social media.

The massive uprising in April 2016 took the African coalition completely by surprise. A series of devastating suicide attacks employing women and children suicide bombers ravaged the western African states, and these attacks occurred in conjunction with a ground offensive to retake Boko Haram holdings in the area around Lake Chad. The coalition was taken by surprise by the viciousness and speed of the counter-offensive, which retook vast swathes of territory. It was during this counter-offensive that military observers from the UK noted the deployment of a new radical splinter group working side by side with Boko Haram and operating under the ISIS banner. This group appeared well-armed, organised and formidably effective, carrying out commando operations with tactical precision then disappearing without a trace. Identified as possible mercenaries by CIA and MI6 intelligence, these mysterious soldiers of fortune raided supply depots, carried out night attacks and cut coalition supply lines. This radical group pledged their allegiance to ISIS, but distinguished themselves with a new banner depicting a single white Arabic word on a field of black. The word was "sabbaha", or as translated into English - "exalt".

The Black Standard of the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria (ISIS). This standard was adopted by Boko Haram in March 2015 when the jihadist group pledged allegiance to ISIS.

UN Response

With western African troops heavily engaged in Borno President Buhari had no option but to make an impassioned plea for assistance from UN and NATO forces. The magnitude of the crisis in Ogbomosho took everyone by surprise. No one could have anticipated a lifeform like the chryssalid, and the very real existential and exponential threat it posed not just to Nigeria, but to all life on Earth. UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-Moon responded by diverting UN troops earmarked for the Central African Republic to Ogbomosho, and by calling X-Com to the scene. X-Com's global mandate was couched in very general terms, but the very vagueness of the UN resolution proved to be a blessing in disguise, as it allowed X-Com to deploy virtually anywhere in the world under the guise of "investigating the UFO phenomenon". More important was the fact that X-Com had an over strength UN brigade at its disposal, consisting of approximately 6000 soldiers. The biggest criticism of the UN has always been its lack of a standing army, or a rapid reaction force that could speedily deploy to trouble spots around the world. Former UN Secretary-General Kofi Annan once stated:

Well, the issue of a standing UN army has been raised by many because, quite frankly, the way we operate today is like telling Ottawa that I know you need a fire station but we will build one when the fire breaks. We have no army. When the crisis breaks then we begin to put an army together. We go around to governments and begin asking for troops. The question with a standing UN army is that it raises issues of budget issues, legal issues, where do you place it, under what jurisdiction? And the big boys, big countries don't want it. The smaller countries are also nervous.

In an ironic twist of fate X-Com's general mandate to investigate the UFO phenomenon also allowed it to deploy the soldiers under its command virtually anywhere in the world. In practice any such deployment would be preceded by a formal request, but it opened the door for future clandestine operations without official government permission in the future. It had become the UN's first de facto standing army. It possessed no authority to intervene in internal disputes or conflicts between nation-states, but had carte blanche from the UN General Assembly to cross state lines when it came to incidents involving the extra-terrestrials.

X-Com, Japan and NATO

X-Com was notified of the developing crisis in Ogbomosho at 8 pm Japan Standard Time, three hours after Nigerian forces breached the UFO. Operators were hastily briefed on the deteriorating situation in Ogbomosho, and within the hour three Skyrangers were airborne and winging their way to Nigeria to assist the UN relief effort led by Major-General Peter Van Doorn. X-Com Force Commander Kiyofumi Iwata and Deputy Force Commander Colonel John Bradford could only listen in disbelief at the unfolding drama. X-Com had never encountered floaters or chryssalids before, and could offer no advice to the stunned Nigerian forces grappling with this new enemy. When a clearer picture of the new enemy's capabilities emerged Bradford realised that the strike force would not be sufficient. He immediately contacted his superiors in the US military and asked for NATO intervention. Unlike the UN, NATO already possessed a rapid reaction force called the Nato Response Force. In September 2014 this reaction force was supplemented by a spearhead force called the Very High Readiness Joint Task Force (VJTF), which could begin deploying anywhere in the world within 48 hours. The VJTF was created in response to the increasing tensions in the Ukraine, and this force was expanded further from a brigade of 5000 to 13000 to finally 40000 troops in June 2015. Given the speed of the chryssalid growth Bradford formally requested the intervention of the VJTF to assist in the containment of the organism.

NATO members meet in an emergency meeting to discuss intervention options at NATO HQ in Brussels.

Bradford's request for assistance was met with incredulity, and his warnings about the chryssalid threat disregarded. In hindsight such scepticism was not without foundation - the chryssalid and its life cycle beggared belief, and even troops on the ground had problems accepting the reality of such a creature. NATO did pledge to assist African forces against the Boko Haram, judging this to be the more credible threat. They would be sadly mistaken. The problem facing X-Com was that the aliens' ability to deploy anywhere in the world far outstripped the world's ability to deploy troops fast enough to contain them. Nonetheless, Bradford did not sit on his heels while waiting for the NATO response. He took steps to mobilise the remainder of the X-Com brigade on the same night the strike force took off for Ogbomosho. General Iwata also formally asked for the assistance and intervention of Japan Ground Self-Defence Force units, but Prime Minister Abe, wary of the political backlash, reluctantly refused. Article 9 of the American-written Japanese Constitution still forbade the use of force except in self-defence, and while Abe's cabinet had passed a bill allowing for a more flexible interpretation of "self-defence", Abe did not want to risk inflaming public opinion in Japan. A very strong and pervasive pacifist tradition had taken root in Japan after their total defeat in the Second World War, and this tradition hampered US and Japanese efforts to re-build Japan as an active military power in the region. The Japanese were quite content to rest behind the shield of the US Seventh Fleet, and wielded their power through indirect means such as economic contributions, diplomacy and logistical support. Abe sensed that the Japanese public was not ready for the kind of direct military action required in Ogbomosho. Nonetheless, he did everything he could up to that point by directing the Japan Air Self Defence Force to assist in the transportation of the X-Com brigade to Nigeria. He also contacted his counterparts in India and Egypt, and arranged for the use of airfields in which the C-1 transports could refuel. Finally the Diet (the Japanese Parliament) would authorise the donation of 2 billion yen to set up a disaster fund for Nigeria after the crisis.

All of this was cold comfort to Iwata and Bradford, both of whom were beginning to intuit the magnitude of the disaster facing the Nigerians. The X-Com brigade was packed into C-1 transports shortly after the departure of the Skyrangers on 7 April 2016, and after two refuelling stops in India and Egypt, arrived in Ogbomosho late in the afternoon of 8 April 2016. In the end the forces trying to stave off the chryssalid breakout in Ogbomosho would amount to the soldiers of the Nigerian 2nd Division under Major-General LC Ilo, the UN brigade under Major-General Peter Van Doorn, and the X-Com brigade from Tanegashima under Colonel Bradford. 20000 soldiers, arriving in detail and composed of polyglot units speaking different languages and hailing from different cultures, would face off against a fast, armoured and deadly enemy that numbered perhaps 5000-10000 on the night of 7 April 2016, and over half a million on 8 April 2016.

Next: The Long War, Part XII - The Battle of Ogbomosho

Previous: The Long War, Part XI - Crisis in Africa

The Battle of Ogbomosho

The Skyrangers arrived in Ogbomosho early evening Nigerian time on 7 April 2016. By this point the chryssalids had been running amok for almost 12 hours, and their numbers had swollen to over several thousand. It was fortunate for the X-Com operatives that they landed in an area relatively devoid of the creatures. Had they landed in the southern part of Ogbomosho, where most of the creatures were concentrated, they would all most likely have perished. Without communications from Doorn "Okami" Takeda did not want to hazard a landing at the university, but rather chose a site half a kilometre west. His squad would then loop around to the north, while the second squad commanded by "Tora" Sato would loop around to the south. Okami and Tora were able to lead their respective squads from the drop site and link up with UN troops still holding out in the university. Tora's squad encountered an impregnated civilian en route, and was able to witness first hand the transformation from human host to newborn chryssalid. The squad soon learnt that light and noise drew the creatures. Killing the alien pupa drew several more, and they were forced to conduct a fighting withdrawal to the university. They were only saved from being overrun by making it to the perimeter. UN troops keeping quiet under light and noise discipline opened fire to cover the squad, and they made it through the lines thanks to the intervention of the blue helmets.

The cordon around Ogbomosho in the evening of 8 April 2016. Nigerian reinforcements from Ibadan maintained a strong front, while the arriving X-Com brigade (marked in red) was used to complete the encirclement of Ogbomosho and to reinforce the UN lines.

The arrival of X-Com only marginally increased the firepower of the defenders. The real contribution made by X-Com was through the use of the Skyrangers in ferrying people and supplies in and out of Ogbomosho. Doorn refused to abandon his troops and the civilians trapped in the university, and faced with such intransigence, Okami decided to put the Skyrangers to work. With most of Nigerian air power tied up in operations against the Boko Haram the Skyrangers became the life line in and out of the city. The Japanese pilots ran dozens of missions from Ogbomosho to either Ilorin Airport to the north, or to Oyo to the south. They evacuated thousands of civilians, UN personnel and Nigerian army soldiers during the period between 7-9 April 2016. They also flew in supplies, ammunition and reinforcements to the defenders in the university. Fuel became a problem due to the lack of specialised jet propellant used by the Skyrangers, but under advisement from Chief Engineer Raymond Shen the pilots simply filled up with commercial jet fuel at Ilorin Airport. "It'll do in a pinch," stated the engineer. "We'll clean out the pipes when you boys and girls come home. And in the meantime keep your speed below supersonic, or you may have some...difficulties."

The troops trapped in the university initially considered a wholesale evacuation of the pocket, but it was judged that a Skyranger airlift could not carry out enough people at once without compromising the perimeter. Chryssalid attacks were virtually non-stop, and the encircled troops were forced to fend off attacks all night. Most of these attacks were sporadic, random and disorganized, but on occasion the defenders were swamped by massive pods of chryssalids which threatened to overwhelm them. Even worse than the attacks were the constant pleas for help from civilians, soldiers, and police officers trapped in the city. When the UN first arrived in Ogbomosho Doorn organized several patrols whose primary purpose was to find and escort civilians to the safe zone around the university. These patrols were very successful but were discontinued once night fell, despite the pleas and protests of the civilians within the university. All the UN troops could do was listen to the increasingly desperate men and women begging, pleading, threatening and screaming on cell phones and emergency bands, and advise them to either stay put, escape the city or make their way to the university. Organized hold-outs could resist the chryssalids while they had ammunition, but once they were out they were doomed. Hiding was more successful, but ineffective if a chryssalid strayed too close - later autopsies on the creatures revealed that electroreception numbered among one of their senses. The creature had the ability to detect the weak bioelectrical fields generated by living beings from a range of about 4-5 metres - cowering behind a wooden door or wall usually ended brutally with the chryssalid using its forelegs to punch through the obstruction. Metal partitions offered better protection from detection because the metal blocked or distorted electrical fields (creating rudimentary Faraday shields), but the aliens also appeared to possess excellent eyesight and hearing. People who hid on rooftops and basements fared better, but their existence was poised on a knife's edge - any noise, stumble or mistake had disastrous consequences, especially as the number of chryssalids exploded out of control. Civilians at the university determined to find family and loved ones tried to head out into the city on their own, but were stopped by UN troops under Doorn's orders. Some managed to slip past the perimeter, and were never seen again.

Dawn over Ogbomosho.

Okami raised the idea of using the Skyrangers to rescue clusters of civilians trapped on rooftops, and Bradford initially gave the go-ahead. The use of the Skyranger was a double edged sword - it could be used to ferry people in and out of the city, but also drew the chryssalids in large numbers. Okami conducted several rescue missions throughout the city, and in each one the template remained the same - one Skyranger would be sent to create noise and draw the chryssalids away from the target area, while another would land, rescue the civilians, and take off before too many of the chryssalids arrived. X-Com operators provided perimeter security during the operations. The missions were discontinued because it was judged that using the Skyrangers to extract the wounded and bring in ammunition and reinforcements was more critical to the survival of the pocket, which was in constant danger of being overrun. One Skyranger piloted by "Variable" Fukuyama was sent on frequent runs around the city with one simple goal - to create noise and draw chryssalids away from the university. The importance of this diversion did not become apparent until the dawn of 8 April 2016, when X-Com and UN troops finally had enough visibility to see what had become of the city. Scanning with binoculars from the highest vantage points of the university revealed a heart-stopping sight - the city of Ogbomosho was awash with movement as chryssalids roamed unchecked on the streets. "There were so many of them that the ground looked like it was moving," stated "Mesmer" Levin, an Israeli scout sniper. Mexican sniper "Chestnut" Jimenez added: "The chryssalids were terrifying. Anyone who says they weren't scared is either lying or a lunatic. The fact that they used to be people, though - that's the worst part. And the thing that scared everyone the most was the thought that we might end up like them."

By the morning of 8 April 2016 UN and Nigerian forces had created a U-shaped cordon around the city. Estimates of chryssalid numbers were now in the tens of thousands, and the creatures had begun migrating away from the city. Outside Ogbomosho the advantage lay with the human defenders. Unhampered by urban clutter and with long clear lines of sight the soldiers mowed down hundreds of chryssalids on the outskirts of the city. Rifles, machine guns, mortars and howitzers were extremely effective in the open fields. By contrast the university was in constant danger of being overrun, and it was only the bravery and steadiness of the troops barricaded within, and the constant diversionary runs made by Skyrangers over the city that gave the defenders the breathing room to survive. Even the cordon outside the city began to feel the strain of having to kill thousands and thousands of chryssalids. The battle became more about logistics rather than combat - the vital question which determined whether or not the chryssalids could be contained was whether the soldiers could remain supplied with enough bullets to hold the line.

The arrival of the X-Com brigade from Tanegashima on the evening of 8 April 2016 alleviated some of the pressure on the human lines. They arrived in Ilorin Airport, hustled on board a vast melange of troop transports, and driven through the night to their positions. The only gap in the human cordon lay to the northwest, and the biggest fear of the crisis was a chryssalid breakout in this direction. To the northwest of the city lay Old Oyo National Park, a wildlife sanctuary populated by buffalo, antelopes, lions and many other types of African fauna. It was not known at the time whether the chryssalids could impregnate non-human species, but it was a fair assumption - the nightmare scenario which Nigeria, the UN and X-Com wanted to avoid was a wholesale chryssalid migration to the park. Once the creatures had the run of the park they had access to thousands of new hosts, as well as the freedom to spread out in any direction to rampage across all of Nigeria. Two battalions were placed across this gap to complete the encirclement, and the remainder sent to shore up parts of the cordon which were wavering and in danger of collapse. Doorn's heavy equipment, vehicles, transports and ammunition reserves also arrived at Ilorin Airport after being redirected back from the CAR, and these were funnelled to the front lines as fast as possible.

UN forces drive through the night to reinforce the cordon around Ogbomosho.

The night of 8 April 2016 was the most critical of the battle of Ogbomosho. The chryssalid population had stabilized - there were no more easily available hosts left to impregnate, and any remaining survivors were either within the university, escaped to the human lines, or hidden away in the deepest, darkest places they could find. The chryssalids, driven by a deep seated need to reproduce, began leaving the city en masse in search of new hosts. The human lines were formidably effective during daytime, but once night fell their advantage was diminished. Some units, notably the US and UK companies in the UN brigade, were fortunate enough to be equipped with night vision goggles and were able to maintain their combat effectiveness. Other units used starshells and flares to illuminate the darkness. Some units had none of these advantages, and it was these sections of the line that were most vulnerable. The nights of 7-8 April coincided with the new moon over Nigeria, shrouding the area in pitch black with only the stars providing ambient light. Without visibility some parts of the line were forced to let the chryssalids come dangerously close, and the resultant contacts were highly risky affairs. Some parts of the line gave way, but were immediately plugged by whatever reserves the human defenders could muster. Every member of both UN brigades were committed - if a soldier could hold a rifle, then they were in the line, or waiting in reserve to plug the gaps. Another difficulty was the melange of nationalities in the brigades. A UN brigade was not a brigade in the same way a national brigade was, with a unified chain of command, shared language and customs, and efficient communications. A UN brigade in reality was composed of a group of battalions, companies and sometimes platoons from different countries with fragmented chains of command, disparate languages and customs and wild variations in rank. Communications was an ongoing nightmare, requiring translation, repetition and clarification. To combat this Bradford seeded every company with members of his staff, and paired them with translators within the unit to ensure that he received accurate situation reports and that his orders were carried out. Even in the face of the enemy there were petty displays from officers from various nations who refused to take commands from a soldier from another country whom they considered to be their inferior in rank. It took a polite phone call from Japanese Force Commander Iwata to ensure compliance. Even the Force Commander's orders were not orders per se, but formal requests. If a company captain or major proved particularly intransigent it would take a phone call to that officer's superiors in their home nation to force them to act, and even then it would be begrudgingly.

One advantage in the UN's favour was the simplicity of the task in hand. All that was asked of the human defenders was to hold the line at all costs, and every man and woman, whether they were a commando, a line infantry soldier, or logistics clerk could understand this elemental imperative. The dawn of 9 April 2016 saw the defenders weary, exhausted and almost out of ammunition. The lines had nearly been breached in a dozen places, and it was only through the expert handling of his meagre reserves that Bradford managed to stave off a breakthrough. The Skyrangers were again co-opted into service, scrambling three squads of the X-Com strike force into crisis points in the cordon and bringing forward reserves of ammunition to the tired UN troops. The Kawasaki Super Heavy Infantry Vehicle (SHIV) excelled in its first deployment, taking a massive toll on the aliens anywhere it was deployed until it ran out of ammunition. The Skyranger pilots were at the point of collapse, and at the very end of their combat effectiveness - only the use of copious amounts of caffeine and amphetamines allowed them to continue their runs over the city. The Nigerians in the southern half of the cordon were rock solid - they had none of the UN's disadvantages and they were constantly reinforced by more and more troops and equipment from Ibadan. They were ably led by their commander, Major-General Ilo, and more importantly, they were on home soil and fighting for their homes and families. They needed no other motivation to stand their ground.

The UN defence, on the other hand, was compromised by its multinational composition, fractured command and control, and lack of supply. Bradford had already begun planning a general withdrawal to ease the pressure on his lines when the sound of jets overhead gave the beleaguered defenders hope. The Very High Readiness Joint Task Force (VJTF) from NATO arrived in the morning of 9 April 2016. Tireless lobbying from the UN Secretary-General and visceral, shocking footage of the carnage in Ogbomosho taken by helicopters overhead finally convinced the heads of NATO of the seriousness of the threat. European fighters screamed overhead and made bombing runs over the chryssalid herds, destroying swathes of the creatures in a single pass, shortly followed by helicopters and paratroopers. NATO command coordinated with Bradford to place the arriving soldiers where they were needed, and this combined with daylight, allowed the cordon to stabilize. In the afternoon of 9 April NATO commandos from the VJTF launched an offensive to link up with the encircled troops in the university. Advancing in a wedge down Ogbomosho Road Belgian, Dutch and German troops were able to clear a route, creating a salient with the university at its apex, and providing relief to the exhausted defenders who had been fighting non-stop for over 48 hours in the pocket. The lines had been stabilized - the pocket relieved - and more and more NATO troops were arriving en masse to provide fresh troops, ammunition and supplies. The crisis had finally been averted.

NATO forces arrive to relieve the beleaguered UN troops.

On 10 April 2016 Nigerian soldiers observed several chryssalids walking slowly and aimlessly on the southern perimeter of Ogbomosho. Further sightings suggested that the aliens were sick and debilitated, and this observation was soon confirmed all along the perimeter. On 11 April 2016 Nigerian units pushed cautiously into the city and found an amazing sight. Everywhere they found chryssalids dead or dying on the streets. They were still dangerous if approached, and made feeble lunges at soldiers who came too close, but in their incapacitated state they were easily dispatched. The carapace of the chryssalids had faded from a vivid purple to a bleached violet, and they appeared addled and disorientated. A general advance was ordered all along the cordon, and weary UN and Nigerian troops, along with fresh NATO forces itching for a fight, closed the noose around the city. Everywhere they went the situation was the same - the chryssalids were collapsing and dying in droves. Every now and then the troops encountered an active chryssalid that was still fast and dangerous, but these became increasingly rare and were easily put down. By 12 April the crisis was considered over, and Ogbomosho was in human hands again.

Aftermath

The initial hypothesis for the wholesale death of the chryssalids was that they fell victim to pathogens in the atmosphere which their immune systems were not equipped to handle. Comparisons were made to the north, south and central American Indians, whose population and culture were initially decimated by the introduction of diseases such as smallpox, tuberculosis and diphtheria by European settlers. The survivors, like the Europeans, were able to develop antibodies and resistance to the introduced diseases, but not before the disease exacted a deadly toll. It was thought that the chryssalid's immune system, with its affinity for human biochemistry, fell victim to some innocuous bug to which humans had adapted to generations earlier. This hypothesis would be challenged by Dr. Vahlen several days later after her team conducted extensive examinations of the creature. According to Vahlen, the creature's hybrid cells exhibited signs of accelerated senescence. "This creature didn't die from any disease or virus or bacteria," Vahlen declared. "It simply died of old age." Vahlen's autopsies revealed that the chryssalids only lived for about four to five days, and were most dangerous in the first 48 hours of their inception. By the third or fourth days the accelerated ageing took its toll in the form of dulled reflexes, lethargy and listlessness. By the fourth or fifth day they were too weak to move, and died shortly afterwards.

