TURNBULL'S SAGA

Simon Turnbull

X-Com Apocalypse Saga.
Chapter one 
First day.


Mega-Primus, Earth
06:15  1/3/2084

Airtaxi 168 floated quickly through the air towards a small government
warehouse.  Both of the people in the taxi were a little stressed, the
driver was on edge because the passenger had told him in no uncertain terms
that should he talk about who he had in his taxi to any one else he would
never fly again.  The passenger in the taxi was also stressed, she was
starting a new job today, a very important job.  Almost as important was
the expectancy of what she would be using.  Like a child before a birthday
she was dreaming of a mind-bender of her own.  

Tatyana Akira removed her sunglasses and stared at her rat, it stood up
onto its back legs and danced to the background music of the taxi.  It
drained Tatyana just to control a rat like this but soon she would have a
mind-bender, a device that would let her control humans with ease. The
driver turned back to Tatyana and saw he large jet black eyes, he jumped,
this was not in his job description.  "Miss, we're about to land".  Sure
she was bald, but he had not even thought that his passenger was
half-section, a bug-eye, in his cab ! He shuddered as he landed the taxi,
as they passed though the hover-port a sign was visible on the side of the
warehouse "Mega-Primus Central Academy Class of 2074".  

Even after the incident yesterday, where a unknown craft of unknown origin
buzzed main street, the government are still covering up.  Tatyana gathered
up her bags and summoned her rat, it was time to punch in…

Thirty minutes later
Aboard Valkyrie 1

"None of us could have thought that so early into our service we would be
required to fight, but now we are".  Tatyana looked around the craft, with
everyone decked out in police armour they were hardly inconspicuous but it
was good enough.  At the front of the 'plane an android,  Dave Belov was
making a speech, he was the temporary group leader, as the funding body had
not allowed any experienced officers to be transferred out of   Megapol or
Marsec, he had been chosen because he had the had the highest stats. of the
group.  "We have been called to the luxury apartment block Eden Mansions,
we have a number of distraught citizens, one of whom claims to have seen an
alien life-form…".  

Inside her helmet Tatyana felt the wash of unconscious anger.  

"…Of unknown origin, the creature has been described as a pink coloured
humanoid, about one and a quarter metres tall, it appeared to carry no
weapons, but has a large tube-like head, from which it spits an acidic
substance."  Murmurs passed around the squad as they realised what they
would be facing.  

"This is will be an important mission, important people are at risk and
this will also be a shake-down for X-com and its troops".  

Tatyana checked herself again, she had a Megapol lawpistol on each side of
her belt and extra clips in her pack, four grenades hung from her belt
waiting, and hanging perfectly on her back clip was a mind-bender.  Tatyana
was ready.  

One minute later
Eden Mansions

The doors swished open and Dave Belov stepped into the passage, the way
ahead was empty so he and another android moved down the passage, checking
each window as they passed.  On the ground Tatyana, Jones and Blake spread
out, each took a building. Elsewhere three more agents did the same.

"I can see one" it was Blake, "it's the pink thing, wait, it's seen me!"
Tatyana heard a horrible choking noise followed by a spitting noise, Blake
cried out and Tatyana ran around the building to where the creature was. 
The pink creature turned towards Tatyana's pistols which knocked it to the
ground with just a few shots.  

"Blake, respond", Tatyana quickly scanned the area but found nothing.

"Oh shit" Blake got shakily up an tried to wipe the slime of his armour,
"no damage, I repeat, I am not injured, did you kill it, Tatyana ?" 

"Yes, they are pretty weak up close".  "Everyone continue patrol, there
will be more".

Jones stepped out of his building "nothing to report" he signalled to
Tatyana.  

"Follow me" she replied.

The next building was larger, with a massive staircase in the hall, "Jones,
hold the stairs, I will sweep the ground floor the we'll go up".

Tatyana worked her way though a bar, then a lounge, and then into a
Sensovision suite; all were clear, she was about to go back into the hall
when Jones's link opened.

"I've seen one, its just crossed across the top of the stairs".

