X-COM A SOLDIER'S STORY
By Brion Jaeger

The scream of the jets rose to a howl as the assault transport lifted off smoothly from the soccerfield in the subburbs of Berlin. The Russian pilot was good, perhaps learning his trade in the hard school of Afghanistan, Brion thought as he looked down the cargo bay. The space was packed with tired troopers, their gear and some of the smaller alien artifacts. The very rear of the transport held the wounded being stablized closest to the loading doors. By now, others would be boxing up, sorting and transporting the rest of the alien materials for shipment back to their base. There the science boys would be going over all of it, trying understand it and then telling the engineers how to reproduce it in a form the squad could use. Or maybe even inventing some new technologies to try out on the invading aliens. Suprise them for a change! At the least give his and the other special units some sort of parity with the aliens.

'Special units!' Brion snorted, 'Some sort of elite strike forces to defend Mother Earth. A scratch force made up of bits and pieces from all over the world of each country's special forces. More like a colossal snafu. How were they to have any unit cohesion or identity when they could seldom practice together or know who was going to be in what squads? At least everyone had the same type of weapons, armour and miscellanous equipment. The very best that was available too. That helped some, but until they got to know each other alittle bit better, times they were going to be rocky.'

'Berlin helped though.' he thought. 'Now we are at least acting like a regular unit instead of a bunch of individual professionals. Every major country had it's people here, undoubtedly they were reporting back on all that was found out. Even though that was in the charter for this organization. The "X-COM". Extra Terrestial Command, UFO Defense. Well, it had to happen with all of the recent sightings coming in and individual goverments finding themselves unable to handle the incursions. It took a secret conclave of the U.N.'s Security Council to figure out how things were going to be done and then setting up a plan together to do it. So much wasted time in paperwork and bureaucratic snafu's before the units were actually formed and resources committed. Even now things were still being sorted out and handled in an ad hoc manner.

The base and their equipment was a case in point. "Base One" located just outside of Dallas in the U.S.A. was an abandoned U.S. Air Force base being phased out. Now it was the chief XCOM command center in the North American hemisphere. Another was being prepared in central Europe at an old Warsaw Pact base. Still another in southern Japan to cover the Far East was under construction. All in secret lest the aliens learn of them and attack before they could be adequately defended. "Adequately defended!" he thought. "How and with what? What good are rifles against aliens in some sort of armour carrying death ray rifles?" Death Ray was as good of a term as any to use, though no doubt that they would correct him later, once they figured out how the weapons worked. But what else would you call something that shot some sort of ball that could knock holes in brick walls and fry people through the best armour available to humans?

The radar systems were of a new type that could actually detect the aliens at range and give you some sort of time to prepare. Everything had to be underground to shield them as best they could against alien observation and be easily defended. Maybe. At the least the rifles worked if you hit an alien with enough shots. Same for grenades too. About the only one shot one kill weapons they had were the auto and heavy cannons. After this misson, they'd carry more types of ammo for diffrent situations. AP was good, but HE was better for dealing with larger numbers of aliens and long range shots. Even if you missed the alien, chances were that you'd still kill him with the concussion. The AP you actually had to hit them, and that was hard to do. Unless you were in heavy brush or very close quarters, he'd recommend using the HE ammunition. These weapons were the newest thing out, and not even issued to troops in the field yet. If they weren't so large and cumbersome the whole unit would have them. As it was, you could only tie down a couple of people with the things. Thankfully the bazooka's worked well against the aliens, even their floating tank discs.

"Floating Death Frisbees" Brion thought. They'd almost wiped out the squad before they could get off the transport this last time. It wasn't like the last two times he'd been in the field. Then they'd been in either the desert or wooded countryside. Nor had as many aliens to contend with. A UFO shot down had dead crew, one caught on the ground had them all alive and ready to kill you. The science boys loved it when you caught a craft on the ground intact. (They were still trying to find something short of a satchel charge to open up the side of a UFO!) But they'd never had this many or the Frisbees to deal with before. The war was changing for the worse, the aliens were delibrately attacking cities now. Showing themselves and their power to strike. All we can do is try and catch them before they leave and make them pay as heavily as possiable.

The transport reached it's cruising altitude and Brion leaned back and remembered the first two encounters that he'd been on.

Return to Stories of Andromeda

Return to the Room of the Dark Poetress

Return To Main Hallway