Survivors of Ogbomosho.

Despite the demise of the chryssalids Dr. Vahlen remainded deeply concerned. Cellular mitosis in the creatures occurred at a rate which made terrestrial life seem glacial by comparison. More worrying for her and her team were the tell tale signs which pointed to the fact that the organism was designed rather than evolved. Vahlen had no way of knowing what kind of world the chryssalids hailed from, but she was highly doubtful that environmental factors could have evolved such an organism. She pointed to the elegance of its design and its specific ability to interact with carbon-based biochemistry as proof that the creature was bio-engineered. "It's the perfect bioweapon," Vahlen stated. "If you introduce a single organism to an enemy city, it will decimate the civilian population in a matter of hours. Once it runs out of hosts, they will all die off within four to five days, allowing your soldiers to walk into the city without any danger to themselves." Her grim warnings did not end there. "If the aliens decided to turn their hand to biological warfare on a viral, even bacterial level, the resultant diseases could wipe out humankind in hours given the speed of alien cellular replication. If they can engineer something as complex and deadly as a chryssalid, with its bizarre hybrid life cycle, then a simple virus would be child's play for them."

Nigeria remained a cauldron of unrest in the days after the crisis. The losses in Ogbomosho were catastrophic. Identifying the actual number of victims proved an almost impossible task, given how the chryssalids consumed their victims and left little of their hosts behind. The inability to conclusively identify the dead left many families in a hellish limbo with no closure and no body to mourn. Entire families and communities disappeared without a trace. It was estimated that over half a million Nigerians lost their lives during the attack, making it the single most devastating attack in the nation's history. Some incredible tales of survival emerged in the aftermath of Ogbomosho. Some children were inexplicably left alone by the chryssalids for no apparent reason. Anyone in the vicinity of these children were spared by the chryssalids, and these children were soon deified by Vodun ("voodoo") practitioners for possessing strong juju, or supernatural power. Others Nigerians from Christian denominations shunned them and called them the spawn of the Devil. Even more incredible were stories of how the chryssalids appeared to respect, even fear snakes. A snake charmer from Ogbomosho recounted an incredible tale of walking in the streets with a snake draped around his neck and being left alone by hundreds of chryssalids who gave him a wide berth. Upon learning of the snake's apparently talismanic powers the snake charmer draped several snakes over the shoulders of his family and walked them safely to UN lines, much to the astonishment of the blue helmets who saw the horde of chryssalids parting like the Red Sea in Biblical mythology to allow the passage of this Nigerian family.

For X-Com the crisis in Ogbomosho was a baptism of fire which unified and gave the organization a clear purpose. For the first time the entire brigade, not just the strike force, had fought a common foe, and it created a strong esprit de corps among the soldiers which went beyond national lines. For the first time the soldiers began to think of themselves as soldiers of humanity, as opposed to soldiers of whatever nation-state they hailed from. The leaders of X-Com began to see the possibilities of the wide mandate given by the UN resolution, and the size of the X-Com reaction force almost doubled when UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-Moon folded the remains of Doorn's brigade into the unit. To commemorate the fallen, Bradford requested and was granted permission to create a unit badge for X-Com which separated them from other UN forces deployed in peacekeeping missions around the globe. X-Com also adopted a motto that would one day become as famous as many of the other mottos sported by other famous military units in history, such as the SAS's "Who Dares Wins" or the US Marines'Semper Fidelis ("Always Faithful"). X-Com's new motto was Vigilo Confido, or roughly translated from Latin - "Trust In Our Vigilance".

Vigilo Confido.

Next: To Be Continued

This is a break from the Long War story, and it's just going to be a bunch of stuff from my head about the difficulties I'm having with both the game and the story. I'm not going to reveal the decisions I make about where I want the story to go, because that would spoil the fun for people who are reading. I will outline thoughts and possibilities though, without committing to anything. This post will also meander and not have any real structure, just more a compilation of my notes, observations and miscellaneous stuff about X-Com. I'm basically arguing with myself.

The Game

I still haven't finished the Long War campaign on any difficulty, because I keep restarting the campaign. The first two were just dry runs to about May or June, while the third and fourth were aborted because I started cheating. I'm on my fifth (!) campaign, and it's on the cusp of being aborted as well - there's a way to cheat even in Ironman campaigns in both X-Com and X-Com 2 - if one of your favourite soldier dies then you can Alt-F4 and quit before the program saves your game state. Then you restart the game and voila! - it's the previous turn, your soldier is still alive, and thanks to an amazing feat of pre-cognition a la The Minority Report, you can take steps to avoid your soldier's death. The thing is when you start writing a series like this you start really caring about your characters, and it's hard to relinquish control over their fates. I'd even planned arcs for some soldiers assuming that they won't die - when the aliens foil my plans by shooting my heroine in the head then I am sorely tempted to use the Alt-F4 solution. In my previous Ironman campaigns I resisted this temptation because it was more about winning the games rather than the individual characters themselves - in the campaign I am recording for my story I am ashamed to say I did this to save Hatakeyama in mission 54, a character whose namesake has personal meaning for me. Then I did it again to save Jeromai in mission 85, whose namesake wrote a blog that inspired me to do this series. It's hard to let go of your soldiers, especially when they start developing extensive back stories. Once the seal was opened, however, it was only natural for me to start reloading whenever things went bad. Before I knew it, my campaign was compromised by numerous reloads, even thought I'd set out to play the game on Ironman mode. I should have just played a normal game, with saves and reloads. It would have been more honest.

The main thing that stops me from abandoning the game is the length of the Ironman campaign. I am on mission 125 (!) and I still haven't finished the damned game. 125 missions including two alien base assaults, one base defence, several large UFO assaults, dozens of abductions, and much, much more. I've completed the DLC arcs successfully - Operation Slingshot was completed without reloading, while I cheated at the end of Operation Progeny to save the psykers from being killed by the aliens. Overall I have reloaded 22 times in 125 missions, starting from mission 54, followed by mission 85, then with increasing frequency from then on out. Save scumming is technically possible even if you don't enable save scumming in the options - while the RNG result is the same, you can change the order of shots to take advantage of high rolls and low rolls. If your sniper missed and then your assault guy hit, and the sniper shot was more crucial, you simply change the order of shots in the reloaded game to take advantage of better RNG result for the second shot. This, too, is cheating.

The death of Hatakeyama was a tragedy, but her subsequent return disrupted the fabric of time and space, and irrevocably tainted the fabric of the universe.

So the end result is that I'm going to start my Long War Ironman campaign again. AGAIN. No more Alt- F4. If they die, they die, and I'm just going to be a sad panda, and will have to write around it. My squad can't be the saviours of humanity if they are immortal, even if it hurts like hell to lose them. Alt-F4 is the gaming equivalent of a deus ex machina intervention in traditional media, and it taints the purity of the campaign for me. I know that real life is more important than pure gaming, but for some reason it really irks me to know that I reloaded. When the game is over and humanity wins, I'm not going to feel a sense of accomplishment - it'll just be the end of a rote task which took a long time to complete. And make no mistake, I will win - you can't lose when you have the ability to reload your game. So, bollocks to that - I'm starting again. It took 54 games for me to take the Alt-F4 option, and that was because X-Com hit me below the belt and killed my beloved Yuri. If it was any other soldier, I would have grimaced and took it. But in her case I couldn't let it stand, and I brought her back. That decision unravelled time and space, and corrupted the campaign irrevocably. In games as in real life, I just have to let her go.

The Story

What I do have in my favour is that the Long War story is only up to April 2016, so it won't take much to catch up. There's no pressure on me to complete the game - I've already beaten both games, so I can dawdle along at my leisure. I know the tech tree now, so I can try and navigate an optimum path to give my boys and girls the best chance to succeed. It's going to take some creative playing to align some of the story-telling elements, thought - I'm going to have to hope that RNG is kind, and give me enough male Japanese soldiers to re-constitute my squad leaders Takeda, Hara, Ishikawa and Sato. They all also have to live through March and April. Luckily I can modify the Long War INI file to set the percentage chances of recruiting a soldier from a specific nation. What I can't control is the gender of the soldier, which incidentally, is one of the more difficult parts story-wise about X-Com. In X-Com genders are represented equally in the strike force, and this is not the case in the world circa 2015-2017, especially in elite formations. I've no doubt that female representation in global armed forces will increase, maybe even reach parity sometime in the future, but for now I need to find a plausible reason to explain the 50/50 representation in X-Com in 2015-2016.

The ability to modify what countries your rookies will come from will also solve a problem introduced in the Long War mod - namely that the recruits literally come from all over the globe. The Long War pulls people from over 100 countries. This is not a problem if you're just playing the game, and it's actually pretty cool, but a problem for someone like me who has to somehow justify what a guy from Eritrea is doing in the task force. Not just from Eritrea, but one dude from Eritrea. The fictitious conceit I am using is that X-Com originated from the UN, and even they don't take people from everywhere. Back in the Korean War the minimum size a country could contribute to a UN force was a battalion, but this restriction has been lifted since then. For fictional purposes I'm assuming the minimum size is a platoon of 30 soldiers. Say 3 platoons to a company - 3 companies to a battalion - 3 battalions to a brigade. That means 27 countries for the entire X-Com force, and that's assuming each country only contributes a platoon of 30 guys. In reality nations usually donate at least a battalion, and that would mean that Bradford's brigade is actually made up of three battalions, say one from Japan (as the host nation), one from the US, and one from India (the biggest troop contributor in the UN). I can sort of wiggle around it by making some countries donate companies, and poorer ones donate platoons, but then I get screwed when a solitary African dude from an obscure country rolls up and joins the strike force. Where the hell did he come from? Starting a new game and modifying the INI file will allow me to pick the countries from which the recruits will hail from. The inclusion of the 16 Council nations are a no brainer, but I'd also like to add several more, specifically NATO members who joined the fight in Ogbomosho. Adding Doorn's brigade to the X-Com force also increases the pool by one more brigade (another 27 possible nations), and since they were originally deployed to the CAR we could expand the recruit pool to include more African nations. I just have a problem with utterly random recruits who pop up and have no plausible business being there.

If that sounds really anally retentive, then you're getting a glimpse of how obsessive compulsive I am about these things. An alternative explanation to X-Com is that it is a privately funded organisation with roots dating back to the McCarthy years, a la the story told in The Bureau (the X-Com spin-off game set in the 1960s). In this version of X-Com history X-Com was apparently set up as a bulwark against Communism, and re-purposed to fight the aliens when the invasion began. I would have been happy for the clandestine organization route, but the problem then became who the hell is supplying the planes and the satellites? Satellites and planes are prohibitively expensive, and I only know of one real world private company - SpaceX - which can afford to launch their own satellites. Even SpaceX has military support - they are allowed to use Air Force bases, and their biggest contracts are government and military. The only existing organization I can think of capable of creating the X-Com organization is either the UN or perhaps the US on its own. Since in-game lore depicts X-Com as having the support of a mysterious Council of 16, the UN was a no-brainer.

I also have a problem with X-Com being a clandestine organisation funded internationally but having a global reach and mandate. This is a giant contradiction in terms for me, and if based in reality, would be a NATO sized organisation but one that is supposedly secret and covert. If you look at the members of the coalition they are composed of nations that have been at historical odds with each other - China and Japan, and the US and Russia, for instance. I have a hard time seeing the coalition surviving 50 odd years without fracturing or letting the world know of its existence, especially during the Cold War period. Who is asking them to intervene, and where are they getting the authority? Or are they just flagrantly breaking international borders when conducting their missions? The only way the clandestine organization works is if it is hidden within one country, most likely the US. I would find that plausible, but their excursions into superpower airspace would be fraught with danger and liable to cause international incidents. Also, if they've existed for years then why is their gear still so abysmal? Vahlen and Shen basically learn to make a UFO in one year, while the only thing the Bureau has to show for their efforts after 50 odd years of possessing alien tech is the Skyranger. Erm, good job, guys?

Anyway, all this made me decide to ignore The Bureau as a source of lore, and just pull from the X-Com series in general. The historical narrative approach works for me because it removes the burden of having to be original. All I have to do is make inferences based on what I know of X-Com lore and human institutions like the UN and NATO. The whole Ogbomosho arc came out of what I knew of the chryssalid life cycle as depicted in game - an organism like that could wipe out a continent, yet in game we're supposed to accept that a squad of international soldiers can rock up and save the day on their own, hours after the aliens land. Doorn was just an NPC in one of the game's Council missions, but I needed to come up with a plausible reason why X-Com would have to rescue him, which made him into a UN guy, which then begged the question of the who the hell he was and what the hell he was doing in Ogbomosho, and before I knew it, he was a Major-General commanding a MINUSCA brigade bound for the Central African Republic. I didn't pick Ogbomosho either - I didn't know it existed until it came up as a terror attack site in the game. Now I know the street layout, a little bit about its history, its geography relative to the rest of Nigeria, the language spoken by the locals, and all sorts of other things I would never have researched had I not decided to write this story. I've always been a big history buff - if you really like historical narratives you should read Anthony Beever's books on Stalingrad, Berlin and D-Day. That's the style I'm patterning my writing on, and he has the added advantage of writing about real events. There's so much drama and horror in human history that fantastical stuff really pales in comparison. Even the half million dead in Ogbomosho is a drop in the bucket in the total amount of people killed in the numerous conflicts that have wracked and are still wracking Africa. If the aliens weren't so hell bent on turning us into DNA soup their arrival might actually be beneficial - but I guess that's like saying Hitler would have been remembered as a great German statesman if he hadn't decided to liquidate the Jews and start a world war.

This leads me to the problem of the schizophrenic nature of the alien invasion in the game. The aliens can't seem to make up their mind whether they are going to infiltrate us or conquer us from within (Thin Men, Faceless, Seekers, EXALT and Sectoid Commanders) or they're going to go old school and conquer us with brute force (Floaters, Mutons, Chryssalids, Cyberdiscs and Sectopods). But it seems to me that if the aliens wanted to, they could do both equally well. It makes no sense to do both, however, and it's something I'm going to have to reconcile somehow because that's what happens in the game. I could just ignore the events in game, but it serves a narrative purpose for me. I'd like to keep one foot in reality, and one foot in X-Com. If I stray too far from either, the end result will not be the one I am after. I really like the X-Com bestiary, including the 1994 version, and hope to incorporate both old and new aliens into the mix. There are some weird lifeforms in the 1994 version that newcomers to the series will not have been exposed to. Even the chryssalids were different, but the thing that makes them scary - their ability to grow exponentially - is represented well in both the 1994 and 2012 versions of the game. It's funny that I can cherry pick the bits I like - i.e. the relationship between the viper race and the chryssalids in the 1994 game - and ignore the stuff I don't - i.e. The Bureau's origin story.

Before I end this longwinded spiel I would like to say many thanks to the people who have commented both here and on Reddit - I really appreciate the feedback and criticism. The amount of traffic brought to this site by Reddit was just staggering - the day I posted the story on Reddit the blog recorded over 10000 hits for the first time ever. I normally potter along at under 100 a day, and I reckon 80-90% of the traffic is automated stuff from Russia, so it's nice to have people read my stuff and comment from time to time. Because of the feedback I've corrected spelling errors, cut out stuff which people thought were immersion breaking, and changed dodgy images like the F-14s mistakenly labelled as F-15s. I will also do more research into aspects of the air war after some valid criticisms made by VariableFrequency on Reddit about my choice of X-Com's interceptors. Having an audience has made me more meticulous and thorough. It might be fiction, but its fiction grounded in reality, so I have the duty to make sure the reality part hinges with what we know in the 21st century. I will also repost the story on Reddit every five posts or so, just as an update for people who saw the first nine posts, said they liked it, but then promptly forgot about it.

Jeromai also died in an alternate universe, but was his death pre-destined? Or is reality just a tree of possibilities, separated by the thinnest of veils? Fucked if I know.

As for canon, the release of X-Com 2 made all versions of the story possible. That's the great thing about X-Com - we make our own version of the universe through playing the game. As I said, I'm going to restart my Long War Ironman campaign, and there will no reloads or Alt-F4s. I'll play it on Classic difficulty, and if I win the campaign, the story gets a happy ending. If I lose, the story will link to X-Com 2 and detail the fall of X-Com and the demise of humanity. The first two months are going to be on rails, because I'm going to have to rename soldiers to assume the identities of existing characters in the story. And - ugh - I'm going to have to sacrifice some rookies to replicate the death of casualties suffered in March and April. Give them the names of the fallen, and then make them charge the enemy lines screaming, "KILL ME! KILL ME!" And regardless of what happens in my new campaign the first country to leave X-Com will always be France, and the first terror attack will always be in Ogbomosho. Once we get into May, however, the story is free to follow whatever trail it sees fit. I'm not sure what is going to happen in the alternate universe my characters are inhabiting, but I hope we win.

Previous: The Long War, Part XII - The Battle of Ogbomosho

The battle of Ogbomosho marked a turning point in the global perception of the alien threat. The pathetic ineptitude of the sectoids in combat was nothing compared to the terrifying threat of the chryssalids - for days, weeks and months, harrowing footage from Nigeria circulated and haunted the collective nightmares of the world. The sight of UFOs in the sky once again inspired fear and terror, and a second wave of panic swept the globe. Religious attendance swelled to historic proportions, as people from all denominations faced the very real idea of Armageddon in their lifetimes.

Rebuilding

Colonel John Bradford was promoted to a one-star general for his conduct in Ogbomosho. Now a Brigadier-General, one of the youngest ever in the US Army, his promotion not only acknowledged his exemplary conduct during the battle in Africa, but was also driven out of political necessity. Major-General Peter Van Doorn was now part of the X-Com task force and was already a two-star general. It would be almost unheard of for a general to place himself under the command of a colonel. Bradford's promotion to the General Staff made him a general and decreased the margin in rank between them by one, making his command over the task force more palatable to outsiders. This was especially true for the Japanese, whose strict sense of hierarchy was confounded by the presence of a higher ranking officer serving beneath his junior. In a frank discussion between the two men, however, Doorn acknowledged Bradford's authority over him and set his mind at ease. Secretary-General Ban Ki-Moon also threw his support behind Bradford. One of the conditions put forward by Ban for Doorn's inclusion into the task force had been to place Doorn subordinate to Bradford, and Doorn accepted this caveat without reservations.

UN Secretary-General Ban Ki Moon and Japan's Prime Minister Shinzo Abe exchange warm greetings after the successful containment in Ogbomosho.

The addition of Doorn's brigade expanded the X-Com task force to about 10000 soldiers. The force was re-organised into two brigades under their original commanders, with Bradford leading 1st Brigade, and Doorn leading 2nd Brigade. Force Commander General Kiyofumi Iwata remained in overall command of X-Com, but it was becoming clear to all that it was Bradford - addressed by the operators as "Central" - who was the true heart of operations. Iwata's role was more political – he left operational command to Bradford, and focused his attention on being the liaison between X-Com, the UN and the Japanese government. The existence of X-Com was kept from the public eye. As far as the general public was concerned the alien breakout in Ogbomosho was contained by a coalition of Nigerian, UN and NATO troops. No explicit stories of X-Com were ever mentioned in newspapers or TV reports, but it was impossible to maintain total secrecy given the proliferation of social media. Virtually every contemporary cell phone had a camera which could take pictures and record video footage. The Skyranger in particular was captured in a series of dramatic videos rescuing a group of civilians from a hotel rooftop. The drop ship's futuristic design and the multi-national crew raised some eyebrows, as did the presence of Japanese troops during the crisis, who were clearly identifiable by the national badges worn by X-Com soldiers. Abe's political opponents accused him of deploying troops in clandestine operations in blatant contravention of Article 9. In the meantime Secretary-General Ban downplayed the existence of the X-Com unit, and lauded UN and NATO forces publicly for their intervention in Nigeria.

