XCOM Survivor - An Encounter
Part One:
Dawn, the Skyranger’s hydraulic ramp lowered with a mechanical groan, hissing as the pressurized cabin equalized with the stagnant, humid night air of Rural Argentina.
Sergeant Jon Vance checked his weapon. His fingers, clad in the thick, polymer-weave gloves of his personal armor, ran over the receiver of his heavy plasma rifle. He hated the weapon's weight, but he respected its destructive power. Around him, the rest of Strike Team Alpha sat in tense silence. They were veterans of the Extraterrestrial Combat Unit XCOM—but tonight, the global Geoscape had flashed a dark, pulsing purple icon over this sector. A Very Large UFO had been brought down by an Interceptor's avalanche missiles. It was a Battleship.
"Listen up," Strike One, Captain Maria Sterling, barked over the tactical comms. "Satellite telemetry suggests a high concentration of hostiles. We have multiple signatures, diverse species. The eggheads back at Central are calling this a multi-layered infiltration unit. Watch your corners, mind your Time Units, and remember your spacing. We don't want a single alien grenade taking out a fireteam."
Vance nodded, stepping out onto the wet grass. The Battleship loomed in the distance, a towering, multi-tiered monolith of polished, purplish alloy that pulsed with residual Elerium-115 energy. Smoke billowed from a massive rupture in its lower hull, casting long, eerie shadows across the tall cornfields.
The squad fanned out in a classic wedge formation. Vance took the left flank, his heavy boots sinking slightly into the mud. To his right was Corporal Martinez, a fresh-faced rookie from Spain carrying a heavy laser, and Rookie Chen, whose wide eyes darted frantically under his tactical visor.
"I’ve got movement," Martinez whispered. "Fifty meters out, heading three-zero. Small. Fast."
Before Vance could turn his rifle, a high-pitched, guttural screech echoed through the stalks. Out from the darkness darted a pair of sectoids. They were short, bulbous-headed humanoids with translucent grey skin and oversized, glossy black eyes. They moved with an unsettling, spider-like agility, their small plasma pistols crackling with emerald light.
"Engaging!" Chen screamed, panic bleeding into his radio. He fired his standard-issue assault rifle wildly. The kinetic rounds shredded the corn husks, hitting nothing but air.
One of the sectoids paused, its oversized skull pulsing with a sickening violet radiance. Psionic attack.
Vance felt a sudden, icy needle prick the back of his mind. He gritted his teeth, forcing the intrusive thoughts away through sheer willpower. Chen wasn't so lucky. The rookie dropped his rifle, clutching his helmet as blood welled from his nose. He shrieked, collapsing into a fetal position, utterly broken by the mental assault.
"Martinez, take the left one! I’ve got the psychic!" Vance roared.
Vance dropped to one knee, anchoring his heavy plasma. He didn't use sights; he relied on instinct trained through dozens of horrifying drops. He squeezed the trigger. A concentrated bolt of superheated green plasma erupted from the barrel, illuminating the night. The shot struck the psionic alien square in the chest. The alien didn't just fall—it disintegrated, its alien biology boiling away into vapor in a fraction of a second.
To his right, Martinez’s heavy laser whined, a solid ruby beam slicing cleanly through the second sectoid, dropping it instantly.
"Clear," Vance breathed into his mic. "Chen is down. Neuro-trauma. He’s breathing, but he’s out of the fight."
"Secure him and move up," Captain Sterling commanded from the center line. "We have to reach that breach before they organize a counter-attack."
They advanced through the smoking crater surrounding the alien craft. The sheer scale of the Battleship was suffocating. Its outer hull was cold to the touch, constructed from a dense, unearthly metal that resisted Earth's most powerful explosives. As they approached the jagged hole torn open by the Interceptor's missiles, a deep, rhythmic thudding vibrated through the ground.
"Heavy infantry!" Vance yelled, diving behind a chunk of displaced hull plating.
From the smoke stepped a trio of Mutons. These colossal, green-skinned brutes stood over two and a half meters tall, their massive torsos encased in tight-fitting crimson organic armor. They didn't show the fear or agility of the sectoids but they moved with the disciplined, unstoppable momentum of a main battle tank.
The lead Muton roared—a sound like a grinding industrial engine—and unleashed a volley from its heavy plasma rifle.
The red-hot plasma bolts slammed into the hull piece Vance was using for cover. The alloy began to melt, dripping like hot wax. Martinez tried to return fire with his laser, but the beams merely scuffed the thick red armour of the lead brute. The Muton answered with a single, perfectly placed plasma bolt. The shot struck Martinez’s laser power pack. The resulting explosion was instantaneous and catastrophic.
Vance was thrown backward by the shockwave, his vision blurring as dirt and metallic shrapnel rained down on his armor. Through the ringing in his ears, he heard Sterling’s team opening fire with everything they had. Rockets detonated, lasers flashed, and the screech of alien plasma filled the air.