The link stayed open and was filled with the sound of running "stop, wait
for backup" Tatyana shouted back to Jones, but he was not listening.

Damn, thought Tatyana as she ran into the hall again, she was almost at the
top of the stairs when she saw the creature, it was taller than the pink
thing and blue, this mattered less than what it carried in its hand; it was
from a different race, with different society and different tech but a gun
is still a gun.  

Jones stopped as it leapt out from one of the rooms, but before he could
raise his laser rifle the blue creature fired, purple energy cut into his
chest and he fell. At this range Tatyana could not hope to hit with pistols
so she pulled the mind-bender off her back and trained it on the alien. 
Their eyes met and the creature tried to ward off Tatyana's influence, it
failed and Tatyana grabbed hold of its mind.  

  
 
 

Tatyana took hold of the anthropod's gun arm with her mind and pointed it
at it's own head.

 thought Tatyana and fired.

Jones was dead when Tatyana reached him, she took the anthropod's gun and
placed it in Jones's arms, and then reported in.  

The other three humans and Blake cornered some kind of giant worm, but when
they killed it, four large snake type things slid out of its corpse, three
of them were swiftly dispatched but one jumped on to Blake and injured him,
the others then knifed it in till it stopped moving.  Meanwhile the two
robots came up empty, and Tatyana panicked a pink spitter with her
mind-bender, then killed it with a single lawpistol shot to the tube shaped
head. 

X-com base Avenger
Later that day

"Good Work, squad leader" Tatyana smiled with pride, she was now in control
of all of X-com's tactical missions now.  The mission was a perfect success
except for the death of  Otto Jones and Blake's injures.  No civilians were
hurt or killed, and very little damage was done to the buildings.  The
quantum physicists have started looking at the alien weapon and the
biochemists were getting excited over alien DNA samples taken from the
bodies, the corpses had started to decay as soon as the alien influence was
removed from the area, and the Valkyrie was not equipped to handle the
corpses but it would be soon, as work had started on a specialised cargo
hold for both live and dead aliens.

All in all, a very interesting first day…


End one.




X-Com Apocalypse Saga.
Chapter two. 
It never Rains…


Mega-Primus, Earth
X-com Base: Avenger
09:31  8/3/2084

Tatyana Akira was sitting in the control room reading up on the second wave
of recruits for X-com; none of them were up to the level that she wanted
and none of them were real psionics. She smiled, many humans had some
psionic power, but she only considered half sectoids as real psionics. 
Still, Tatyana sighed, she tapped a few buttons and a human and an android
both got jobs.  

Dr Damien Stuart, the head of the quantum physicists and the scientists in
general, wandered into the room and made his way to the coffee dispenser.

"Rough morning ?" asked Tatyana, it certainly looked like it.

"Is it morning ?" he replied darkly, "that gun you got us…"
He seems hesitant, Tatyana thought.
 "…does not run out, and for the life of me I can't tell why".  

Before Tatyana could enquire several large alarms went off and she jumped
up to the main console.  

Illegal Flyer alert
1.      Phoenix hovercar, unregistered, P.O.E. Cult of Sirius Temple of the
Visitors.
2.      Phoenix hovercar, unregistered, P.O.E. Cult of Sirius Temple of the
Visitors.

"All pilots report to duty stations" Tatyana took control of the intercom. 
"Hoverbikes 1 thru 10 get airborne immediately, prepare Valkyrie 1 for dust
off".

"What are you going to use the transport for ?" asked Dr Stuart as Tatyana
gathered up her gear.

"They invade our air space, do they ?  Then we are going to invade their
ground space !"

1 Minute later

In the early morning the city was still, but this was shattered by the roar
of military grav engines, the Sirius hovercars darted low though the city
winding their way towards X-com's "secret" base.  At almost every turn they
are blocked by X-com hoverbikes but they are gaining ground.

"Hoverbike 2 go wide on the next turn," Tatyana had a nasty look in her
eyes as she gave commands to the bikes "Hoverbike 6 go higher, good."

"What are we doing ?" said the co-pilot.