Despite the public acclaim Bradford knew full well how close the UN brigades were to disaster in Ogbomosho. His first actions as Brigadier-General were to take steps to mitigate and eliminate the problems which beset the task force during the battle. The first step was purging the unit of recalcitrant officers and prima donnas who refused to follow orders delivered by junior officers in Bradford's staff. With the full support of the UN Secretary-General, Bradford was able to have most of the difficult officers removed or reassigned. The remainder were given logistical or support duties away from front line deployment. Bradford's second reform involved creating a command element within every national unit which could speedily translate and relay instructions up and down the chain of command in English. English classes became a regular part of the task force's daily routine, much to the chagrin of the English speaking soldiers who were press-ganged into becoming language instructors. Thirdly, Bradford reorganised the two brigades as best he was able, putting platoons, companies and battalions into logical formations which took into account geography, shared language, culture, religion and casualties suffered. Bradford's brigade suffered 300-400 casualties, while Doorn lost almost a third of his UN brigade (approximately 1500-2000) soldiers. This consolidation meant that some of Doorn's soldiers were incorporated in Bradford's brigade and vice versa, but the two worked together with a minimum of fuss and were able to make compromises that the other could live with. Finally Bradford opened another round of selections, giving Doorn's men the opportunity to try out for the strike force. The strike force was no longer considered to be a joke formation by "wannabe" special ops soldiers who couldn't cut it in their home nation's selection programs. It was now battle tested, experienced and blooded, but most importantly it now had credibility. No one who fought at Ogbomosho would forget the sight of the Skyrangers screaming out of the sky to provide either relief, reinforcements, or ammunition. No one questioned the bravery of the strike force soldiers as they were loaded onto the Skyrangers and dropped off into the cauldron of the university, surrounded by chryssalids on every side. No one could question the sacrifices made by the strike force, which lost a full quarter of its strength - 13 soldiers - in their role as a mobile reserve during the crisis.

Gender Wars

The most striking aspect of the X-Com strike force was that it was the first military unit in modern history in which men and women were almost equally represented. X-Com began as a UN formation, and as such gender parity was an explicit goal in its mission statement. Despite this lofty ambition reality lagged dramatically behind ideology - when the X-Com force was first constituted in February 2016, women only comprised of 3.4% of all UN military personnel, and only 8.9% of all UN police personnel. The real driving force behind gender parity was Secretary-General Ban, who was determined to leave behind a legacy before his term ended on 31 December 2016. No one envisioned that the X-Com strike force would mutate into a counter-terrorism unit, and as such the unit was initially made up of mostly non-combat units preparing to serve a largely ceremonial role. This allowed the deployment of a significant number of female personnel, who made up 19% of the X-Com task force. By contrast the strike force was almost evenly split between the genders. Bradford's initial selections during February 2016 was an exercise in soothing the various egos at work between the commanding officers in the polyglot brigade. Faced with a surfeit of requests and demands Bradford conceived of the selections as an impartial way of determining who would deploy on recovery missions. Not anticipating extensive combat operations he was instructed by Ban to create a model unit of the future along UN lines - a mixed unit made up equally of men and women. They saw their role as to provide security and logistical support to the research and recovery teams, and to liaise with local government authorities. No one realised that they would be eventually assaulting downed UFOs or holding the line against a full scale alien infestation in Africa. Selections may have begun as a political exercise, but the astonishing resiliency of the downed UFOs, the predilection of the aliens to defend their downed craft, the number of continuing abductions occurring all over the globe and X-Com's global mandate to cross state lines all helped shape the transformation of the unit from a security force into an assault unit.

X-Com's decisive intervention in the African crisis also radically changed the perception of the world's superpowers towards the task force. The primary motivator for the formation of the Council of 16 was a share in the research booty on offer from salvaged alien craft. In a series of secret protocols X-Com was obligated to turn over part of their salvage to the Council of 16 in return for continued funding. However since the protocols were drafted before anyone knew how effective the organization could become, Force Commander Iwata found that he had a lot of discretionary leeway as to what, when and how much X-Com would give. Japan invariably received the lion's share of the salvage, as did the US, which basically owned and operated X-Com's interceptor program. Elerium was the most coveted prize. This mysterious element was able to generate tremendous amounts of energy orders of magnitude greater than anything that existed on Earth. It was the power source for all alien technology, and its origin was a complete mystery. No one could guess at what physical processes created it, or where it came from. "Imagine having a nuclear reactor on your wrist," said Chief Engineer Shen. "That's how much power a tiny ball of elerium can generate."

The unit's success in Ogbomosho, as well as a growing understanding of the implications of the X-Com mandate, led the Security Council nations into offering their special units for inclusion into the task force. There was talk of transforming the task force into a "real" unit, with "real" soldiers. Much of the off the record criticism directed at X-Com was the presence of so many female soldiers, and detractors pointed to studies such as the US Marine Corps Force Integration Plan, which indicated that mixed units were inferior to same sex units in terms of safety, efficiency and lethality. America's Joint Special Operations Command (JSOC) offered the services of Delta Force and SEAL Team Six to the international task force. "Look, we all know that women in uniform are good for the voters and makes the UN feel warm and fuzzy inside," said JSOC's Lieutenant-General Austin S. Miller to Bradford during confidential discussions. "But this is a real war now, and you'll want real soldiers for this coming fight."

Ban, Iwata and Bradford did not want to compromise the unit's autonomy, and they declined the offer. Bradford anticipated that a large internal JSOC presence within the task force would amount to a corresponding increase in American influence. While Bradford was unquestionably a loyal patriot, he had more vision than most - he saw that an increased American presence could possibly antagonize China and Russia, whose continued support was invaluable to the continuing existence of X-Com. Bradford also understood that the primary factor in the effectiveness of special force units was the support and logistic structure behind them. The operators themselves were the visible tip of the spear, but behind each operator was a veritable army of support personnel, ranging from the intelligence network which provided them with their missions, to the pilots of the transports responsible for inserting and extracting the soldiers. Bradford was aware that JSOC operatives were probably stronger, faster, and better conditioned than most X-Com operatives, but he was willing to concede the 5-10% drop-off in overall effectiveness. In his eyes an intelligence failure or lack of adequate equipment would be more damaging to the effectiveness of the strike force than the difference between how fast an individual operator could run a kilometre in full pack and gear, or how much a soldier could bench press. Bradford's overall goal was to create a sophisticated support network behind his strike force which would off-set any human qualitative differential. He intended to do this by developing quality intelligence, providing comprehensive logistical support, and arming his strike force with the best gear possible. Chief Engineer Shen and his team were already on the cusp of developing laser weapons and cutting-edge body armour based on alien alloys. Bradford was confident that the deployment of these new weapons would make X-Com the best alien fighting unit in the world.

Bradford also had no intention of displacing his female veterans, many of whom had lost friends and colleagues in Africa. As far as Bradford was concerned X-Com was now a legitimate fighting force, whose cohesion had already been paid for in blood. In the era of firearms a child soldier from Africa could kill a room full of adult males with an AK-47 or a single grenade, and against foes like the chryssalids physical strength was a non-issue – the life form could tear through both sexes with equal ease. For Bradford it was the intangibles that mattered – heart, skill, will and tenacity – and these qualities were non-gender specific. There was ample historical precedent for the effectiveness and courage of female troops, he argued, pointing to the experience of the Soviet Union during the Second World War, in which the dire peril of the German invasion overrode traditional gender divisions of labour. During the siege of Stalingrad in 1942-1943 German armoured units were first resisted by teenage girls manning antiquated anti-tank guns on the outskirts of the city. They defended their guns to the last (wo)man, and German officers who fought them were horrified to find out that they had been killing young women. This horror turned to fear when they realised that Russian courage and fanaticism was a quality shared by both sexes. One German account of Stalingrad read - "There was absolutely nothing more frightening than to have to face Russian women lying on their stone doorsteps and firing until they were dead. These women did not know what giving ground meant. They killed, then died, in their place."

Ludmilla Pavlichenko, the world's greatest female sniper, with 309 confirmed kills. She refused an offer to become a nurse and became one of 1,885 female Soviet snipers to serve during the Second World War, and one of only 500 to survive.

Bradford's loyalty to his troops was also based on the growing skill of the female members of the strike force. The Soviet experience illustrated that women appeared to be ideally suited to the role of snipers, producing several outstanding female snipers such as Ludmilla Pavlichenko, Maria Ivanova Morozova and Tania Chernova. An impromptu sniper school established by "Okami" Takeda produced several promising female candidates, including "Tenshi" Hatakeyama (Japan), "Eva" Soroka (Ukraine), and "Chestnut" Jiminez (Mexico). Okami's scepticism was dispelled by the skill and work ethic of his students, and many of his graduates would go on and distinguish themselves in the war against the aliens. The skill and conduct of the snipers also won the respect of their male counterpart, echoing a similar situation which occurred in the Soviet Union during the Second World War. While female non-combatants were considered fair game for sexual harassment or worse, women combatants were off-limits and the men they served with strictly enforced this rule. Once someone passed selections and proved themselves they ceased being a man or woman, but became a soldier instead. After seeing X-Com's female soldiers in action in Ogbomosho, Doorn made the following comment: "They walk like soldiers, they talk like soldiers, they carry themselves like soldiers and when it came down to it, they fought and died like soldiers." Bradford was even more emphatic. "Gender is irrelevant. As long as they can pass selections and meet our minimum standards, they are eligible to serve. Make no mistake, this is just the beginning of a long, hard and costly war. Before this thing is over we may even end up having to bring our children into this fight." His words were spoken lightly, but even Bradford did not realize how grimly prophetic his words were to become.

Next: The Long War, Part XIV - The Battle for the Skies

Previous: The Long War, Part XIII - Escalation

The Air War Intensifies

Military commands all over the world were determined to wrest back control of the skies from the aliens. Since the German attack on Poland in 1939, no country has won a war in the face of enemy air superiority, no major offensive has succeeded against an opponent who controlled the air, and no defence has sustained itself against an enemy who had air superiority. Conversely, no state has lost a war while it maintained air superiority, and attainment of air superiority consistently has been a prelude to military victory. The high commands of most nations knew this, and made greater efforts in developing countermeasures to combat the alien threat. X-Com's success in shooting down two scout class UFOs encouraged and gave hope to air commands everywhere. Drawing from the lessons learnt by “Monk” Kanamin, air forces ceased using guided missile systems and went back to old school dogfighting. Advanced fighters which excelled in BVR (Beyond Visual Range) air combat were replaced by ageing craft which had proven their worth in classic “furballs”. Planes like the F-15 and the F-16 were stripped down of any redundant systems, and had their gun ammunition capacity greatly expanded. The double advantage of using older fighters was that they were purposely built to fight in WVR (Within Visual Range) combat, and they were significantly cheaper. For the price of one F-35 (estimated to be more than $180 million per aircraft) one could get six F-15s (roughly $30 million per aircraft) or nine F-16s (roughly $20 million per aircraft). An ongoing debate raged over the role of stealth fighters, and as to whether or not they could be detected by the UFOs. The discussion was abruptly cut short when modified American F-35s off the west coast of the US launched several experimental missiles at a UFO contact north of Los Angeles. The missiles spiralled uselessly into the sea, and the contact, seemingly enraged by the interference, immediately made a bee line towards the F-35s and shot one of them down, decisively ending the debate.

A flight of scout class UFOs flying over Connecticut in the gathering dusk.

The aliens' ability to strike anywhere in the world gave them the initiative against any defence humanity could muster. At cruising speeds of almost Mach 2, even the Skyranger would take roughly 10 hours to get to a hotspot on the other side of world. Time was of the essence, especially with something like the chryssalids which had the ability to multiply exponentially. Many units patterned on the X-Com model sprang up all over the world - some were counter-terrorist units re-purposed into alien fighting groups, and others were built from scratch. In the US alien fighting was placed under the umbrella of the Joint Special Operations Command (JSOC), and soon Delta and SEAL teams were deploying all over America in response to landings and abductions. In Europe the NATO Very High Readiness Joint Task Force became responsible for responding to alien incursions in western Europe. All over the world airborne assault units were being constituted or re-purposed to do one thing - to respond rapidly to alien landings and to contain the threat lest a situation similar to what happened in Ogbomosho occur.

The changes implemented by global air forces paid immediate dividends. The first pilot credited with a UFO kill was Chinese pilot Bao Wu, who engaged a scout class UFO with his Chengdu J-10 and shot it down with his Gsh-23 autocannon near the Vietnamese border on 17 April 2016. His feat was celebrated and feted by the Chinese, and he became a global hero to the general public, who were unaware of the two kills scored by X-Com earlier in March. Monk's achievement as the first ever fighter pilot to score a UFO kill would not be revealed until many years after the war. He took his relegation in the history books with good humour, despite constant ribbing from his fellow pilots and an attempt to change his call sign to “No Kill”. In the war's aftermath fellow pilot “Grounder” Tanner stated, “Not only did Monk get the first UFO kill ever – he also did it with an F-35, which is terrible in a furball. Back then the F-35 didn't even have a proper gun system– our cannons were jury-rigged by Chief Shen, and jammed all the time. We had enough ammunition for about – I don't know – about five seconds of firing. But Monk was a badass. He lined up that bogey, and put it down with ammo to spare. He was the best pilot I'd ever seen.”

Grounder's comments reflected the X-Com pilots' general discontent with the F-35. The most expensive fighter jet ever developed, the F-35 was plagued with problems long before the UFO threat became public. Cost overruns, doubts about its effectiveness and constant delays hampered the project, and its greatest strength, its ability to fire missiles from BVR and escape without detection, was completely ineffective against the extra-terrestrials. The most damning criticism came from the pilots themselves. Once they realised that dogfighting was the key to shooting down the enemy the X-Com pilots had no hesitation in requesting the F-22, which along with the Russian SU-35 and European Typhoon, was arguably the best dogfighter of that era. No fighter could keep up with a UFO when it decided to accelerate away, but for reasons unknown scout UFOs, perhaps intent on their own mysterious missions, would hover around an area despite the presence of fighter craft and give pilots every chance to shoot it down. Guided missile weapon system rarely ever worked against the aliens, meaning that the only way to shoot down a UFO was to close in and engage it with guns. Without the aid of radar pilot skill became tremendously important, with each pilot having to rely on their own judgement to lead the target accurately to score decisive hits. In spite of these disadvantages human forces world-wide were able to score three kills in the month of April, taking the total of UFOs shot down to seven. X-Com accounted for four of this overall total, but it came at a terrible cost. X-Com's fourth kill, UFO-11, destroyed one F-35 piloted by "Skipper" Darwin and badly damaged the planes of "Zeke" Gibson and "Q-Tip" Murphy. Skipper's body was never recovered. The cost was similarly prohibitive for other air forces all around the world - every UFO shot down was done at the cost of roughly twenty terrestrial aircraft.

Counter-thrust

The alien response to the renewed air offensive was decisive. In late April a new type of contact was spotted in the skies above the world. It was superficially similar to the alien scout ship in size and appearance, but ensuing events proved that it was vastly superior in armament, manoeuvrability and aggression. These craft were dubbed "fighters" and they lived up to their name, aggressively engaging and destroying any craft in their vicinity. No terrestrial fighter could stand against them, and squadrons of aircraft foolish enough to try were soon blazing wrecks falling from the sky. On 19 April 2016 X-Com tracked the largest UFO contact ever seen to date (UFO-9). It was easily double the size of a modern aircraft carrier, and its entry into Japanese air space precipitated a massive response from the Japanese government. Squadrons of F-15s from the Japanese Air Self-Defence Forces were scrambled for a second time to engage the massive craft. The US Seventh Fleet also scrambled several F-15s to support the air strike, but it was to no avail. Missiles failed to hit their mark, and attempts to close into gun range were punished by massive plasma barrages which obliterated several brave but luckless pilots. The surviving pilots were ordered to withdraw, and all Japan could do was watch helplessly as the alien battleship traversed their air space before finally heading out over the Pacific Ocean.

A flight of F-22s.

In addition to the losses incurred by air forces all over the globe, the aliens also began methodically destroying the new satellites launched into orbit by US and China. Emboldened by the success of X-Com's first satellite, US and China attempted to restore their orbital networks with launches in March and April. Whatever hopes both superpowers harboured soon faded into ashes when these satellites were located and destroyed by alien fighter craft. Even X-Com's vaunted stealth satellites were not immune to the alien's riposte, but it seemed that the stealth systems at least gave the satellites a fighting chance. If a UFO was detected the satellite would fire its manoeuvring rockets to displace to a new location, and then go into silent running mode, essentially shutting down all its systems while it glided to a new location in the sky. Satellite XCS-1 over Japan successfully avoided a marauding fighter using this countermeasure, but the newly launched satellite over India (XCS-2) had no such luck due to the sloppiness of ground control, which failed to react in time. The Indian satellite was destroyed by the aliens, leaving XCS-1 as the lone active satellite in orbit around the Earth. Due to the fates of the newly launched satellites Force Commander Iwata was understandably hesitant about launching X-Com's third satellite, but after intensive talks with the UN Secretary-General, the US President and the Japanese Prime Minister it was agreed that the risk was acceptable. XCS-3 was launched from Vanderberg Air Force Base in the US, and it took station over mainland China. X-Com's request for a squadron of F-22s was also granted by the US. Despite federal legislation prohibiting the export of the fighter, most of the X-Com air wing was composed of American pilots under the jurisdiction of the US Seventh Fleet, and thus never left American command and control. President Obama cut off vocal Republican opposition to the transfer with the statement: "The pilots are American. They answer to American commanders. If the UN wants to use our planes, they ask us, and if we think it's prudent, we will order our pilots to go on the missions. If we don't, they don't. So what's the problem?" In addition Obama circumvented a study commissioned by the US House of Representatives by proposing the immediate resumption of F-22 production, and also tabled a bill repealing the Obey Amendment in the Department of Defence Appropriations Act 1998, which banned the sale and export of the F-22 to foreign governments in 1998. Obama's proposal to both restart the production of F-22s and to make the craft available to foreign nations was a complete turn around from his actions in 2009, in which the Democrats were responsible for cutting $1.75 billion in defence spending earmarked for the continued production of the Raptor. When asked about the about face, Obama replied sardonically: "As far as I can recall, the Earth wasn't being invaded by aliens in 2009."

The increased aggressiveness of alien air patrols was accompanied by a commensurate increase in alien forces on the ground. Counter-alien groups all around the world reported an increasing number of aliens during their ground missions. The ubiquitous sectoids were now being accompanied by the floaters first seen in Ogbomosho. The chryssalid was the most feared alien species for obvious reasons, but they were not sighted again for the remainder of April. Instead human defenders ran into increasing numbers of sectoids, outsiders, drones and floaters. The floaters were more capable combatants than the sectoids due to their speed and manoeuvrability, and their ability to fly. They required expert marksmanship to bring down, and could plague a landing site for days after the UFO which brought it to Earth either escaped or was secured by human ground forces. There were also some troubling reports of some kind of terrifying hidden alien “stalker” which strangled its victims. To date no one had seen one these “stalkers”, but anywhere the aliens went there were increasing numbers of victims found dead and asphyxiated, with their wind pipes crushed. As with the floaters, these murders could persist long after the UFO was gone, and they provoked terrible feelings of dread in civilian populations. Finally Delta Force commandoes reported encountering a hitherto un-encountered species of alien during a UFO recovery in New Mexico. This alien was reportedly a heavily armed biped wearing powered armour of some sort, but no more details were forthcoming from an unusually tight-lipped JSOC spokesman.

X-Com's April 2016 evaluation.

April would prove to be the high water mark of the global air war in 2016. It would not be until the following year that human air forces would be able to effectively challenge the visitors in the air thanks to breakthroughs made by Dr. Moira Vahlen and Dr. Hongo Marazuki. As the months wore on UFO contacts became more heavily armed and aggressive, and by mid-2016 most air forces around the world ceased trying to intercept and shoot down the visitors. Even the introduction of F-22 fighters in the X-Com air wing did nothing to improve the kill ratio against extra-terrestrial craft, although it did improve the survivability rate of the pilots who flew them. All humanity could do now was to maintain a network of counter-alien ground units on high alert, and respond to landings and abductions as timely as possible. It was a passive reactive response which handed all the initiative to the aliens, but it was also the only thing the humans could do in the face of the aliens' total air superiority.

Next: To Be Continued

Previous: The Long War, Part XIV - The Battle for the Skies

The Rise of EXALT

Intelligence analysts initially believed that the massive Boko Haram uprising that coincided with the chryssalid outbreak in Ogbomosho was an unfortunate coincidence which diverted much of Nigeria's armed force assets away from the crisis. Weeks after the incident, several facts began to emerge which contradicted this initial conclusion. African coalition forces continued to give ground to the Boko Haram counter-offensive around Lake Chad, and much of the insurgents' success could be attributed to the actions of the splinter jihadist group known as the Sabbaha. At first it was believed that the Sabbaha was just a highly effective cell of the Boko Haram network, but when members of the faction began appearing in Syria and fighting alongside al-Qaeda and ISIS fighters it became apparent that they were a separate organization with a global reach equalling and even surpassing that of al-Qaeda and ISIS. Sabbaha was the Arabic word for "exalt", and it was by this name that the faction became known as, thanks largely to the viral videos released by the organization. One infamous video showed a Sabbaha spokesman quoting a mishmash of religious texts after a successful attack against a Nigerian outpost south of Lake Chad. "Praise be to Allah, the Cherisher and Sustainer of the worlds," the spokesman intoned. "His messengers have returned. Exalt them in all their glory, and accept them into your hearts. Be not proud, but abase thyself, and exalt those that have to come to lift us up. For it is said, whoever shall exalt himself shall be abased; and he that shall humble himself shall be exalted."

An EXALT patrol moving through the ruins of an urban centre in Syria.