When Vance managed to push himself up, the landscape had turned into a slaughterhouse.
Captain Sterling lay motionless near the breach. The rest of Alpha squad was gone, scattered or vaporized by the sheer overwhelming firepower of the heavy alien squad. The three Mutons were still advancing, their heavy boots thumping in unison. Behind them, hovering effortlessly in the air, was something worse. A Floater—its hideous, grimacing humanoid torso crudely grafted onto a mechanical propulsion unit—drifted above the battlefield like a vengeful ghost, its plasma rifle sweeping the area for survivors.
Vance was alone. His squad was dead. His comms were dead, filled only with the static hiss of a severed tactical network.
His survival instinct, honed by a year of fighting a losing war, took over. He couldn't fight them in the open. He grabbed his heavy plasma rifle, scrambled to his feet, and threw himself through the smoking breach into the dark, labyrinthine interior of the alien Battleship.
Inside, the environment was a nightmare of non-Euclidean geometry and eerie green illumination. Tubes filled with glowing, cryogenic fluids lined the walls, and the air smelled faintly of ozone and decomposing organic matter. The deck vibrated beneath his boots—the ship's main power core was still active, humming with a deep, terrifying resonance.
Vance ran, his breath ragged inside his helmet. He didn't know where he was going, only that he needed to break line of sight.
A skittering sound echoed from the ceiling above him.
Vance spun around, bringing his rifle up just in time to see a nightmare made flesh drop from the overhead rafters. It was a Chryssalid. The creature was an apex predator, a terrifying four-legged insectoid abomination with a glistening, black chitinous exoskeleton, scythe-like claws, and a jaw dripping with hyper-toxic venom.
The Chryssalid screeched and lunged, its legs blurring with impossible speed.
Vance fired blindly. The plasma bolt clipped one of the creature's front legs, shattering the chitin, but the beast's momentum carried it forward. It crashed into Vance, knocking him to the hard, metallic floor. The heavy plasma rifle was ripped from his grip, clattering away down the narrow corridor.
The Chryssalid snapped its jaws inches from Vance’s faceplate. He could see the dripping stinger inside its mouth—the weapon it used to implant its horrific reproductive larvae into human hosts.
Desperate, Vance reached for his hip and pulled his plasma pistol. He jammed the barrel directly into the soft, unarmored tissue beneath the creature’s jaw and pulled the trigger repeatedly. Three rapid bursts of plasma cooked the creature from the inside out. The Chryssalid shuddered, its black blood boiling, and collapsed on top of him, a dead weight of smoking chitin.
Panting, Vance shoved the heavy carcass off his chest. He stood up, wiping the foul alien ichor from his visor. He looked down the hallway. His heavy rifle was gone, lost somewhere in the dark ventilation shafts below. He was down to a standard plasma pistol with a half-depleted clip and a single alien grenade he had looted from a previous mission.
Survive, he told himself. Just survive.
He crept deeper into the ship, navigating through what appeared to be a cloning laboratory. Rows of massive glass vats lined the walls, each containing the half-formed, pale bodies of Sectoids and Mutons drifting in amniotic fluid. This wasn't just a military invasion force; it was a terrifyingly efficient production line of biological weapons.
As he reached the end of the lab, a brilliant flash of blue light illuminated the dark corridor.
Vance froze, pressing his back against a bank of alien computer consoles. Rounding the corner was a Cyberdisc—a massive, metallic saucer that hovered a meter off the ground, its mechanical hull shifting and rearranging itself like a deadly puzzle box. The machine's central eye glowed with an ominous crimson light, scanning the room.
Vance held his breath. The Cyberdisc was a terror on the battlefield, armed with a high-output plasma cannon and capable of deploying deadly tracking mines.
The machine paused right in front of his hiding spot. The metallic plates on its side slid open, revealing its internal mechanism. Vance knew he had one shot. If the disc spotted him, its plasma cannon would turn him to ash before he could blink.
He didn't fire his pistol. Instead, he pulled the heavy, metallic alien grenade from his belt. He clicked the priming mechanism, counting the seconds in his head. Three... two...
He leaned out from behind the console and shoved the grenade directly into the open internal machinery of the Cyberdisc.
"Catch, you mechanical bastard," Vance snarled.
He threw himself backward into an empty cloning vat just as the grenade detonated. The explosion was deafening, amplified by the enclosed metallic corridors. The grenade's containment field collapsed, releasing a localized shockwave of pure plasma that tore the Cyberdisc apart from the inside. The machine’s volatile internal power core chain-reacted, resulting in a spectacular secondary explosion that blew out the walls of the laboratory and sent Vance spinning across the floor in a shower of sparks and broken glass.
Vance groaned, pushing away shards of reinforced glass. His armor was blackened, scarred, and cracked in multiple places. The internal HUD inside his helmet flickered violently before dying entirely, leaving him in absolute dark, save for the flickering fires of the burning Cyberdisc.