"Throttle back, now watch that tunnel," as she spoke both Sirius hovercars
flew into one end of a hollow duct through a large slum building,
Valkyrie1was waiting at the other end.  "Use the missile array on the first
one and laser on the second, now".  The Valkyrie's janitor missile array
spat just as the first car flew out of the tunnel, the blast flipped it
over and downwards.  As the second car flew out of the tunnel the
Valkyrie's laser crumpled the front of its engine and the second shot cut
into the crew compartment, the hover car swerved and was shot to pieces by
a hoverbike.  The remaining hovercar was destroyed by Valkyrie 1 and the
radio chattered with the hoverbike's pilot's cheers.  

"Now, let's roll onto the temple of visitors, Sirius needs to be taught a
lesson".  

The cult of Sirius was a quite powerful organisation that had started out
in the early 1990's as another false-christian-saint church, but when the
first wave of aliens came in 1999 Sirius changed it to an alien-worshipping
cult.  Over time they had grown in power and numbers and now they had made
a deliberate attempted attack on X-com, they will pay…

"Em, where have the dimension gates gone?" the co-pilot he shook as he said
it.  

The dimension gates, the phenomena that the last UFO had just appeared from
had, as the co-pilot saw, had simply disappeared !

The crew was silent, had the alien threat gone, had X-com won ?

Not quite yet…

"The dimension gates have reformed in sectors 13,15 and 20" the co-pilot
was almost glad.  Tatyana however was not.  

"Bikes 1 thru 7 go to sector 13, bike 8 to 10 go to sector 15, pilot follow
bike ten" the Valkyrie swung around and headed for sector 15.  

"Sir, we have an alien craft on scope" 
"Where ?"
"Sector 13"
"Pilot, re-route for…"
"We have another, sector 15, and another 13, and another, 15" the co-pilots
eyes could not open any further, he almost went into shock.

"It appears we have a war"  Tatyana was in her element, in control.  

Bikes 1-7 shot around a slum building and opened fire on a small rugby-ball
shaped object about ten metres long, although it fired back it was ripped
open by the first volley and fell into the slum zone. 

They swung around individually and headed for their other target.

Meanwhile Valkyrie 1 and its bikes had a much bigger fish, or to be
precise, two of them.  A giant purple disk over 30 metres across floated
above a small flyer factory while a 25 metre wide disk hovered in front of
it, protecting it.  

"Hoverbikes 7 thru 10 attack the purple disk, pilot start us on a attack
run on the green one and then go the for the purple one"

"Why?"

"The green one is a escort, so the purple one must be worth having".

Both alien craft fired before the X-com craft were in range, but the weight
of fire from the Valkyrie and bikes damaged the purple UFO and shocked it
back into movement.  The other group of bikes, who had destroyed their
other UFO shot into the combat and the purple craft was sent crashing down
in to an executive park.  As soon as the purple craft was downed the green
craft shot away at an amazing speed into the dimension gate it had come 
from.  

For a time the air was silent, then the radio became a flurry of cheers.   
 X-com had proved itself in the air, it was now time to prove itself on the
ground.  

Grounds of Sensovision HQ
3 Minutes later

The UFO was quite visible as the Valkyrie landed, but was soon obscured
from the landing site by a hill.  

"Belov, Adams, Horton get to the top of the hill and be ready to snipe, 
Miller, Shimaoka, Tanida come with me".  The snipers climbed up to the brow
of the hill and then started scanning the area.

"This is Belov, we have a pink spitter to the south of the ship, it is next
to a fountain, we are awaiting your signal".

"This Akira, fire at will".  The sound of auto-cannon fire punctured the
air and the "Bug sighted" light disappeared from Tatyana's HUD.  
"Belov, give me a description of the craft"

"It is 30 to 40 metres across and disk like, it  has a recess, probably a
door on the south side, but I can't tell, the symmetry would suggest a door
on the north side as well".  

"Belov, Adams, Norton you have been assigned as near squad hold your area
and the south door, we are far squad, we will search the outer area and
take the north door, when the area is clear we will all raid the ship".