The spokeman's speech was sprinkled with a confused jumble of psalms and aphorisms from both the Bible, the Koran and a number of more obscure religious texts. The lack of doctrinal consistency was not lost to some - analysts wondered out loud as to whether EXALT actually possessed a cohesive internal ideology, or whether the allusions to religious texts were a smokescreen for a more sinister agenda. Analysts also posited that EXALT's confused religious stance could possibly lead to conflict with the more fundamentalist elements of the jihadists, which took religious orthodoxy to extremes. Nonetheless there were advantages in EXALT's more moderate approach, especially in Africa, where Christianity, Islam and the Bahá'í Faith were the most widespread religions. In a continent filled with a myriad of cultures, dialects and religious practices a moderate stance ensured a larger pool of followers and more potential recruits for the EXALT cause. Regardless of whether they were true believers, apostates or cynical opportunists, no one could deny the effectiveness of the EXALT forces, whose hit and run raids took a disruptive toll on government operations in both Nigeria and Syria. What made these raids more worrisome was the presence of UFOs in the skies during critical operations involving EXALT forces. On numerous occasions air support could not be provided to ground troops fighting in Nigeria and Syria due to alien fighter craft hovering in the vicinity. It was a troubling coincidence, and one which did not slip past the eyes of careful observers.

At the end of April 2016 a large battle took place near Diffa on the Niger and Nigerian border between African coalition forces and Boko Haram. Diffa had been a harbour for thousands of Nigerian refugees fleeing the fighting in Borno, but on 27 April the refugee town was attacked by a large force of Boko Haram. The battle was a costly one, and it ended in a marginal victory for the African coalition. During the battle several EXALT soldiers were killed along with hundreds of Boko Haram insurgents. The bodies were to be summarily buried, but a keen eyed medic noted some unusual aspects about the cadavers and made arrangements for an autopsy. While the bodies were superficially similar to a normal human cadavers, deeper inspection revealed several modifications not of terrestrial origin. While the Nigerian doctors were unable to understand how these implants functioned, they seemed to correlate to observations made by Nigerian soldiers about this new splinter group, which attributed EXALT with superhuman feats of strength, speed and skill. Alarmed by this turn of events Nigerian forces were instructed to send any fallen EXALT soldiers back for autopsy, and subsequent corpses revealed that all of them had also been subject to genetic modification. Not all corpses had the same modifications, however, which seemed to indicate that these implants and grafts were done to enhance the existing specializations of the enemy combatants. One corpse had a secondary heart - another had skin which looked like human epidermis, but had the stopping power of Kevlar - one cadaver, identified as a sniper, had eyes which were clearly modified to give the recipient improved ocular vision and the ability to see in different spectrums of light. Many discredited Nigerian soldier eyewitness accounts were re-examined in the light of these findings. Furious Nigerian commanders had refused to believe these tales told by their soldiers, dismissing them out of hand as excuses for military setbacks, but the mounting evidence told otherwise. Amazing stories of EXALT soldiers jumping onto rooftops in a single bound, or vanishing in plain sight suddenly became much more believable.

In the meantime the appearance of EXALT forces in the Syrian civil war turned around the flagging fortunes of the jihadists, whose forces were under constant attack by a coalition of nations led by the US and France. Syria was a flash point waiting to combust, as Russian assisted government forces led by President Bashar al-Assad pushed back US backed rebels from key cities in the strife-torn state. Syria was a complex three cornered conflict, with the Russians and Assad's government in one corner, the Kurd rebels backed by the US in another, and the jihadists in the third, who sought to exploit the chaos and confusion to carve out a fundamentalist Islamic state in the greater region of Syria and Iraq. To add to the confusion Turkey, the US's nominal NATO ally in the conflict, seemed quite content to antagonize both superpowers. While Turkey was staunchly anti-Assad and anti-government, President Recep Erdogan took Washington to task over the Western refusal to see the militarism of secular Kurdish groups in the same light as the terrorism of the Islamic State. Turkey also shot down a Russian Su-24 which they claimed had strayed too close to the Turkish border, precipitating a diplomatic crisis between the two nations.

The fiery remains of a Russian jet plunges to the earth after being shot down by Turkey.

While the superpowers and their allies played their complex game of regime-building in Syria, the real human cost of the civil war went largely unnoticed. The estimated number of casualties ranged from 150,000 to over 470,000, with the UN estimating the number at roughly 400,000. These casualties included women, children and non-combatants, and precipitated a refugee crisis as hundreds of thousands of Syrians fled the war zones. The United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees estimated that there were over 4.8 million displaced Syrians, making it the biggest displacement of people since the Second World War. Many European nations, wary of sleeper terrorist cells entering their countries, closed their borders, and the issue of immigration became an incendiary topic in politics once more. In the meantime, intelligence reports from the region pointed to an alarming development - thousands of displaced Syrians and Iraqis, shunned by the world at large, appeared to be turning towards the jihadists in unprecedented numbers. A report by UK intelligence officer Amelie Edwards revealed that it was not to fundamentalism that people were turning to, but to rather to more secular concerns:

The movement towards EXALT appears non-ideologically driven. What the EXALT forces are offering is something neither the US or Russia, or any of the other powers currently intervening in Syria have - safety, protection, and an end to the conflict. While thousands of Syrians die everyday in clashes between pro-government and rebel forces, Syrians who manage to flee to the EXALT zones are given food, medicine and shelter. We don't know from where exactly these supplies are coming from, or how they are getting there, but we strongly suspect that the visitors are responsible. Furthermore the EXALT zones are safe from bombing or shelling - the UFOs in the area shoot down any fighters or missiles straying over these zones. This is the first time we've seen the aliens establish what is essentially a no-fly zone - we've never seen them stake out a piece of Earth's territory and hold it before. Ground incursions by government or rebel forces are decisively punished by EXALT forces - in some cases with air support from the UFOs - and the EXALT forces allow people to move in and out of the safe zones to pass on the message of hope to friends and relatives in conflict ridden areas. Even the world's media is allowed to enter these zones, and the images and footage coming out of these safe zones show injured people being treated and fed and taken care of.

Edwards also confirmed that EXALT's comparatively moderate stance on religious orthodoxy was both a boon and a curse for the fledgling organization:

EXALT's moderate stance allows people from all denominations - Christians, Muslims, Sunni, Shia, Kurds - to enter their safe zones, which makes their appeal even more widespread. They also police the zones very stringently to ensure no fundamentalist related conflicts arise. We believe that ideological struggles have taken place between EXALT and the more extreme elements of ISIS and al-Qaeda, but in each case the EXALT forces seem to prevail, either through negotiations or in some cases, the use of force. EXALT is providing the jihadists with equipment, manpower, and air support, which gives them a lot of leverage. Hardliners have either changed their tune, perhaps accepted it as the cost of doing business, or in some cases, just disappeared. Somehow EXALT has managed to penetrate networks which have taken us years to unravel, and the most worrying thing about it is that we don't know how they are doing it. They seem to be changing these networks from the inside out, moderating them and toning down the rhetoric, thereby increasing their supporter base.

Shell-shocked and war weary Syrian refugees arrive in EXALT camps.

The visitor's humanitarian intervention in Syria prompted some to suggest that the aliens were not wholly malevolent, a hypothesis which Bradford quickly rejected. "No one who was in Africa will tell you that the aliens are here to help us," he said. "I have to admit, thought, that in the battle for hearts and minds in Syria the aliens are trouncing us. But to what end, who knows." Nonetheless this was the first act of benevolence attributed to the aliens, which opened the door to the possibility of negotiations in the future. While some people lauded EXALT's actions in Syria, Edwards warned that there were still plenty of disaffected and displaced people who were ripe for recruitment into terrorist organizations. EXALT offered empowerment, purpose, and a sense of belonging against the impersonal juggernauts of the superpowers. Angry young men and women who lost friends and family could not help but be impressed and influenced by the EXALT soldiers. They were genetically enhanced to be stronger, faster and more skilled than normal humans, but beyond these superficial changes they were also making a difference and influencing the world around them. They were not just helpless victims in the game of nations. More people joined EXALT after seeing their loved ones being given life-saving medical treatment than the Boko Haram ever recruited by compelling people at gun point, and these recruits were true believers in the righteousness of their cause.

Next: To Be Continued

Previous: The Long War, Part XV - The Enemy Within

The French Connection

In May 2016 the Western intelligence world was shocked by the revelation that France was exporting arms and supplies to the jihadists in Syria and Nigeria. The Bundesnachrichtendienst (BND), Germany's foreign intelligence agency, shared these allegations with the US, who later passed it on to General Bradford at X-Com. German-US relations had cooled somewhat after it was revealed in 2014 that the US had CIA moles in the BND, but the scale and nature of their discovery overrode any differences between the two NATO partners. A clear chain of custody was compiled through German surveillance which showed arms being taken from French bases, stockpiled in ports on the Mediterranean Sea, before finally being smuggled onto container ships bound for Nigeria. There was also inconclusive evidence that French shipments were also being routed to Syria by way of Turkey, with shipments crossing the northern border of Syria to end up in the hands of ISIS and al-Qaeda groups. What made these revelations even worse was the apparent complicity of the French government - surveillance footage showed the weapons being packed and loaded in plain sight in French bases, although there was much debate as to whether or not the base commanders were aware of the final destination of these weapon shipments. These claims were so shocking and controversial that intelligence officers did not know what to do with the bombshell on their hands. If these claims were validated then the French government was responsible for supplying the worst terrorist organizations of the 21st century, responsible for numerous deaths and atrocities all over the world.

The French carrier Charles De Gaulle carried out hundreds of air strikes against fundamentalist Islamic groups in Syria and Iraq.

This revelation was a complete turnaround for French policy, which up to the latter part of 2015 had been to actively oppose and combat terrorism all over the globe. France had one of the most forwardly deployed militaries in the world, and maintained several bases in Africa due to the painful legacy of French colonialism in the 19th and 20th centuries. France was instrumental in peace keeping and anti-terrorism operations in sub-Saharan nations such as the Central African Republic, Mali, Chad and the Ivory Coast. France was also one of the coalition leaders in the battle against al-Qaeda and ISIS in Syria, having launched over 200 air strikes against terrorist strongholds from the carrier Charles De Gaulle in the Persian Gulf since 2014. For these reasons, France's actions in the early 21st century baffled and mystified the international community. US Secretary of State John Kerry stated: "Since late 2015 French policy has been unpredictable and inconsistent. President Hollande refuses to engage in meaningful dialogue anymore, and French officials obfuscate, delay and sometimes outright lie when dealing with us. In the UN they have been unreliable and dishonest partners, pledging to stand with us on resolutions, only to back out later without giving us the courtesy of telling us." Kerry's statement was in reference to France's flip flopping with regards to the establishment of X-Com in 2015-2016. As a permanent member of the UN Security Council France had vetoed the original X-Com resolution, but then voted for it when the amended resolution went before the UN General Assembly. France sent a company of soldiers and technical staff to Tanegashima in February 2016 when the X-Com unit was first constituted, only to have them withdraw one month later after France left the Council of 16. President Hollande's dramatic about faces exasperated and infuriated world leaders, while domestically it merely confirmed the French people's dim view of their incumbent President, who possessed the lowest approval ratings of any French leader in modern history. Nonetheless none of France's backflips in the UN compared to the shocking revelation made by German intelligence, and crisis meetings were convened in secret to discuss what was to be done in the light of these findings.

Official French opposition to the X-Com project had grown since their withdrawal from the Council of 16 in March 2016. The newly appointed French ambassador to the UN, Jean Pétain, publicly lambasted the UN and the X-Com project in a series of speeches and interviews. Pétain's actions publicly exposed X-Com as a nascent military organization, and laid bare before the global public details of its operations. The details were so explicit that they could have only come from the French personnel initially deployed with X-Com back in March 2016, or from an insider currently serving in the task force. "X-Com has gone far above and beyond its original mandate," said Pétain in a fiery interview on CNN. "It was supposed to be a research team, not some paramilitary unit wilfully ignoring sovereign borders. There are over 10,000 soldiers in Tanegashima. What possible purpose do they serve? More importantly, who do they serve? Who do they answer to? X-Com is basically the Secretary-General's own private army, answerable only to him, and what baffles me is how all these nations are willing to let him do whatever he likes with it." Ban's response was typical of the man. "If the X-Com unit only answered to me," he stated ruefully. "Then why do I have to make so many phone calls every time they need to go anywhere?" Realistically the X-Com unit was under no threat of being disbanded, despite the strident objections put forward by Pétain. As long as it had the support of the superpowers it had manpower, material and funding. The decisive intervention in Nigeria also earned it a great deal of international good will, although its global mandate did raise many questions among the nations in the General Assembly. In the spirit of cooperation and inclusion Ban accepted small donations of men and material from nations not represented in the Council of 16 in order to sooth and placate the odd murmurs of dissent. In return he promised greater transparency and consultation from the X-Com unit in future operations.

The Advent Acts

France's anti-terrorist stance up to the end of 2015 earned it the ire of global terrorist organizations, and the country was the subject of numerous terrorist attacks in the early years of the 21st century. The single deadliest attack in French history took place on 13-14 November 2015, where a coordinated series of suicide bombings and mass shootings in Paris killed 130 people and injured 368. The attacks were a retaliation by ISIS for France's involvement in the Syrian civil war. In response to the attacks President Hollande instituted an état d'urgence (a state of emergency) which was originally scheduled to last only three months after the attack, but was never subsequently lifted. On 17 November 2015 Hollande convened a Congrès du Parlement français and addressed both houses of the French Parliament, laying out his plans for constitutional and legislative reform. There was widespread support for a tough law and order stance after the November attacks, but that support evaporated almost instantaneously after Hollande's dramatic proposals were made public. The proposed new laws expanded police powers to hold and detain suspects without a warrant, and temporarily suspended habeas corpus, freedom of assembly and freedom of the press while the state of emergency persisted. The most controversial proposal was an amendment to the French Constitution which would give the President plenary power to institute or maintain a state of emergency. Under existing law the President could only institute a state of emergency for 12 days, after which the consent of Parliament would be required to extend it. Under Hollande's proposal the President could unilaterally decide when to begin or end the state of emergency, and taken with the expansion of government powers effectively gave Hollande dictatorial control over the country.

Hollande's attempt to pass what later became known as the Advent Acts was the spark that lit the powder keg in France. These acts were so-called because they were drafted during the Advent period before Christmas, and also as a way of mocking Hollande, whom popular media labelled as an aspiring tyrant with a Messiah complex. An editorial in the Le Nouvel Observateur wrote:

Monsieur Flamby has finally lost his mind. In these proposed acts we not only see a mind swimming in delusion, but also the power hungry aspirations of a would-be tyrant. No one in his right mind would even consider proposing, never mind ratifying these acts, which take away all the freedoms fundamental to democratic society. Even Herr Hitler's Enabling Act appears benign by comparison.

Opposition leaders were similarly stupefied at the audacity of Hollande's proposals. Unlike American or Australian bipartisan governments, France had a multi-party system and governed through the creation and dissolution of ever-shifting coalitions. Hollande's constitutional proposal would have to navigate a political quicksand to even have a chance of being heard, and early indications were that it would be impossible. Virtually every political party in the political spectrum, including the Republicans and the National Front, did not waste the chance to denounce and ridicule the President. Members of Hollande's own Socialist Party and their coalition were horrified at the draconian provisions of the acts, and begged Hollande and his advisors to radically alter them, lest they destroy any miniscule hope of winning re-elections in 2017. Defections from the Socialist Party began en masse. "Hollande no longer speaks for the Socialist Party," said one disaffected member. "He only speaks for himself now." French and international media were equally merciless in pouring scorn and derision, and popular opinion was almost universally in opposition to the acts. The numerous calls for a vote of no confidence were drowned out by louder calls for the President to resign.

Despite massive opposition Hollande did not waver. Hollande became the first President in nearly a decade to invoke Article 49 of the French Constitution, which allowed the Advent Acts to bypass the National Assembly. Under the French constitution the opposition was entitled to raise a vote of no confidence, and this was done on 10 May 2016. No one expected Hollande's government to survive the vote, but in an amazing and complete reversal of fortunes the opposition was only able to raise 246 out of the 288 votes needed to dissolve Hollande's government, much to the consternation and bafflement of every political analyst. In the days before the vote Hollande had conducted a series of one on one talks with influential party leaders at the Élysée Palace. While the content of the talks were kept confidential, party leaders exited the Palace with a seemingly new found respect for the President, and tried to influence their party members to vote with the incumbent. The confusion engendered by this about face muddied the voting waters tremendously, allowing Hollande to squeak by on the thinnest of margins. Hollande had also somehow managed to unify the Socialist Party - even dissenters from the back benches appeared to have recanted their misgivings, and voted with the President. This new solidarity, along with the disarray in the ranks of the opposition, allowed Hollande to call for a Congress of the French Parliament to vote on the constitutional amendment giving him plenary powers on 24 May 2016.

Ratification

The French Congress was a special body composed of both the Senate and the National Assembly, and it met at the Palace of Versailles to vote on the amendment. Constitutional change required either a national referendum, or a three-fifths majority in Congress, and it was almost universally believed that the bill stood no chance of being passed despite the miracle wrought by Hollande in surviving the vote of no confidence. Nicolas Sarkozy of the Republicans attacked Hollande for wasting the Parliament's time, a sentiment which was echoed by Marine Le Pen of the National Front. Prior to the vote the Palace was surrounded by heavy security and closed to the general public for over a week. Arriving reporters and political commentators were shocked to find that the proceedings were to be closed from the media. Aside from a select group of "approved" reporters (mockingly known as Hollande's "stooges"), reporters were not allowed to enter the building during the Congress and had to wait outside behind heavily patrolled cordons of French security. Reporters noted that there were large numbers of police clad in riot gear present, ostensibly as a precaution against terrorist attacks. Since the November attacks Hollande's security detail had tripled in size, and large numbers of tall, thin men wearing dark suits and glasses were becoming a common feature in the President's increasingly infrequent public outings. After three hours, members of the Congress began leaving the building, and news began filtering out that the impossible had happened - the bill had passed.

France's President Hollande addressing the French Congress on the vote to grant him plenary powers.

The news stunned the nation. Politicians leaving the building appeared dazed and confused by what had just transpired. Sarkozy, one of the most adamant critics of the amendment, looked lost and discombobulated. Mobbed by the media all he could offer was a weak statement:

Hollande gave an amazing speech, one of the best I've ever heard. At the time it seemed so convincing - so inspiring - that I couldn't help but vote aye. Now, though, I think - what have I done?

Similar stories emerged from other politicians, all of whom displayed signs of confusion and incoherence upon leaving the building. Not all present were similarly affected. Le Pen launched a blistering attack on the rest of Congress, calling them "slack-jawed idiots" who "were taken in by a confidence trick." Her anger was also reserved for members of her own party, who could not explain why they voted the way they did. In a public display outside Versailles Le Pen lambasted members of her own party, who could only stand shame-faced and apologetic as their leader vented her wrath. Similar stories emerged of party faithful across the political spectrum talking to their colleagues in bewildered confusion, unable to explain what had just happened. "It would be laughable if it wasn't so tragic," said Le Pen bitterly. "This is a national catastrophe."

The accounts which interested X-Com observers the most were ones similar to that given by Greens senator Marie-Christine Blandin:

I felt a very, very strong compulsion to vote yes - I don't know why I did, or where it came from, but it didn't feel like it was coming from me. So I fought it, and fought it, and suddenly the compulsion was gone. I was free again. I looked around and saw my colleagues in a similar stupor. I shook Desessardbeside me, and all he did was look through me, before returning his gaze on Hollande. I did the same to Placé , and he looked at me like I was a stranger. I shook him again, and this time he recognized me and snapped out of whatever it was. We looked around the room, and it was the same everywhere. Hundreds of faces staring at Hollande like he was God or something. Here and there, people like me and Jacques, looking around, wondering what the hell was happening.

Blandin's description rang true for many X-Com operatives, many of whom had first hand experience of such compulsions during their battles against the sectoids. When quizzed by Bradford and Doorn as to whether such compulsions could compel someone to vote, Nigeria's "Syp" Mayumba could only shrug: "When it happened to me I would hallucinate and see things that weren't there. But I never felt compelled to do anything. I could still choose how to react, even to disbelieve what was in front of my eyes. I don't believe the sectoids could control us in the way you are suggesting." Hungary's "Gevlon" Kovács disagreed. "In England, when Scholz died, I could feel something compelling me to run. I've never felt terror like that before, even when we were fighting the chryssalids. The fear was completely irrational - most of the sectoids were dead, and we were just mopping up the last two or three. There was no reason to be afraid, but I was." The Hungarian soldier was emphatic. "It's only the scale that is different. In my view it is completely possible." Accounts like these only added to the growing suspicion within X-Com that the French government had been compromised by the aliens. It was a suspicion borne out of their experience fighting the sectoids, but one they could not readily share with the world, which remained largely ignorant of the capabilities of the visitors.

Revolt

For the rest of the world and France in particular, the result of the Congress was solely attributable to the politicians who voted yes for the amendment. Questions as to the irregularity of the proceedings were subordinated to outraged calls for the whole sale resignation of those who ratified the amendment. "We have been betrayed," cried the L'Express. "These so-called guardians of the Republic have handed the keys to Monsieur Flamby, of all people." Politicians baffled by their own behaviour during the Congress regrouped swiftly to campaign against the amendment, partly as a means of damage control, and also out of shame over what had happened. When quizzed by reporters on the validity of the Congress' result, Sarkozy was adamant:

There is only one way to satisfactorily answer this question. President Hollande decided to forego a referendum, knowing full well that the French people would never stand for such an amendment. It is time for the French people to decide. We must have a referendum, and we must have it as soon as possible. Let the people decide if this is really what they want for France, because if we let this result stand we make Hollande the first despot of France since Napoleon the Third.

The call for a national referendum was a battle cry taken up by virtually all of France. France in the 21st century was an active democracy, with an almost 80% voter turnout compared to the US's 48%, and massive demonstrations, strikes and protests erupted all over the nation. There was immense public pressure on Hollande to resign. His political opponents recognized the hallmarks of a coup d'état, but were confident that Hollande lacked popular support to maintain his new government. No coup survives long without popular support unless backed by powerful police or military regimes, and Hollande did not appear to possess these, either.

Or so they thought. Once Hollande had the authority of the amendment behind him he immediately created a task force called ADVENT, perhaps as a jab against those who labelled his legislative proposals as the Advent Acts. ADVENT was granted wide spread powers mirroring that and superseding traditional police, including the ability to arrest people without warrants and to hold them indefinitely. Hollande never had to appeal for police or military support because he used ADVENT troopers to implement his policies within the capital. No one knew where ADVENT was recruited from or where they were trained but soon there were thousands of well-armed and well-disciplined black clad troopers in Paris and their numbers swelled daily. Traditional law enforcement like the police nationale and the gendarmerie nationale were more or less left alone to complete their duties, but their chiefs and leaders were summoned by Hollande to theÉlysée Palace for high level briefings and subsequently became as reclusive as the President, rarely leaving their offices and issuing puzzling and contradictory decrees to their mystified and increasingly concerned subordinates. The Compagnie Républicaine de la Sécurité (CRS) or the French riot police, was merged with ADVENT and compelled to undergo "re-training" in several newly-established facilities all around the nation. French military units were also deployed overseas and garrisons emptied, ostensibly to pursue the war against terror - in reality, Hollande was dispersing and breaking up power blocs which could conceivably create organized resistance while he consolidated control domestically. ADVENT forces began arresting and detaining journalists and reporters, and the sight of heavily armed riot police armed with rifles and batons became more common place. They were invariably led by thin men in dark suits, marking them as part of Hollande's own private security detail.

French protesters demanding the end of the state of emergency.

If Hollande expected the French people to roll over meekly while he seized control he would be sadly mistaken. The birthplace of one of the earliest explicit enunciations of human rights (the Declaration of the Rights of Man and of the Citizen), France had a robust history with democracy and dictators, occupation and resistance, and its people were no strangers to revolution. Incensed by the increasing presence of ADVENT troops in the capital, French citizens began to adopt extra-legal means to combat the growing repression. They hid political dissidents from the prying eyes of ADVENT, and when faced by the shut down of Internet service providers (ISP) throughout the nation, reverted to handing out pamphlets and leaflets and passing news through word of mouth. Guerrilla radio stations sprang up in the absence of the Internet, and soon the air was alive with insurrectionist talk of revolution. These stations did not survive for long - somehow government forces could locate and triangulate these ad hoc broadcast networks swiftly, and squads of heavily armed ADVENT troops would shut them down. Undeterred resistance radios went mobile, and learned to displace from place to place from broadcast to broadcast. Protests became more violent as ADVENT responded with increasing brutality. The question of where political prisoners were being detained was the largest and most incendiary topic - no one knew where they went, and many of the massive protests racking the country were composed of furious and distraught citizens looking for their missing loved ones. In the meantime the rest of Europe could only sit back and watch in disbelief as one of the Western world's more stable democracies implode and descend into anarchy and totalitarianism.

Next: To Be Continued

Previous: The Long War, Part XVI - Advent Rising

France

Syl was dumbstruck at the sight of the millions assembled in the Place de la Republique. She had never been in a crowd that size before, and the teeming mass was like a living thing, breathing, roiling and undulating through the streets of Paris, filling every street, every alley, and every corner. They had come from all over the France to take part in a massive rally against President Hollande. The news was disseminated through traditional word of mouth - social media had been shut down in the first wave of emergency legislation, but despite the lack of Twitter, Facebook, or Instagram, the French people, undaunted and provoked by the President's brazen attempt to seize control of their nation, rallied and massed together in their thousands. They descended onto the French capital like a force of nature, sure in their belief that a demonstration of national unity would suffice to frighten off this wannabe dictator, fracture the Socialist Party, and rally the rest of the French political parties to their side. Seeing the crowd first hand Syl was inclined to agree.

Scree, on the other hand, was more concerned with the practicalities of navigating through this enormous throng of people. The two former X-Com operatives were on their way to a meeting with their commanding officer. Two French companies had deployed with X-Com in February, only to be withdrawn one month later, and had never been heard of since. Scree and Syl, as members of the strike force, were the last two to return, and their repeated attempts to contact members of their unit were met with silence, confusion or concern from relatives or loved ones.

"I was told that you were all still deployed in Japan," replied one concerned spouse to Scree's inquiries. "What's going on, Pierre? Should I be worried?"

"It's probably just a misunderstanding," replied Scree. "I'll get it straightened out and get back to you."

Truly alarmed now, they shared their concerns with their X-Com commander, Colonel John Bradford, and he in turn offered them a roundabout way of returning home. They'd only been with X-Com for just over a month, but as members of the strike force they participated in two missions apiece, which was enough to earn them the loyalty of their C.O. The two of them were dropped in Belgium, given a powerful radio transmitter, and sent off with the best wishes of Bradford and their squadmates.

"The transmitter links to a bay tower in Germany, and then travels overland across Europe and Asia," said Bradford. "You need anything, give me a call, and I'll do whatever I can."

That transmitter was now safely tucked away in Scree's pack as the two of them bumped, jostled and ground their way through the square. Scree swiveled the pack around so that it faced to the front, in order to keep the contents more secure. The two of them were linked together by their elbows in what would otherwise have been an intimate gesture, but it was done for more practical purposes - if they lost each other in this crowd they would never find each other again. Being soldiers they'd also prepared for this eventuality. Every fifteen minutes or so they would set a rally point at an intersection, a street, or a shop both of them knew just in case they were separated. In the event that this failed then the final contingency would be to meet a block from their destination. There was a reason for their excessive caution. Syl's last phone conversation with her C.O. did not sit well with her. Davout, a gregarious but competent officer, shared Syl and Scree's misgivings and agreed to cover for the two of them when he departed home for France. They had not heard from him since. In the intervening time they traveled across the Belgian border in the Ardennes and made their way to Grenoble. From Grenoble Syl called Davout on a pre-arranged number, and spoke to a person who sounded like their old C.O., but differed greatly in manner and attitude.

"Come to Paris immediately," Davout had said in a flat, emotionless voice. "This is an order." He gave them an address in Paris, and hung up.

So here they were in Paris at last, only a kilometer or so from their final destination. This kilometer might just have well been ten, given at the speed at which they moved. Despite the size of the demonstration an air of merry-making permeated the air. The people seemed confident in victory - this rally dwarfed even the thousands that lined the streets in the liberation of Paris in the Second World War, and the size of the assembly begat confidence and purpose. It was as if every man, woman and child had come to Paris that day to underscore and re-affirm the tenets of liberté, égalité, fraternité. The tricolors of France fluttered in the spring breeze, and they flew everywhere, from the hands of small children and the elderly alike, and from cars, balconies and rooftops. White collar and blue collar marched side by side with students and unionists. Celebrities of all stripes turned out in force either as an expression of true belief and solidarity, or as cynical opportunists hoping to parlay this zeitgeist for personal gain. Songs and chants rippled through the crowd, died out, then began again. The noise was like a roaring of a great waterfall, and the sound was felt, rather than heard. It rippled through tissue and bone, and it was hard not to become enamored by it, to be caught up in the feeling of being part of something greater. Even the two soldiers were not immune to its charms. Syl found her heart swelling with pride for the ardor of her countryfolk.

"This is amazing," she said to Scree.

"What?" Scree's gaze was fixed resolutely forward.

She stopped moving, and Scree finally turned and faced her, annoyed at the sudden stoppage. She motioned all around. "This," she said. "This is amazing!"

Scree's eyes turned outward, and the enormity of the gathering seemed to finally register. An uncharacteristic grin came to his face, and he nodded. "Yes, it is." He looked around once more, then re-focused. "Come on. We have to go."

The crowds increased in size as they pushed closer into the city center. Slowly and almost imperceptibly the atmosphere gave way from gaiety to muted tension - Syl knew without looking that they were approaching the police lines. The welcoming smiles turned into tight lipped nods and looks of acknowledgment. Suddenly they were at the front, and before them, about 20 meters distant, stood a wall of black clad riot police. They wore riot helmets and sported riot shields and batons. They stood stock still in the face of the din, and their line was meticulously perfect. Their sleeves were adorned with new ADVENT insignia, an emblem that was fast gaining notoriety in France and greater Europe. At the front of the demonstration stood men, women and even some children, hands linked together as they chanted slogans and sang songs. Syl shook her head. She feared for the safety of the children at the front of the demonstration. As they winnowed their way through the crowd, Syl took the time to address one of the parents.

"You should take your children home," she shouted over the din at one startled looking couple. "This could get ugly." She looked at a different couple with a young girl, and repeated her comment. "This is no place for children."

Scree gave both couples long, even looks before pulling on Syl's elbow. "Come on," he said. The two of them kept moving through the chanting throng. Behind them one couple appeared to heed Syl's advice and began moving backwards, while the other parents exchanged quick words, shrugged, laughed and then turned their attention back to the police lines. Syl seethed in frustration. Scree appeared oblivious to Syl's mood, his attention solely focused on blazing a path through this dense, seething forest of humanity.

"The police are blocking the route," Scree said. "We need to find a parallel street and go from there." He pulled on Syl's elbow again, but she didn't budge. Irritated at this second stoppage he turned to her, but found her pointing towards the police lines. Look, she mouthed.

A pretty young woman had detached herself from the chanting crowd, and crossed the gap between the demonstrators and the riot police. She held a bouquet of white poppies in the crook of one elbow. When she reached the lines she offered one to one of them of the troopers - when it failed to elicit a response she placed it in the gap of the trooper's helmet and moved on to the next one. She moved down the line, placing poppies in the gaps and chinks of the riot gear of every trooper she met. She was also speaking to them - Syl could see her mouth opening and closing, but it was impossible to make out her words over the roar of the crowd. She stopped in front of another trooper, but this time she reached up and lifted up the perspex shield covering his face. She tucked the flower behind the man's ear, and smiled at him. The crowd cheered approvingly. Syl admired the girl's boldness. Then Syl took another look at the face of the trooper, and a shock of recognition almost floored her.

She tapped Scree on the shoulder and pointed. "Look - isn't that Girard?"

"What?"

She had to shout to make herself heard. "Look. Isn't that Girard? Wasn't he part of your unit?"

Scree followed the direction of Syl's finger, and stared at the trooper. "My God. It is him." He was dumbfounded. "What's he doing here?"

"I don't know," Syl shrugged. "But I'm going to find out." She deftly unhooked her elbow, left the embrace of the crowd and walked briskly across the gap towards Girard, bellowing a greeting over the tumult. Scree was left grasping at air, but recovered swiftly and jogged after her.

"Girard! It's Roche!" The man didn't budge. "Girard! It's me, Roche." She looked into the man's eyes, trying to spark a flicker of recognition. "Girard, you jackass, it's Roche. What are you doing here? Where's the rest of the unit?"

Girard stared at her, eyes unblinking. The girl noticed Syl's presence at the front of the lines, and flashed her a friendly smile of camaraderie. She offered a white poppy to Syl. "Vive la France," she said. Syl took the poppy and returned the smile with an awkward one of her own, but her attention remained fixed with Girard. It was him, no question, but the man's seeming lack of awareness and his failure to recognize her troubled her. He stared straight ahead, eyes unblinking and utterly devoid of warmth.

"Girard, you damned jackass, snap out of it. Don't you remember me? What's wrong you?"

Girard turned and looked at her for the first time. Encouraged, Syl continued. "It's me. Roche. We were in Tanegashima together." Scree arrived behind her. "Do you remember Marchand? You were in the same unit." Syl looked to Scree, and on cue he continued prodding the silent trooper. "Girard. It's Marchand. What's wrong, comrade? Where is everyone else?"

The whole line suddenly moved in unison, much like a parade line does when reacting to a shouted order. All of the sudden Syl and Scree had the attention of the entire front line, and the unblinking gaze of so many eyes was disconcerting, especially after the trooper's silent vigil. Girard's eyes were now alert and wakeful, and he spoke for the first time. "Roche. Marchand. Major Davout wants to see you." In an amazing display of synchronization Girard and another trooper grabbed Syl by both her wrists. At the same time two other troopers stepped forward and grabbed Scree. "You must come with us. Do not resist." The troopers behind created a gap to allow them passage, and without waiting for either for them to speak the troopers began dragging the two of them bodily back through the police lines.

"Wait a minute," Syl said angrily, digging her heels in. She pulled her wrist back through the weak point of the grip between the thumb and the index finger, and was shocked when he was able to maintain the hold. She tried again, this time with all the strength she could muster, and her hand slipped through the grip and was free. Girard made a clumsy attempt to grab her wrist again, but this time she was ready and avoided his clutching hand easily. Nonetheless the other trooper still had her other wrist. Despite her best efforts she was being pulled further and further back.

"Stop!" she shouted, furious now. The trooper was tremendously strong, but she received help from an unexpected quarter. The girl with the flowers latched onto her other wrist, shouting, "Fascists! Fascists! Let her go! Help me, they're trying take her! Fascists!" The poppies tumbled out of her hands, covering the ground in a tangle of white petals, but their combined strength was enough to stop the trooper from dragging Syl back any further. The girl shouted and pleaded with demonstrators in the line, while simultaneously hurling curses and imprecations at the riot police. "Fascists! You should be ashamed! You call yourselves French?" One trooper near the girl deliberately drew his baton and brought it down in a vicious arc into her face. The girl went down instantly, her face suddenly transformed into a crimson mask. There was a collective gasp of horror from the crowd. For two, three, maybe four seconds there was absolute silence - then an animal cry of outrage swelled from the mouths of a thousand people and a human tide engulfed the lines. The mob surged, ebbed and crashed violently, but around the fallen girl an eddy of stillness prevailed. Several people picked her up gently and began moving her back through the oncoming charge, which parted like the Red Sea to let them through. The crowd's fury was reserved for the troopers, and in the front of the melee furious demonstrators punched, kicked, bit, spat, pushed and hurled insults.

The trooper's casual brutality seemed to be a signal for the remainder of ADVENT to swing into action. More ADVENT hands grabbed Syl, and this time there was no resisting - she was carried backwards like a struggling, kicking child by several troopers. Scree too, was resisting as violently as he could. A big strong man, he was putting up a mighty fight, and he shook off the first two troopers with ease. An accomplished judoka, he also cross-trained with his fellow soldiers in other grappling disciplines like wrestling and jujitsu. These troopers were large and uncannily strong, but also slow and ponderous, allowing him to move his feet into positions where he could throw them over his hip and shoulders. Nonetheless the weight of numbers began to overwhelm him as more and more ADVENT troops joined the melee. Even the troopers he'd thrown were grabbing his boots from the ground, seemingly oblivious to the kicks and stomps he was throwing at them to make them let go. He was saved by the arrival of the furious crowd. Scree could see Syl disappearing into the police lines, but there was nothing he could do about it. Surrounded by hundreds of furious French it was all he could do just to keep his head up in the madding crowd. He hoped that the crowd's impetus would suffice to sweep away the lines, and let himself be carried by the wave of outraged French towards the ADVENT lines.

The black lines showed no fear of the oncoming mob, and they laid into the demonstrators with brutal precision, hitting them with batons and riot shields. They displayed no fear or remorse, and their attacks were bone-crunchingly effective. The initial fury of the crowd was dissipated in mere minutes as skulls, shoulders, forearms and elbows were shattered and broken by the fury of the assault. Soon the first demonstrators were either writhing in agony on the ground, or backing off fearfully, stunned at the viciousness of the police response. Some lay unmoving, pools of blood growing beneath them. The black line advanced slowly, shields interlocked, and the crowd began giving way. Demonstrators helped their wounded comrades retreat, or dragged them backwards with the help of others. Witnessing the brutality of the attack Scree realized that he and Syl had been spared the worst of it - none of the troopers had used their weapons on them, and had been content merely to forcibly haul them into custody. He didn't have time to ponder this mystery. The whistle of tear gas canisters overhead warned him of a new danger. To his right a retreating protester buckled and fell suddenly, but got up again and limped on. Rubber bullets and tear gas, Scree thought grimly. This escalated fast.

Scree withdrew with the rest, recognizing the hopelessness of the situation. He passed by a groaning young man in his 20s, and grabbed him by the scruff of his jacket. He dragged him backwards for about 20 meters, but found further progress impeded by crowds of people advancing from the other direction. By now the canisters were laying down clouds of choking white gas along the street, and protesters who had never experienced the awfulness of tear gas found themselves coughing and gagging as the acrid fumes burned their eyes and lungs. It was the catalyst for a disaster - afflicted people stampeded and fled in all directions in frenzied attempts to escape the gas. People were trampled underfoot, and terrible scenes ensued. Scree knew that he had to get off the street. He lifted up the youth, and slung the boy's arm over his shoulder.

"You need to walk," he yelled. The youth nodded, his features twisted in pain. "What's the injury?"

"My ankle," the youth replied, grimacing. "Rolled it as we were pulling back."

Scree nodded. "Lean on me, keep your weight off your bad ankle, and walk with your good leg. Ready?" The youth gave a pained thumbs up, and the two of them began hobbling along the curb, looking for a place to stop. They had barely moved 10 meters when a terrific explosion knocked them off their feet. The detonation came from the direction of the Place de la Republique, and such was the force of the blast that it shook the ground itself.

Scree rolled to his feet, dusted himself off, and looked in the direction of the explosion. A persistent ringing was all he could hear, and he wondered if his eardrums had burst. He could not see the plaza from this street, but above the tenements he could see a thick plume of oily black smoke rising into the sky. The ringing was slowly dying away, and its place the wailing and screaming of the injured could be heard keening into the wind. Then he felt his eyes burning and his nostrils and throat constricting in pain, and he knew this was no place to tarry. He hauled the youth to his feet again, despite the latter's cries of agony - the boy had fallen on his bad ankle, and was in incredible pain. "Come on," Scree grunted. They stopped in front of an apartment building. Scree tested the door, found it locked, and saw a frightened face through the glass behind. He thumped on the glass. "Let us in," he shouted.

The face disappeared for a few moments, and Scree was debating whether to smash the glass when the door finally opened, and several hands emerged and helped the two of them inside. They were in the lobby of an old apartment, and the place was full of terrified people. Some appeared to be nursing injuries, while others looked in shock. The muted weeping of frightened children murmured in the background, as did the whispered words of comfort doled out by parents trying to contain their own rising panic. One old man had the doorway to his apartment wedged open, and from the interior emerged a steady supply of cold water, hot tea and coffee, and biscuits. The ground floor hallway was almost full of people, and more were coming in every minute to escape the carnage outside. Scree helped the youth down to a patch of tiled floor. Rolling back the hem of the trousers Scree uncovered an ankle ballooned to double its normal size. He sighed. "You won't be walking on that anytime soon," he remarked.

The youth nodded through the pain, and replied, "Yeah, I noticed."

"I'm going to leave you here, OK? My friend is still out there, and she needs my help. Do you have a phone? Do you have someone you can call?"

"Yes, I'll be alright. Go on. Merci pour tout."

Scree turned to go. "Wait." The youth reached into his pack, and produced a gas mask. "Take this. For the gas."

Scree looked at the mask. "You always carry one of those around in your backpack?"

"Not my first demonstration," the boy grinned. He must have been barely 20.

"What do you know of this ADVENT group? Where are they based?"

"ADVENT? I hear they've taken over the old Compagnies Républicaines de Sécurité HQ. They merged the CRS with ADVENT a few weeks ago."

"Is that where they would take rioters, people they've arrested?"

"I assume so, yes."

"Do you know the address?"

"I have it." He pulled a moth-eared notebook filled with pamphlets, maps and scribblings, flipped through it and found what he was looking for. He scribbled an address on a page corner, tore it off, and handed the stub to Scree.

Scree looked at the address. "I know this address." It was the one Davout had given them earlier. "Merde."

"Is something wrong?"

"Nothing. I was hoping an old friend could help me out, but he might be in more trouble than we are." Scree began pacing, stopped, then made a decision. "I'm in over my head here. I need help."

The youth's eyes blazed fiercely. "My friends and I, we're organizing a resistance. We've already joined forces with several other campuses. We could use someone like you."

"What?" Scree paused and smiled ruefully. He admired the youth's spirit, and did not want to patronize him. "I would be happy to join." He pulled out the radio transmitter Bradford had given him. "First, though, I'm going to need to call some people."

Next: The Long War, Part VIII - Awakening

The date is March 2017. It is one year after the X-Com project was activated. Our interceptor fleet has three brand new Firestorm aircraft, and even our modified Ravens are shooting the aliens out of the sky on a regular basis. Our troops are armed with plasma weapons and titan armour, taken back base after base from the invaders, and repelled an alien assault on X-Com HQ. The hyperwave beacon is mere days from activation, and several soldiers are mastering the new art of psionics. It has taken me over 150 missions and God knows how many hours to get to this point in this, my sixth attempt, and completing the Long War mod seems to be an attainable goal at last. I load up my Ironman game, eager to get into the last stages of the campaign. The game loads. And loads. And loads.

The Long War refuses to be beaten.

ARE YOU KIDDING ME.

I restart the game. My save refuses to load.

NO.

I restart my computer. My save refuses to load. All I'm looking at is the orange X-Com unit badge revolving around and around and around.

HELL NO.

I trawl Reddit, the Steam forums, the 2K forums, and the Nexus mods site looking for a solution. The consensus is the same - I am shit out of luck.

NOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO!!!

I have to start again. Unbelievable. The first and second playthroughs were dry runs. The third was the seminal playthrough in which most of the characters and events in my fan fiction piece were established, but was abandoned because I started cheating by using Alt-F4 to save characters I grew to like from terrible fates. The fourth and fifth playthroughs were clumsy attempts to try and recreate the events and characters of the third, and they, too, were abandoned because I started cheating. This is my sixth playthrough. I was good. I didn't cheat. I took my lumps and said farewell to dozens of good soldiers who were shot, blown up, eviscerated, and impregnated by aliens. My memorial wall had over 70(!) names by the end game. It was painful, but the game was never dull because of it. But now this...?!?

I like X-Com. So I'm going to start again. When I first started writing the Long War story, my intention was simply to document the adventures of my band of soldiers in my Long War playthrough. These next series of posts is an attempt to get back to that idea, which has long since been overtaken by the sprawling, unwieldy fictional tale now in its place. I'm not abandoning my fan fiction piece - I just need a break from writing it. I'm also playing more games this month - Overwatch, Hearthstone, and Darkest Dungeon are all interspersed between moments playing either X-Com or X-Com 2, which means less time for writing. I recently finished X-Com 2 on Veteran Ironman - the release of the Alien Hunters DLC seemed to be an opportune moment to pick up and play that title again. This time around I also used a Jagged Alliance mod which allowed me to use voices from the Jagged Alliance series for my X-Com 2 soldiers. This mod really made me happy as a long time fan of both the X-Com and Jagged Alliance series. For whatever reason though I still can't get behind X-Com 2 as much as I can the original remake, especially with the Long War mod. The fact that I still haven't finished the Long War actually tells me that I like the game a lot.

I tried mightily to reconcile my playthroughs with the stories and characters developing in the fan fiction piece, but those two things are just diverging further and further apart, despite the fact that the fan fiction began from the events and characters in my third playthrough. The third playthrough was where the story's characters first took shape, and determined the events and locales in the story. France was the first country to leave X-Com in that particular campaign, so I chose it as the first country targeted for alien infiltration in the story. Ogbomosho was the site of the first alien terror attack, and so I wrote an arc about chryssalids running amok in Nigeria. The game was solely responsible for choosing these locales, and I just fleshed out the details around them. Even character names (not the call signs, however) were established in the third playthrough, and since that time I've been renaming soldiers in subsequent playthroughs to bring them in line with established characters created in my third game.

This time around I'll let the schism widen, and cease all attempts to reconcile the two branches. The Long War piece will evolve on its own. This series will just be a recounting of my seventh playthrough as it unfolds, and I'll keep it very meta and "gamey" to differentiate between the two. I will continue to try and recreate the characters in the fan fiction in game as well, but there won't be any deus ex machina interventions to ensure they attain certain ranks or avoid terrible deaths. What will be, will be. As to how the events in the game will affect the fan fiction piece, that remains to be seen. But I'm thinking that if someone dies in this seventh playthrough, then it should ripple across to the fan fiction universe, too. I'm also still determined to link the outcome of the game to the outcome of the story. I made the same resolution for campaign number six, and things looked good for the human defenders until my save file decided to take a dump and kill off my playthrough. Hrm. Meta alien intervention perhaps?

Here we go again. For the seventh time.

Stakes are high, X-Com. Time to go to work.

Next: To Be Continued

Previous: The Long War, Part XVII - Resistance

Japan

It started as an indistinct glimmer on the furthest edges of her vision. A mote in her mind's eye, she didn't really notice it until it had become a distinct flickering in the firmament of her consciousness. She could choose to ignore it, and she did - after all she was only thirteen years old, and had more pressing things to attend to. As the days went on it grew in brightness and size, and it became harder and harder to pretend that it wasn't there. She wanted to ask her mother, but she knew that she would get no answers from her. She had become accustomed to seeing and hearing and feeling things that no one else did, and she didn't want to get another of those wary, scared looks from her mother whenever she articulated them.

"Mi-chan," Chiharu would say. "Daijobu?"

Nanami never begrudged her mother these occasional moments. To Nanami her mother's love for her was inscribed in everything she did - it shone through her hands when she made her breakfast and dinner, reverberated through the timbre of her voice in her angriest moments, and radiated off her body while she slept, exhausted and worn after another long shift at work. Nanami knew that men thought her mother beautiful - they tried to hide it, but they might as well have thundered their thoughts from the rooftops. Nanami had always been uncannily perceptive - many men had flitted in and out of her mother's life, and she had always gauged their measure at first impression. She had not thought much of most of them, and she used to be brutally honest with her mother about her opinions. When her mother became upset for the third time she realized then that most people wanted the freedom to make their own mistakes, and so she ceased from offering unsolicited advice. All she could do was watch the inevitable fall, as inexorable as gravity, as another relationship hurtled back to earth and burned up on the way down. To Nanami her duty had always been clear - to pick up the shattered pieces of her mother's psyche and bind them together after every landfall. Exhausted and unhappy her mother had fallen asleep after coming home from work, and woke up to a meal prepared by her then ten year old daughter. The meal was simple and clumsily prepared, but that singular act of thoughtfulness broke down a barrier between them. Her mother burst into tears and hugged her daughter for an eternity, and from then on out they were no longer simply mother and daughter, but also partners, united together against the world. They shared the chores, talked frankly about their lives at work and at elementary school, and shared their hopes and fears with each other.

All except the dreams. When she was younger and her father was still in her life Nanami had been always been beset by the dreams. She could never remember the exact details, but many times during her life she had woken up, afraid, disorientated and screaming. Dismissed as night terrors, she'd appeared to have outgrown them, much to her mother's relief and to her father's exasperated disgust. For a brief moment of her young life Nanami was plagued with the guilt that she was responsible for driving her father away. That guilt disappeared when in a strange moment of clarity she had glimpsed into the contents of his mind, and saw a weak, self-centered man driven by petty desires and vainglorious ambitions. There was no room in that place for her mother and her, and when he finally left, she had not wasted her grief. During that time, however, Nanami had learnt to keep silent about the dreams and visions. As far as she knew, she was the only one that saw them, and sharing them only engendered fear, doubt and skepticism. She wondered if she was crazy, and she made great efforts in suppressing the dreams, or pretending not to see what she saw to herself. Perhaps it worked, because they eventually stopped.

Now thirteen and in the final year of elementary school, life had slipped into a comfortable routine for the two of them. They were not well-to-do, but they were no longer poor, either. Their situation was a far cry from what it was several years ago. Nanami recalled her mother's deep shame at being unable to provide her with a new dress for her nyugakushiki. While all the newly inducted children stood proudly in their new shoes and bright dresses, Nanami wore a plain green one piece with her old gym shoes. Later, as they walked home she had felt the shame radiating from her mother, and at first thought she had done something wrong. Once again her uncanny senses slipped past surface appearances, and she realized that the shame and anger pouring from her mother was directed inwards.

"Mama, daijobu," she said abruptly, grabbing her mother's hand. "I don't need a new dress."

Chiharu looked at her daughter with shock. "How do you do that, Mi-chan?" Her face fell. "I'm so sorry about today." Her face twisted in self-loathing. "How did I become so useless?"

Nanami burrowed her face into her mother's side. "You're not useless, Mama."

"I promise you, Mi-chan," her mother said fiercely, returning the hug. "I'll do better."

Her mother was as good as her word. The procession of men ended, and while hopeful suitors still lurked in the wings, Chiharu's energies were directed at her daughter and herself. Chiharu finally obtained her nursing qualifications, and held down a steady job with solid pay and benefits. She'd swallowed her pride, and reconnected with her estranged parents. Chiharu's mother was overjoyed to have her daughter back, and the pair were immediately reconciled with no recriminations on either side. If anything, Chiharu's mother took the brunt of the blame on herself, castigating herself as a terrible mother for letting her daughter venture into the world alone. Chiharu knew only too well how it felt to feel inadequate as a parent, and both women, generations apart, bonded instantly over their shared guilt. Chiharu's father, cut from a particularly unyielding cloth of Japanese masculinity, took longer to thaw. Once again though, Nanami's strange ability to winnow past the facades of ego came to the rescue. Beyond the rigid mazes of tatemae Nanami perceived an old man anxious and concerned about the well-being of his daughter and granddaughter but lacking the wherewithal to express it. Nanami hugged her grandfather, addressed him as ojiisan, and the walls of formality were breached, the garrison routed, and the stronghold overrun. While Chiharu and her father would never ever be as close again, the intention was there on both sides, and Nanami served as the glue that kept them civil to one other.

By the end of elementary school Chiharu and Nanami could count themselves happy and comfortable, and the gold-tinged days slipped by swiftly and effortlessly. In the waning days of school, however, the dreams began again in earnest. This time, though, Nanami did not suffer alone. When she woke up terrified in a pool of sweat, she found her mother instantly by her side. Her concerned grandparents took her to counselling and eventually to a child psychologist, and Nanami did her best to recall her dreams in quiet conversations with her mother during their bedtime rituals. She also told her mother about the strange glimmering she could see growing in strength on the horizon, as clear as a lighthouse to her eyes, but seemingly invisible to everyone else. Her recollections upon waking were improving, but this was cold comfort to Chiharu, who found herself looking at stark, sinister cartoon doodles of little grey men and tall figures in black.

"They're coming, Mama," she would say. "They're looking for people like me."

"Who's coming, Mi-chan?" her anguished mother would ask, stroking her daughter's hair softly.

Her daughter would not elaborate, and Chiharu could only reflect on Nanami's latest sketch, which depicted a many limbed hooded figure surrounded by a menagerie of fantastic creatures. This was filed away in a folder along with the rest, and shuffled along to counselors, teachers, and psychiatrists, each of whom posited their own theories and prescribed different courses of action. Solely concerned with her daughter, Chiharu only half-heartedly listened to the news of strange blinking lights in the sky that began to fill print and media in the same year. She ignored the bombast surrounding the creation of some kind of multi-national task force based in Japan, and the Prime Minister's attempts to justify the nation's new interventionist stance. Politicians and their promises were so far removed from the minutiae of her life that they faded to the background, mere ambient noise behind the more strident notes of day to day living. It was only while waiting in traffic along the Chugoku Highway with Nanami that the correlation struck home with the force of a thunderbolt. They, along with many Japanese commuters on their way to Osaka, had watched with stunned disbelief as a sleek silver saucer streaked parallel to the highway, slowed its velocity, and land somewhere ahead of them. Traffic ground to a halt, and amazed commuters left their cars, craned their necks and peered ahead, trying to get a glimpse of the grounded craft. Chiharu was among them, until she felt Nanami's hand tugging on her own.

"Mama, we have to go," her daughter had said, urgency flashing in her eyes. "They're here."

Next: To Be Continued

Previous: The Long War, Part XVIII - Awakening

Several kilometres from Yarmouk a large convoy of UN trucks laden with food, supplies and fresh drinking water waited in a depot guarded by Syrian government forces. In and among the halted vehicles was a makeshift camp populated by idle UN staff. Tents, makeshift shelters, hammocks and fold-out chairs and tables festooned the spaces around the trucks, and in and around the nooks and crannies laptops and electronic devices of all kinds played wildly different forms of media to bored men and women lounging in the heat.

Mesmer, Syncaine and Azuriel sat in the shade of a tarp at the edge of the camp, watching a stocky Scottish woman berate a pair of Arab soldiers. McMasters was nominally charge of the relief mission, and whoever had picked her had done a good job - she was fearless in the face of guns and glowering soldiers, and the force of her personality and her belief in the righteousness of her cause was usually enough to bulldoze aside any obstacle in her path. That was before Syria, however. Today she was haranguing the government soldiers for stealing UN supplies from the stalled trucks. Two young soldiers stood shame-faced before the onslaught, before finally fleeing for the safety of their barracks.

"She's a firecracker," said Syncaine laconically. He rubbed the growing stubble of his beard, and took another sip of water.

"It won't do much good," replied Azuriel. He was laying on his back half-dozing in the sweltering heat. "The guards grab stuff during the night when everyone is asleep."

"Yeah, I know."

Mesmer looked at the bottle Syncaine was drinking from. "Did you take that from the trucks?"

Syncaine shrugged. "Everyone else was, so I thought why not?"

Mesmer sighed and shook her head. They'd been in a holding pattern for two weeks now, waiting with the stranded UN supply trucks for a call that would probably never come. The UN had come to Syria with supplies and good intentions, but their attempts to supply the refugees trapped in the Yarmouk district had been stonewalled by the government's refusal to allow them access to the so-called neutral zone. The civil war was in its fifth year, and every year more and more nations joined the carnage. Despite the presence of blinking lights in the sky - despite the incident in Nigeria - despite the meltdown in France - the war in Syria continued unabated. The conflict in the desert had a timeless quality about it. It was a sand-blasted, arid and parched purgatory, and every year the dead and the hollow eyed were replaced by a limitless supply of more men, women and children destined for similar fates. The deserts of the Middle East was where the hopes for peace and prosperity came to die - yet, even in this blasted landscape, the olive trees dug their roots stubbornly in the flimsy soil, and the doves returned year after year, seemingly oblivious to the desolation around them and the shattered, desiccated bones of their forebears.

The Scot stomped over to the lounging X-Com soldiers, and her eyes immediately locked onto Syncaine's purloined bottle of water. "You took that from the trucks," she said accusingly.

Syncaine shrugged.

"Unbelievable." She walked off angrily, the tension in her shoulders clearly evident.

"I think she likes you, Syn," Azuriel observed.

"Lucky me," replied Syncaine. They knew the real source of McMaster's frustration came from not having any authority over the X-Com operatives. They'd been inserted into the UN aid mission by order of the Secretary-General, and all McMasters ever received was a memo signed by Ban Ki-Moon ordering her to give the squad every form of assistance at her disposal. Nominally the squad were UN observers reporting on the status of the temporary cease fire between all combatants in Damascus. The reality, however, was far different.

It was EXALT's presence in Syria that X-Com was interested in most. The newest player in the volatile and deadly game of international terrorism, EXALT had apparently begun as mercenaries for the jihadists, but had rapidly expanded, in some cases appearing to subsume substantial parts of both the ISIS and al-Qaeda networks. That did not concern X-Com directly - for them the biggest concern was the growing evidence that EXALT was being armed with alien tech. Kurd rebel forces claimed to possess cadavers bearing indisputable signs of genetic modification, and they had approached Mossad with a deal - they would turn them over if the refugees in Yarmouk were supplied. And so here they were.

Today, though, the war against the aliens was on dangerous ground. Azuriel, Syncaine and Mesmer were all Israeli, and their presence on the ground was a closely kept secret. No commander in their right mind would have ever considered deploying Jews in Syria, given the decades long enmity between the two nations, but X-Com's hands were tied - the Kurdish rebels had deep historical ties with Mossad, and they would only deal with the representatives of the Israeli secret service. So when Mossad was offered the deal, they relayed it on to X-Com command through Mesmer.

"So, you're a spy, Mesmer?" Bradford had asked after the briefing concluded.

"I'm a patriot, General," the scout-sniper replied. "Just like you."

"Any more patriots like you on the strike force? In the task force?"

"We have patriots from all over the world, General," she had replied.

It was a running joke that the X-Com strike force was made up exclusively of spies. No one had taken the unit seriously in its inception, and it was joked that the only people who applied for the strike force were intelligence officers for their respective nations looking to keep tabs on the movement of the international force. Mesmer knew she was a spy, but the fact that she had been ordered to reveal herself meant that Mossad no longer felt the need for subterfuge within X-Com. Her superiors in Mossad told her that Jeromai was an FSB officer, and she suspected that either Bhagpuss or Tremayne reported to British MI6. Even Bradford probably reported every X-Com movement to his superiors in the US Army. There was nothing secret about X-Com - every move it made was reported to a dozen intelligence agencies shortly after it acted. Yet somehow the coalition limped on, acting on an ad hoc basis and moving under its own inertia.

An olive skinned woman wearing a hijabemerged from one of the distant tents and walked towards the Israeli trio.

"What's happening, Saylah?" Azuriel called out from his bunk.

"Same story." The Saudi Arabian spoke in perfect British English. "Nothing. Assad won't budge. Neither will the Kurds."

"The aliens are laughing their asses off at us," Mesmer said suddenly. "Look at us. Humanity is a fucking joke. Maybe we should just let them take over."

Azuriel laughed mirthlessly, his eyes hooded. "Maybe they should."

"Worried about the Palestinians, Mesmer?" Saylah asked. "Uncommon sentiment from your people, isn't it?"

"Are you picking a fight, Saylah? Or just being a bitch as usual?"

"I have no problems with Palestinians," Azuriel grunted. "As long as they stay out of our country, and leave us in peace."

"And if they don't?"

"As the good book says," Azuriel replied, eyes steadily fixed on the Saudi woman. "An eye for an eye."

"Here comes the sarge," Syncaine commented, smoothly cutting off the Arab woman's rebuke. Two more figures approached the throng of operators gathered under the tarp. One was a short, well-built Japanese soldier, while his companion was a large hulking bear of a man. The Japanese soldier, Okami, was the most respected squad leader of the task force. His marksmanship was second to none, and he was the founder and chief instructor of the impromptu sniper school founded in Tanegashima for new X-Com recruits. He led two squads in Ogbomosho during the African crisis, and fought in the week long battle to keep the chryssalids contained within the city. His companion was another respected soldier. Jeromai was a 40 year old plus veteran of the First and Second Chechen Wars. The Russian cut an intimidating figure with his massive build and piercing blue eyes. He rarely spoke, but every utterance was issued with the force of a command. The two of them were an unlikely pair, but together they were an effective command element for the X-Com platoon known as Shirogumi, or White Team.

"Get your gear together," Okami said in his clipped, strange English. "We're moving out in 10."

"What changed?" Saylah queried.

Okami shrugged. "Assad won't move. Neither will the PYD. But the local commander has come to an agreement with the leader of the opposition forces in the Yarmouk area. He says we can deliver the supplies today."

Syncaine looked skeptical. "I don't like it."

"Neither do I," Azuriel agreed. "No official sanction from up high is an invitation for a gigantic clusterfuck."

Okami nodded. "I understand. However, the local commander is willing to provide an escort and accompany the convoy to Yarmouk. He says that he has negotiated a ceasefire."

"Do you trust him?"

"He's coming with us, so he is willing to bet his life on it. It's good enough for me. Otherwise we have to wait here longer. Maybe forever."

"Are we going in geared? Or as UN observers?" Syncaine again.

Jeromai answered the question. "I insisted that if we're going to go in on his word then we would go in armed, just as a precaution. Our UN credentials won't mean anything if someone starts shooting."

"What about al-Nusra? What happens if they show up?" Mesmer asked. The ceasefire between the government and the rebels did not apply to al-Nusra, the militant arm of al-Qaeda, nor did it apply to ISIS.

Jeromai looked at Okami, and shrugged. "Then we kill them."

Next: To Be Continued

Previous: X-Com War Diaries, Part I - Long War Incomplete

So here I go again, starting campaign number seven of the Long War. Because of the fiasco of the corrupted save file I'm not going to play Ironman mode any longer, but instead just save my progress regularly on different files to avoid meeting a similar fate. It will still be an Ironman playthrough with no reloads, so if someone gets snuffed they're going to stay snuffed. As with the last campaign I'll be playing on Classic difficulty. I've chosen the Kiryu-Kai starting perk which gives me a max level soldier at the outset of the campaign. I was hoping for a male soldier so I could remake Takeda, the strike force's de facto leader on the ground, but RNG gave me a girl instead. She was immediately christened Hatakeyama, and it would be she, not Takeda, who would be leading the strike force in this version of the X-Com universe. I play with full squad sizes already enabled, so the team goes into combat with eight soldiers by default. This, combined with Hatakeyama's sniping skills, ensures that the first months of the campaign are comparatively easy for the fledgling force before it starts to ramp up in difficulty. The maxed sniper is an insurance policy against the bumbling shots taken by my rookies in the early game, and she always shoots last as the weapon of last resort.

X-Com's March 2016 report.

Unlike X-Com 2, I have no direct control over the nationality and gender of the rookies I recruit, which means that replicating the cast of my third playthrough is up to RNG. I can play with the INI file to adjust the percentage chances of someone coming from a particular nation, but it's still up to Lady Luck as to whether they arrive or not, and if they join the force as a man or a woman. I can stack the odds, however, by creative tinkering - by reducing the cost of new recruits to 0 and increasing my initial allotment of soldiers from 40 to 100 I get enough men and women from the nations I want. This could be considered cheating, but I'm not exploiting it to have an infinite well of soldiers - I'm just trying to get a certain number of people of specific nationalities and genders to recreate my original cast of characters. Once I had all the characters recreated I dismissed all but 40 soldiers, and raised the price of new recruits back to its original cost before starting the campaign proper.

The status of the X-Com base at the end of March 2016. The Foundry unlocks powerful upgrades, which is why it was high on my construction priority list.

Once my cast was re-assembled it was time to start the campaign. The month of March 2016 saw five UFOs entering Japanese air space. X-Com were able to shoot down two scouts by setting the interceptors on aggressive posture, but a third scout escaped. A large unknown UFO flew over China, and I let it pass unmolested - at this stage of the game our interceptors are only viable against scouts, and sending interceptors against these bogeys only meant sending them to their deaths. The fifth UFO was a medium sized unknown contact, which I suspected was a raider, but it was scanning for our satellite over Japan so I had to send an interceptor up to harass it. In the Long War if you do enough damage you can make a UFO abort its mission even if you don't shoot it down, and luckily in this case the interceptor was able to land a couple of hits with its Avalanche missiles. Those hits were enough to make it abort its mission, and it saved the satellite over Japan from being shot down.

Russia was the first nation to withdraw from the X-Com project in this playthrough.

On the geopolitical front X-Com lost Russia early in March. There's nothing you can do about this - in every playthrough you will always lose a nation in the first month, and it represents the aliens establishing their initial base of operations. In the Long War you don't lose until all the nations have withdrawn from the Council, and you can liberate the nations by assaulting the bases. So the question is how much pain can you take in the march up to the Temple mission, and for me what really kills me and makes me abandon campaigns is losing characters I've build up an affinity with. I've never actually lost a game per se - I just start cheating to save my soldiers, felt like shit for doing it, then abandoned the campaign.

In March X-Com conducted seven missions - four abduction missions, two UFO crash recovery missions, and one Council mission. The strike force suffered no casualties or critically wounded, but several soldiers sustained light wounds which put them out of action for 2-3 weeks. The Council mission was the one in which the squad is required to escort Dr. Hongo Marazuki out of the hot zone, and my familiarity with this map and mission made it a piece of cake. The aliens in the first month are composed of sectoids, drones, and thin men, and the pods are still of a manageable size, ranging from 2-4, which made it easy to decimate them once they were aggroed. Bad things happen in X-Com when you let the enemy shoot back, so X-Com 101 is to aggro pods singly, then wipe them out before they have the chance to return fire. In the late game this becomes increasingly difficult due to enemy durability and the size of the pods - in the mid-game pods average 6-8 aliens, while late game sees your squad aggroing pods of 8-10 aliens. The size of the pods are dependent on the aliens' strategic status. In the Long War the aliens tech up, too, and this is done by completing UFO missions and establishing bases all over Earth. X-Com has to harass the UFOs and take back countries if possible, otherwise alien tech level goes through the roof and you'll be finding yourself fighting increasing numbers aliens with ridiculous health pools and numerous combat perks.

Our starting base is in a remote location south-west of Japan.

For now, though, this is the happy time for my new recruits - there were no deaths to report in March. I need these neophytes to level up fast, and become big bad asses ASAP. I also built two SHIVS as my first purchases - SHIVs have so much more value in the Long War than in vanilla, because they are tougher than raw recruits, and they don't suffer from soldier fatigue. Troops in the Long War have to rest for approximately 4-6 days between missions. Soldiers who don't rest will suffer a light combat wound and be out for about a week or more, which means that in a pinch you can deploy a soldier in back to back mission, but then they will need extended time off afterwards. SHIVs circumvent this requirement as long as they are not damaged, and can be fielded mission after mission. A player's effective health pool is their native health plus armor, and if damage taken exceeds armor then it translates into longer turnaround times for both soldiers and SHIVs. Fatigue means that you need to cultivate two, three, even four squads and squad leaders to ensure that X-Com is always ready to go on missions. This is why my cast in the Long War fiction piece is so big. If I was writing about vanilla X-Com or X-Com 2 I would always bring the same squaddies, and substitutions would only occur in the event of injury or death. In the Long War I have to have a minimum of three squads plus reserves, and they all need to be built up carefully in order to handle the numerous threats coming our way.

Next: The Long War, Part III - April 2016

Previous: X-Com War Diaries, Part II - March 2016

In April 2016 Japan was visited by seven UFOs. This time around five of the visitors were medium sized raiders, along with one scout and an abductor. X-Com interceptors were able to shoot down the scout and one of the raiders. The abductor, on the other hand, was a large UFO that conducts abduction missions all over the world, and the best strategy for these is to let them land and deal with the abduction mission rather than trying to shoot them down. At this stage of the game our interceptors are no match for them, and the best early air game strategy is to save the planes for scouts and "scanning" UFOs. UFO-10 was one such "scanning" raider and I scrambled a plane just to try to inflict enough damage to save my satellite over Japan. Much to my surprise the plane landed hit after hit and shot the UFO down.

X-Com's monthly report for April 2016.

The second raider landed and was subsequently boarded by X-Com troops. Crash recoveries and UFO assaults are crucial not only for the supplies of alloys, meld, elerium and UFO components they provide, but also because raiding a UFO successfully unlocks research into that particular UFO type. Successful research projects makes that particular craft more vulnerable to terrestrial fighters, as well increasing the yield of supplies from subsequent salvage and recovery missions. The two raiders X-Com was able to secure meant that these craft were now fair game for our air force, and it would be these contacts that we would target specifically in the future, along with the fragile scouts.

Base status at the end of April 2016. The Officer Training School has been established, and our engineers are burrowing deep to exploit the steam vents. In addition we are building workshops and using the adjacency bonuses of the Foundry and the Repair Bay to boost its efficacy.

April was a busier month for X-Com's ground forces. They conducted five abduction missions, two UFO crash recoveries and one UFO assault (UFO-11). In addition we also had our first terror mission in China, and a DLC mission, Portent, in France, for a total of 10 missions in April. The terror mission re-introduced an old but familiar foe in the chryssalid, while Portent squared X-Com off against more thin men dropping out of the sky. Experience once again paid off as our teams completed all the missions successfully. It was not without cost, however, as this month X-Com suffered three casualties. During a crash recovery Lopez was killed by outsider fire while cowering behind low cover. In an abduction mission in Australia Ortiz died from overwatch fire from a thin man while attempting to cross some train tracks. Inoue died in completely avoidable circumstances from floater overwatch fire. She was a scout and had the Lightning Reflexes perk, which imposed a massive to-hit penalty on the first shot, and a lesser, but still imposing penalty on subsequent shots. While dashing forward she was shot at by two floaters in overwatch - the first missed, and the second killed her with a 16% shot.

The first casualties of the X-Com project.

Her death wasn't bad luck, however, because it could have been entirely circumvented. If I'd used my snipers to clear the skies before moving her forward she wouldn't have been shot at at all. Instead I played the odds, and lost. Inoue's death is on me. In fact, all of the operatives suffered entirely avoidable deaths - Ortiz shouldn't have been bounding across open spaces like that - that's what scouts are for - and I shouldn't be letting outsiders take potshots at Lopez. Outsiders and thin men become increasingly dangerous as the campaign progresses and they start picking up skills and perks. Thin men in the mid-game become snipers with the Squad Sight perk - that is, they can shoot at anyone their side can see. Ever been shot by a sniper you can't see in X-Com? It happens in the Long War. Outsiders aren't quite as dangerous, but they're tremendously durable because they regenerate health in the Long War, and so every UFO breach needs to be accompanied by numbers and flashbangs. By mid-game outsiders can't be suppressed anymore (because most of them start having the Lightning Reflexes perk) so the flashbang remains the only sure fire way of locking one down. Lopez facing an outsider in a one on one high noon showdown was a losing proposition, and should never happen again.

Inoue, moments before her death. In the next turn she would brave the overwatch fire of two floaters, and was killed by the second shooter by a 16% shot.

Nonetheless April was still a good month for X-Com despite the loss of three soldiers. Several soldiers achieved the rank of Corporal and earned their callsigns:

Hugo "Murf" Cervantes, Infantry, Spain

Hiroshi "Tengu" Hara, Infantry, Japan

Junichiro "Akuma" Ishikawa, Scout, Japan

Tatiana "Eva" Ivanova, Sniper, Russia

Miguel-Angel "Graev" Maestas, Sniper, Mexico

Aiko "Oni" Okamoto, Grenadier, Japan

Bridget "Syl" Roche, Sniper, France

Paoquan "Dacheng" Tsang, Sniper, China

Late April saw the establishment of the Officer School, and three soldiers were promoted to Lieutenant based on their Will scores:

Lieutenant Hugo "Murf" Cervantes

Lieutenant Yuri "Tenshi" Hatakeyama

Lieutenant Bridget "Syl" Roche

All three officers were given the Stay Frosty perk, which reduces the rest time required by soldiers under their command. This shrinks the downtime from 4-5 days to 3-4, which allows them to be redeployed faster after each mission. These three are my new squad leaders.

Most of the UFO activity in April centered around Asia, as can be seen by the commensurate rise in panic levels within the region.

On an unrelated note I just found out that the Mexican Constitution prohibits Mexico from sending troops out on UN peacekeeping missions unless at war with the belligerent. This doesn't affect my campaign in the slightest, but it does affect my fan fiction piece, because one of my characters - Chestnut, who deployed in the Ogbomosho story - was originally Mexican. I'm going to have to remove the Mexican troops from my story. As for the Mexicans in the campaign they'll stick around, but I'll be removing Mexico from the pool of recruitable countries in the INI file.

Next: TBC

Previous: X-Com War Diaries, Part III - April 2016

In May 2016 X-Com detected six UFOs, shot down three and completely destroyed one. Destroyed craft cannot be recovered (obviously), but they award a cash bounty from the Council instead. All four kills were scout class UFOs. The other two UFOs were an abductor and a raider. The abductor was allowed to land, and X-Com troops foiled the abduction attempt that followed. The raider, on the other hand, could not be intercepted due to lack of interceptors. They'd all taken licks taking down the scouts, and none were available to harass the raider, which, to make matters worse, was actively scanning. Shortly afterwards my fears were confirmed when it shot down the satellite over Japan.

Monthly report for X-Com at the close of May 2016. Two countries have left the project, and panic is rising in Asia.

The loss of the Japanese satellite meant that there were no satellites in orbit around the Earth, and as such no more UFO contacts could be reported. The only missions X-Com would be getting would be abductions, terror missions, and Council missions. You can't subsist on abduction missions alone, as successful completion only awards money - UFO crash recoveries and assaults bring back substantial amounts of elerium, meld, alloys and UFO components like flight computers and power sources, all of which are crucial for R&D and manufacturing. In addition satellites generate income and ameliorate panic so it was imperative that we reestablish coverage as soon as possible. Also if you leave the UFOs unharassed they will be able to complete their nefarious missions, which means they tech up, and you will find yourself fighting tougher and tougher opponents on the battlefield.

Our strategy was to create a network of workshops so as to heavily subsidize production costs from June onwards.

My original plan was to create enough uplinks and satellites so that prior to the end of the next month (June 2016) we would be able to launch several satellites simultaneously to coincide with the beginning of the new funding cycle in July. My strategy was to invest heavily in building workshops and structures which gave adjacency bonuses so that all manufacturing from May onwards would have a substantial discount. Once all the workshops were in play I would be close to a 50% discount of all manufactured goods (workshops are subject to diminishing returns). The infrastructure was laid down in the months between March and May, and from June onwards money would be spent on churning out satellites, arms, armor, and whatever else X-Com would need. For those unfamiliar with the Long War, satellite spam is not a feasible strategy at the start of the game, because satellite numbers are limited by the number of engineers in the base. In the Long War building workshops do not increase the number of engineers - rather they are acquired through missions and Council requests, and there is nothing you can do to increase the rate at which you acquire them.

Because of this bottleneck I could focus either on building laboratories, researching foundry projects, or creating workshops, and I chose the latter. My plan was to launch four satellites just before the end of June 2016, and presto, full satellite coverage over Asia with the income to boot. That was the plan anyway - the aliens screwed that up when they began bombing, harvesting and generally terrorizing the shit out of China. Without satellite coverage I couldn't see the UFOs coming and going - all I got were text lines saying "heavy UFO activity over China" and "A UFO has bombed targets in China, increasing panic", followed by a declaration at the end of the month that China had withdrawn from the X-Com project.

Doh.

That's not part of the plan, dude.

In May X-Com conducted 12 missions - five abductions, three crash recoveries, one terror mission, one Council mission, one DLC mission and one EXALT mission. The terror mission was in China - when the aliens want a country they hammer it with raiders, abductors, and terror vessels to raise its panic levels and force it out of the Council. If I had a satellite to spare I could have probably held China, because satellites overhead increases a country's panic threshold. I didn't have a satellite in reserve, and the combined UFO activity was too much for the poor Chinese, who probably wrote off X-Com in disgust and made a deal with the visitors.

The Council mission was another familiar one, requiring X-Com to extract Peter Van Doorn and his aide. The DLC mission was Friends in Low Places, which introduced "Chilong" Zhang and began the Operation Slingshot DLC arc. Both missions went off without a hitch - I've played both so many times now - and added three new soldiers - Zhang, Doorn and Friendly - to the roster. We only suffered one casualty in May, and it occurred during the terror mission in China. I idiotically pushed up Mason too far after wiping out a pod of chryssalids, and aggroed a second. We had nothing left to deal with the second pod - all I could do was pull back as far as I could, and pray. No one was listening, and poor Mason paid the price for her commander's carelessness. The rest of the squad then had to deal with the sight of Mason rising up as an embryo-implanted zombie. Syria's Jabour did the honours of putting her zombified corpse down for good. This mission also marked the debut of laser rifles, but it was tarnished by the fact that one of those rifles had to be pulled from Mason's bloodied corpse. Just goes to show that all the tech in the world can't save you if your commander is a moron.

EXALT also made their debut this month, siphoning off a significant chunk of X-Com's money in their very first mission. EXALT can be a pain in the ass, with their ability to steal funds, raise panic or disrupt research, but they're also a good way of training X-Com troops against mediocre opposition. Some of the missions can become quite challenging due to the number of EXALT troops present, but tactical use of the arrays can go a long way in mitigating their numbers. Hacking the arrays in missions disarms every EXALT trooper on the map for one turn, giving you time and space to wipe them out. I always use fast assault operatives with the Run and Gun perk so they can dash between arrays and hack them on back to back turns on maps where this is possible. Doing this triggers all the pods on the entire map sometimes, but even of you have 12-15 EXALT surrounding your squad it's not a problem as long as they can't fire their weapons. You just have to watch out for grenades and the, ahem, occasional rocket launcher. I learned this the hard way in previous campaigns, and now heavies are priority targets in our kill order.

10 EXALT in sight, but thanks to our operative, none of them can shoot...

That's our team's cue to enter the area with reckless abandon and slaughter the whole lot of them.

More soldiers earned their callsigns:

Akif "Arcturus" Ahmadzai, Gunner, Pakistan
Maria "Keen" Archuleta, Grenadier, Mexico
Peter "The General" van Doorn, Infantry, US

Brett "Izlain" Favre, Grenadier, US
Glenn "Freaky" Friendly, Infantry, US

Oleg "Jeromai" Kurnakov, Sniper, Russia

Jack "Coreus" Shearer, Assault, Australia
Shaojie "Chilong" Zhang, Scout, China

Not a single satellite orbits the globe at the end of May 2016.

Did I mention that Mexicans can't go on peace keeping missions because of their constitution? I've got more of them on the way because RNG allocated several Mexicans to my initial pool of soldiers. Fidelity to reality be damned, however, because they're kicking ass - three of my best soldiers in-game are Mexicans, but if they transition into the fan fiction piece they're going to turn Spanish or Argentinian to conform with established patterns of UN contributions in real life. Also "Coreus" Shearer was the first X-Com soldier who died in my fan fiction story. In this universe I made him an assault soldier, because assault soldiers and scouts have the lowest life expectancy out of all the classes I play, and I fully expected him to die. So far the tough bastard has led a charmed life, and has survived being flanked, eating a grenade from a muton, and being shot at from all sides. There's always the dark temptation to suicide him, so as to make the death roll conform to the written narrative I've made. But my last few campaigns have illustrated the folly of that approach, and actually pressures me to reload results which don't conform to the story I want to tell. This time the game is driving, and if this causes my game to diverge further from the story I'm writing then so be it. For now "Coreus" Shearer is alive and well, which is two months longer than his counterpart in the original campaign from which the fan fiction piece is based on.

Next: TBC

Previous: X-Com War Diaries, Part IV - May 2016

With no satellite coverage X-Com was blind for most of the month. My lack of foresight in keeping a satellite in reserve cost me dearly - UFO activity over Japan must have hit an all time high, as the country left the country mid-month. Despite our lack of satellite coverage X-Com was able to detect two UFOs - one over Nigeria, and another one over Japan. Stationing interceptors in a country gives you a small chance of detecting UFOs without satellite coverage, which explains how X-Com detected the Japanese bogey, but don't ask me how we were able to pick up the contact over Nigeria. At any rate there was nothing X-Com could do about the Nigerian contact, which was scanning for God knows what. The Japanese contact (UFO-20) was also scanning, but it seemed like in vain, as the aliens had already shot down the satellite over Japan. Nonetheless we were determined to shoot it down in order to be able to research it (researched UFO craft take more damage and yield more salvage). The bogey was incredibly tough - I had to scramble all four of our planes to bring it down. It also destroyed one of our jets in the process. But bring it down we did, and the alien fighter's secrets were soon laid bare by Vahlen's research.

By the end of June 2016 Japan had also left the Council, taking the total to three.

My original plan had been to make a simultaneous launch with four satellites at the end of June to blanket the continent of Asia. With Japan and China down that plan was no longer feasible, and so we switched continents, launching three satellites over the US, Canada and Mexico respectively. Establishing coverage over North America gave X-Com a discount on the purchase and maintenance of interceptors. Our fourth satellite was launched over South Africa, with an eye towards eventually securing the African continental bonus in the future.

By the end of June 2016 all our workshops plus supporting adjacencies had been constructed, giving X-Com an unmodified 55% discount (3 workshops at 10%, plus 5 adjacency bonuses at 5% each). Diminishing returns dropped this bonus down to about 35%, however.

From experience I knew that this would be the hardest month of the early game. Pod size and enemy types were still manageable, but the crunch would come from the increasing frequency of missions plus the two back to back DLC missions that would come at the end of the month. In all my Long War playthroughs the final two missions of the Operation Slingshot DLC always occurred at the end of June and early July, separated by a few days, and this time was no exception. Everything I did in that month was geared towards gearing and preparing a squad of troops for those two missions. The first mission was Confounding Light, and it was a timed mission along the length of a train in a deserted train station. Experience once again allowed me to complete this mission without a hitch - I've played it several times already, and so I knew a squad of snipers and scouts supported by SHIVs and a single assault would suffice to clear out the thin men and mutons dropping in from the sky.

Prelude to the toughest mission in the early game, as an alien battleship looms large over Hong Kong.

The last mission of the DLC was a different thing altogether. Knowing the map and drop patterns was a definite advantage in avoiding nasty surprises, but success in this mission would be determined in the big engagements in either the first or second antechambers. Ideally my squad would have liked to creep forward and kill enemy pods methodically and in isolation, but in most of the games I've played the shit always hits the fan as we cross the massive rooms. As soon as my squad gets into a contact it's a race against time to wipe out the pods - invariably more and more pods arrive, and it's not uncommon to be squaring off against 10-12 aliens in these large rooms. What makes it worse is that the cyberdisks debut in this mission, and they're very difficult to kill with the weapons we have at this point. The mission was going swimmingly until we ran into a big pod of mutons which we couldn't kill in one turn. The very next turn a pod containing two cyberdisks arrived, and everything went south fast. The mutons were upgraded versions, and "Jeromai" Kurnakov was killed on his sniping perch by a 26% shot by an overwatching muton with the Covering Fire perk. Jeromai was perched on high, he had cover bonuses from the Damned Good Ground perk, and it was his bloody turn - regardless, when he tried to shoot a muton it shot first because of Covering Fire, and killed him with a low percentage shot.

Fuck. I really, really wanted to keep Jeromai alive because it was his X-Com series that inspired me to start mine. It would have been a nice homage to the man, but sadly it wasn't meant to be - I've already abandoned a previous campaign because I was cheating to keep him and Tenshi alive. This time I gritted my teeth, and kept trucking on.

Things would only get worse. Most of my damage was now coming from Tenshi and Akuma - my sniper and scout respectively - with two gunners in the front trying gamely to lock down the cyberdisks with suppression. Another gunner fell - this time it was Arcturus, who ate a plasma bolt to the face. Another blogger down. I was looking down the barrel of a squad wipe. Tenshi and Akuma were laying down accurate fire, but they had to chew through two cyberdisks, several mutons, as well as drones and a few floaters I hadn't been able to kill. The only thing keeping the two shooters alive were my two grenadiers - Keen and Oni - who kept popping smoke to cover them. Somehow we survived several turns of enemy return fire and managed to whittle the enemy force down to manageable proportions. When the firefight was over three X-Com lay dead, but the field was ours.

The fight wasn't over by any means. We still had to destroy the remaining conduits on the battleship, and I debated whether to press on, or to cut my losses and run. I decided to see it to the end - if we wiped I most likely would have abandoned the campaign for the seventh time. We didn't however - the tattered remains of the squad were able to inch forward, kill the remaining pods of thin men, destroy the conduits, and secure the battleship. The question of whether I have it in me to continue the campaign in the face of a full squad wipe of my favorite soldiers will have to wait another day.

At the conclusion of Operation Gangplank 39 aliens die at the cost of three X-Com soldiers.

The Memorial of the Fallen. Three more names - "Jeromai" Kurnakov, "Arcturus" Ahmadzai and Ghaffar - are added to the list.

In addition to the two DLC missions X-Com completed nine other missions - five abductions, one EXALT mission, one terror mission, one recovery (UFO-20, the fighter which had shot down one of my interceptors) and one Council mission which required us to disarm an alien bomb. Four more X-Com soldiers were promoted to Corporal and earned their call signs. The survivors of Gangplank - "Tenshi" Hatakeyama, "Akuma" Ishikawa, "Syncaine" Ben-David, "Keen" Archuleta, and "Oni" Okamoto - are also building nice back stories for themselves. Time will tell how many of them will survive the war.

Next: X-Com War Diaries, Part VI - July 2016

Previous: X-Com War Diaries, Part V - June 2016

My favorite soldier through the recurring campaigns has always been Shingen "Okami" Takeda. Unimaginatively named after a famous Japanese daimyo during the Sengokujidai, he has always been the name of my Kiryu-Kai Master Sergeant - the maximum level soldier you receive if you pick this Japanese starting perk - and he was my proxy in this virtual world. Come on, who doesn't want to be the bad ass leader of a troop of bad ass soldiers defending the world? No one else? Just me? Alright, fine. So I'm immature.

X-Com monthly report for July 2016.

In this version of the X-Com universe, he wasn't my first Master Sergeant - "Tenshi" Hatakeyama received that distinction due to RNG - but I thought, hey, I can choose my best Japanese rookie, and through careful leveling, recreate the badass that was Takeda. There have been six iterations of Takeda, and I was hoping the seventh would emulate and even surpass the heroics of his brethren.

More generators were constructed this month by X-Com's engineers.

Anyway, he's dead. He died along with "Eldaeriel" Alonso on an abduction mission that went bad. Once again cyberdisks proved how much of a menace they are, atomizing both soldiers with its main cannon. Normally we can lock down these menaces with snipers using Disabling Shot or by suppressing them, but I was caught badly out of position due to a faulty assumption on my part. I assumed a tiny sliver of darkness we bypassed was clear of enemies, but it wasn't, and when the cyberdisk and its cohorts came storming out of the black my squad was strung out and scattered. By the time we were able to recover both soldiers were dead.

With the death of Takeda, the mantle of leadership falls to "Tenshi" Hatakeyama.

There is an upside. If I can keep going without my proxy, then chances are good that I can see this through to the bitter end. I have been very disciplined in preserving the integrity of this playthrough - I haven't reloaded once. I had such high hopes and heroic story arcs for Jeromai and Okami, too. The war goes on, though, and more caskets are sent home to grieving virtual widows and orphans. The complete casualty list for July is as follows:

Cristina "Eldaeriel" Alonso, Spain
Emma Boyer, France
Changwei Feng, China
Chloe "Spinks" Leroy, France
Samar Sadr, Syria
Shingen "Okami" Takeda, Japan
Leah Tyler, UK

The death toll continues to mount.

This takes our casualty count to 14, and the mounting toll is a cause for concern. If I can be so callous, losing rookies is not a problem - losing soldiers ranked corporal or above is. Between Okami, Eldaeriel and Spinks we lost a lot of veteran experience which will take time to replace. In addition to the fallen soldiers we also lost both SHIVs. This wasn't as bad, as both SHIVs were obsolete - we were in the process of creating alloy SHIVs which are a significant upgrade. Nonetheless there is still cause for optimism, thanks to the battleship we were able to capture at the beginning of the month. The soldiers were outfitted with carapace armor for the first time, and six more soldiers earned their call signs. Upgrades to the Officer School meant that Hatakeyama was promoted to Captain and two new lieutenants - Jack "Coreus" Shearer and Hiroshi "Tengu" Hara - were inducted. Coreus continues to defy all odds. In another reality his interred remains have lain under ground for months now. In this one he is an X-Com officer.

Coverage now extends over both the north and south Americas, as well as over Egypt and Nigeria. Only the US has interceptors, however, which meant that all X-Com can do is observe.

Another country withdrew from the Council after being bombed, raided and harassed by the invaders. India was the fourth nation to leave the X-Com project, and the skies were becoming increasingly unfriendly. After the silence of the previous month, with several satellites now up in the air the X-Com board became lit up like a Christmas tree. 13 contacts were tracked this month, and only two were shot down or destroyed. A scout was destroyed over Mexico, and a raider was shot down in the US. Two UFOs - both raiders - landed and were assaulted and secured by X-Com. The remaining nine UFOs were able to conduct whatever nefarious activities they were doing unmolested. We had a bunch of satellites, but not enough planes to cover all the nations. An alien fighter (UFO-33) shot down the satellite over South Africa.

India withdraws from the Council.

On the ground X-Com conducted 12 missions - four abductions, one UFO recovery, two UFO assaults, three EXALT missions, one Council mission and one terror mission. Our mounting losses did not stop us from completing all the missions successfully. The tactical focus this month was the capture of live alien specimens for Dr. Vahlen. Capturing and interrogating aliens have a dual purpose in the Long War. Firstly, each alien species provides research credits which significantly reduce research times in their particular field of expertise. Secondly, captured alien weapons provide plasma cores, which are an essential part of constructing Tier 5 plasma weapons. One core equals one weapon, so there is cause to capture duplicate specimens, if only to acquire their weapons.

X-Com operatives close in on a muton, looking to take it alive. Its weapon has been disabled by a sniper's Disabling Shot. A floater has already been stunned nearby. This particular muton would not go down to the arc thrower, and had to be killed.

Capturing aliens is a dangerous and frustrating exercise because arc throwers - stun guns - have such short ranges and approximately 50% success rates in the Long War. An alien on three bars of health has a 42% chance of being stunned - an alien on two bars has 48%, and an alien on one bar has 54%. Our standard M.O. is to isolate an alien by killing its comrades, corral it with flashbangs, suppression and Disabling Shots, then approach it with engineers kitted with arc throwers. The troops use pistols to whittle down its health, preferably down to one bar, before our intrepid engineer zaps it with an arc thrower. If possible I also like to have the commanding officer nearby to use their Command ability. The Command ability gives your soldiers an extra move, so if at first the stun doesn't succeed the officer can use Command to give the engineer a second chance at stunning the alien. This still doesn't guarantee success, and I can't count the number of times a pistol shot that was supposed to nick or graze an alien down to one or two bars accidentally turned into a crit and ended up killing the mark.

An outsider isolated outside its spacecraft, surrounded by grim faced X-Com operatives and an alloy SHIV.

In the month of June Changwei Feng from China was the first X-Com trooper to successfully stun and capture an muton. "Oni" Okamoto was the first trooper to field test the arc thrower, but her attempts to stun the alien just failed utterly, and the muton had to be killed by "Tenshi" Hatakeyama before it could blast Oni to smithereens. Luckily Feng was able to succeed where Oni failed, but he did not live long to enjoy the accolades for his feat - he died this month to muton fire. Engineers, along with assault troopers and scouts, have short life spans.

X-Com's first live alien capture - a muton.

In July X-Com was able to capture a thin man, a floater, an outsider, a sectoid and another muton for the labs. In the period of June and July X-Com operatives used arc throwers 14 times and scored six successful stuns, so our overall batting average is at around 43%. These specimens were a research bonanza, and unlocked decreased research times plus new foundry projects for R&D.

Next: TBC

Previous: X-Com War Diaries, Part VI - July 2016

As with July, X-Com's increased coverage of the world meant that we would be seeing much more UFO activity. 15 contacts were tracked. Two abductors were allowed to land unmolested, and X-Com ground units stopped the abduction missions in their tracks once the ships departed. Two UFOs were destroyed by our interceptors, which were now sporting laser cannons and were commensurately more effective against the bandits in the sky. Three UFOs landed and were subsequently assaulted and boarded. The first was a simple raider, but the last two (UFO-41 and UFO-46) were abductor class vessels. Securing an abductor meant a windfall in salvage, as well as the chance to research the vulnerabilities of this particular craft so both missions were stacked with our best soldiers to ensure the capture of the vessel. The remaining contacts either escaped or were left unmolested due to lack of available interceptors.

X-Com's monthly report for August 2016.

Our new tactic in ground missions is centred on our alloy SHIVs, which are tremendously durable once upgraded with the appropriate foundry projects. SHIVs can effectively serve as tanks that are able to reconnoiter, absorb enemy fire, or suppress dangerous targets. They could also be used as mobile cover by our soldiers. It takes a lot of firepower to destroy an alloy SHIV, and when combined with an engineer with the Repair perk and upgraded arc throwers, damaged SHIVs can be patched up to full health and rolled back into the breach time and time again. It's a life saver for the troops, and this is how we conducted the assaults on the abductors this month. The results spoke for themselves, as both missions went off without a hitch and without any casualties. The only problem was our arc thrower's seeming inability to do its primary job, namely that of subduing aliens. During the assault on UFO-46 "Keen" Archuleta tried three times to stun an alien and failed each time. We wanted outsider shards - alien bases can only assaulted with the skeleton key artifact, and these things can only be made with outsider shards. The aliens controlled four nations - China, Japan, India and Russia - and it was our goal to ultimately liberate these countries. In the Long War countries that leave the Council can rejoin if the alien base within that nation is destroyed. Barring anymore departures from the Council, we would be needing at least four shards, one for each occupied nation.

Constructing a psionic lab.

In addition to the three assaults X-Com troops completed five abduction missions, two EXALT missions, one terror mission and one Council mission. The Council mission was a favourite - site recon on the island of St. John in Newfoundland. The first couple of times I played this mission I found it absolutely terrifying - the chryssalids were fast and deadly, the pods were large, and some of the chryssalids were upgraded versions with larger health pools, health regeneration, and Lightning Reflexes (drastically reduces the effectiveness of overwatch fire). Subsequent playthroughs were far easier due to having solved the riddle of the map - creating kill zones and luring the pods one by one into them with a fast scout was the key. I expected the mission to be another cake walk, and things started off promisingly as our intrepid scout baited the first pod to our waiting guns. Rather than waste overwatch fire on foes with the Lightning Reflexes perk the squad steadied its weapons and waited for the chryssalids to close in. We blew apart the pod, apart from one straggler, and prepared to rinse and repeat.

Events escalated when another pod came rushing in during the alien's turn. And another. Things got hairy, but it looked like we would be able to stay on top of it. Then another pod came charging in, and that's when things went to shit. The only thing that prevented total disaster were my rocketeers Towagozi, "Syncaine" Ben-David and assault trooper Jong. Jong in particular was tearing through the chryssalids with her shotgun - she had the Hit and Run perk (free shot at foes not in cover), and any chryssalid foolish enough to close in with her ate two shotgun blasts to the mandibles. Hit and Run also allowed Jong to blast a chryssalid then run away to safety. Other troopers weren't as fortunate. Syncaine paid the ultimate price - holding his ground to fire his rocket launcher meant he killed three chryssalids that would have otherwise torn through the rest of the squad, but it also left him at the mercy of the reprisal from the last surviving chryssalid. It ripped him in half, injected him with an embryo, then turned to Towagozi, who fired a rocket down its windpipe in the subsequent turn. It was overkill, but I was pissed at losing one of my best guys. The resulting explosion killed the chryssalid and the embryo, and the soldiers were spared the sight of Syncaine lurching to his feet as a zombie. I guess if one of your soldiers ever gets killed by a chryssalid just throw a grenade on the body and be done with it. That is, if you have no ethical objections about blowing up the body of your former comrade.

Geopolitical situation has remained stable this month, with no other nations leaving the Council. X-Com has complete satellite coverage over North and South America, as well as Africa. Africa now also has its own fleet of interceptors.

Syncaine was the sole casualty of August, and while his death was a blow, the paucity of casualties meant that we were winning the overall experience war. If the amount of experience gained across all your soldiers exceeds the experience lost when one of them dies then you're in good shape. The experience gained by the strike force in August made up for the carnage in the July. In fact, things were beginning to turn in X-Com's favour - the geopolitical situation had stabilized despite a scare over Canada. The aliens swarmed all over Canada, and I thought that there would be no way to avoid having the nation withdraw. In addition to a terror attack and an abduction attack, the aliens also bombed Canada and shot down the satellite over the nation which we promptly replaced. Somehow the Canucks held their nerve and didn't leave, but nobody could have blamed them if they did. Successfully completing the site recon mission also played a big role in reducing panic, and allowed us to retain Canada on the Council despite tremendous pressure from the aliens.

Our fighters were also becoming much more effective at dealing with the invaders. Foundry projects like UFO Countermeasures (decreased chance to hit interceptors), Wingtip Sparrowhawks (all planes are armed with Stingray missiles in addition to regular loadout), Penetrator Weapons (increased armour penetration) and Improved Avionics (increased chance to hit UFOs) enhanced our interceptors' survivability and firepower. We now had a squadron of fighters in Africa, and most of our planes were armed with laser cannons. X-Com could still not engage any of the large UFOs head on, but scouts, fighters, and raiders were all fair game. August also saw the deployment of Tier 3 weapons. Some of our boys and gals went into battle with gauss rifles and autorifles for the first time, and hopefully sometime in the next month our snipers and scouts will also be armed with gauss long rifles and alloy strike rifles. Once again alien alloys were the bottleneck, however, and the supplies we salvaged from the captured abductors were soon spent on crafting armour and weapons. We would need more if we wanted to outfit everyone. The biggest development for the strike force was the discovery of xenopsionics. Construction on the psionic lab was begun this month, and in September we would begin training suitable candidates in the art of psionic warfare.

Next: TBC

Previous: X-Com War Diaries, Part VII - August 2016

Back.

I was AFK from the blog from about mid-July to the end of August, but am planning to return to posting regularly this month. In terms of content I'm planning to keep working on my Long War playthrough report, as well as resuming work on my fan fiction. The playthrough chronicled in these so-called War Diaries serves an important function in giving me an X-Com timeline with which I can intersperse real life events and my fan fiction. My playthrough and my story have diverged significantly, but the timeline generated by playing the game still allows me to get an idea of where X-Com's gear level is at any point of the game calendar. It also gives me an idea of the geopolitical situation - by September 2016 five nations have left the X-Com project already, so when plotting my fan fiction I would like to have an equivalent number of nations withdraw by this point. They won't necessarily be the same nations, but the purpose of the fan fiction would be to flesh out which nations do leave and why. The story is still stuck somewhere between May-June 2016, so there is still time to square up the fiction with the playthrough timeline. When I stopped blogging I also stopped playing X-Com, so my game state is still halted at around December 2016.

In the August 2016 report I praised the resiliency of the Canucks in holding out against tremendous pressure from the aliens. In September the aliens turned the screws even further, and the country had finally had enough and withdrew from the X-Com project.

Canada leaves the Council.

Five nations had now left the Council but the loss of Canada was a telling blow, because we lost the continental bonus which was the 25% discount to the purchase and maintenance of interceptor craft. With our interceptor fleet growing we needed every dollar we could scrape together. Our original plan was to assault the base in Russia, but that was scrapped in favour of an assault on Canada to restore the bonus. It would have to wait, however, until the skeleton key was completed.

X-Com's September 2016 report.

In the meantime September 2016 was a busy month for X-Com. 19 UFOs were tracked - the most number of contacts since X-Com went online - and X-Com were able to shoot down or destroy 9 of them. Two scout class UFOs escaped, which was a big lapse for our air wing, because successful scouting missions are followed by larger UFOs. Destroying a scout usually cuts off that incursion by alien forces, and they probe elsewhere. The bigger UFOs we either let go or allowed them to land. Our air force still can't tangle with large or very large contacts, and it's still better to allow abductor class vessels to land and deal with the abduction mission that follows. Two very large contacts which we let go led to a terror mission and the loss of Canada respectively - presumably the massive ship forms the nucleus of the alien base once it lands.

We now have three fighters stationed in North America, South America and Africa.

On the ground X-Com conducted 15 missions this month - five UFO recoveries, one UFO assault, two (!) terror missions, four abductions missions, two EXALT missions and one Council mission. One of our most desperate missions was the Council mission which required X-Com to disarm a bomb in South Africa. The squad pushed forward aggressively and were able to defuse the bomb, but in doing so had to aggro numerous pods to beat the clock. Four soldiers were lost in the firefight around the bomb, but once again "Akuma" Ishikawa showed his chops by salvaging the mission through accurate fire, picking off aliens one at a time. The aliens killed four X-Com troops and critically wounded another. Our medic dashed forward and stabilized him but was shot and killed doing so. The remaining three soldiers had a choice - withdraw and leave the critically wounded man to die, or try to complete the mission and save him. Akuma chose the latter, and in a tense, long and painstaking effort the three survivors drew the aliens into ambush after ambush and killed them singly until they were all dead.

Psionic lab went online, as did another fission generator.

This mission was a stark reminder that you're literally one step from disaster in X-Com. We lost nine more soldiers in September, taking our overall tally to 24 dead. Our casualty count represented the single greatest loss of life in a month to date. In addition to the deaths we also lost the use of three soldiers who were critically wounded and would be confined to the infirmary for 45 days or thereabouts. This was partially offset by the two soldiers - "Akuma" Ishikawa and "Eva" Ivanova - hitting maximum level, but nevertheless it was a bad month for X-Com, despite completing all their missions. "Ophelie" Scholz also died this month, paralleling her fate in my original playthrough which gave rise to the Long War fan fiction. At least in this universe she lived six more months.

The casualty list now numbers 24.

The psionics lab also went online this month, and after a few misses X-Com was able to anoint its first psyker, Rebecca Long of Singapore, shortly followed by Waja Towagozi of Syria. Psionics in the Long War is a little random - psi experience is earned during missions and once a soldier hits a certain amount they can attempt to train a new ability. The chance of learning this ability is roughly 50%, modified by will power and a national bonus from Mexico, and takes about a week or so. The RNG element means that you might have to do a few attempts depending on how lucky you are. It costs nothing but time, but the downside is that the soldier is effectively off your active roster, and so you have to be judicious as to who you train, and how many you train at once, lest you need those soldiers on your missions. The type of abilities available is also dependent on the aliens you have interrogated, which gives you another incentive to capture those aliens in the field.

By the end of September X-Com had manufactured a skeleton key, increased the Skyranger capacity to 10 soldiers (for base assaults only), developed advanced gauss weapons and unlocked the capability to create MECs. Our goal for October would be to assault the Canadian base and liberate the Canucks from the bondage of their alien masters.

Next: X-Com War Diaries, Part IX - October 2016

The Long War, Part IX - Ogbomosho

The Long War, Part X - Terror in Nigeria

The Long War, Part XI - Crisis in Africa

The Long War, Part XII - The Battle of Ogbomosho

Wrestling with X-Com

The Long War, Part XIII - Escalation

The Long War, Part XIV - Battle for the Skies

The Long War, Part XV - The Enemy Within

The Long War, Part XVI - Advent Rising

The Long War, Part XVII - Resistance

X-Com War Diaries, Part I - Long War Incomplete

The Long War, Part XVIII - Awakening

The Long War, Part XIX - Mirage

X-Com War Diaries, Part II - March 2016

X-Com War Diaries, Part III - April 2016

X-Com War Diaries, Part IV - May 2016

X-Com War Diaries, Part V - June 2016

X-Com War Diaries, Part VI - July 2016

X-Com War Diaries, Part VII - August 2016

X-Com War Diaries, Part VIII - September 2016