There were no other creatures outside the ship and there was a door on the
north side.

"Near squad, move up to the south door we are going in", Tatyana and far
squad took up position by the other door and waited.

"This is near squad, we are ready" just as Belov reported in, the north
door to the craft opened and a spitter wandered out, it was cut to pieces
immediately by far squad.  In the area behind the spitter far squad saw a
giant  worm, the Biochemists had called it a multi-worm, as it spawned four
smaller worms when it died.  As one each member of far squad pulled a
standard grenade from their belts, primed them and threw them into the
craft, the doors closed with a squelch and then the muffled blast rocked
the ship.  

"You could have warned us," Belov did not sound annoyed so Tatyana guessed
it was a joke.

"We will warn you next time, now everybody slowly into the ship, watch for
the little worms".  

The inside of the craft was dark, damp and for now full of smoke.  The
doors both led to a small diamond shaped room dominated by a six metre
grav-lift that went both up and down.

"Belov go down, everybody else go up, from now on try to limit the use of
grenades, we want to take as much of the ship back as possible, move out".

Belov dropped into the lower section and found only some odd machinery.
"Lowest level is clear, I'm coming up".

The lift stopped on the second highest level of the craft in a corridor,
two troopers were carefully moving down to one end and the rest were moving
the other way.  

"What was down there Belov ?" Tatyana was heading the larger group with a
Lawpistol in one hand and her mind bender in the other.

"There were four pieces of heavy machinery, pointing towards a central spot
on a patch of metal floor, it was strange but I don't think it was a
weapon", Belov was not slowed down by his heavy auto-cannon and took up
position to Tatyana's right, Tatyana was happy to have him there, he was a
good, reliable solider. 

The two man group of Sutton and Norton reached the other end of the
corridor and reported in.  

"This is dead end, it also appears to be the cockpit, it has flight
controls and, wait…".   The sounds of gun-fire reverberated for the cockpit
and were followed by a scream, a human scream. 
"Hold here" Tatyana ran back into sight of Sutton and Norton, a small
orange creature was visible on the ledge above them; they had not seen it
but were firing into the cockpit.  

"Don't worry, we killed it" Sutton turned around to face Tatyana, another
orange creature, this one dead, in his hand.  Before anyone could do
anything the first orange creature jumped off the ledge and onto Sutton's
head, he cried out and then went silent.  Seconds later the creature fell
off Sutton's head and twitched for a moment.

Norton walked out of the cockpit and looked at Sutton "you all right man?"
Sutton did not answer, he just turned to Norton and started firing his
machine gun into her, she crumpled with a few shots and Sutton turned back
the Tatyana.  Tatyana raised her Mind-bender and tried to take over
Sutton's mind, at first she failed, her power blocked by a powerful
influence, but she reinforced her attack and the former Sutton's mind fell.





Tatyana fought through the anger and took direct control of Sutton's body,
with one hand he took his helmet off and with the other he primed a stun
grenade. 



As the gas filled Sutton's mind Tatyana knew that the alien was right,
Sutton was dead, he shall be avenged.  

Adams rushed in when the stun gas cleared, checked on Sutton and Norton.  

"Norton will live" Adams pulled picked up the medi-kit from Norton and
started dressing his wounds, "Sutton, well Sutton's body won't wake up for
a while".  Meanwhile an other spitter wandered into view and Belov blew it
away.

"Move out, shoot to kill".  They immediately found a multi-worm and couple
of spitters, after they were dead Tatyana led two troopers out to one side
while Belov led the others the other way. Tatyana found two Anthropods and
a strange pink thing that just sat there and looked at them.  Tatyana stole
the first Anthropod's mind and used it to shoot the other one.  The second
Anthropod fired back and the pink blob swivelled its head around and
started spitting at the Anthropod under Tatyana's control, Tatyana released
control and then she and the two troopers opened fire on the Anthropods,
killing both.  The pink thing just continued to sit there and look at them.
 

"This is Tatyana, have you found anything?"

"We think we have cornered an Anthropod, but it is avoiding us, I wonder
why…".  The Anthropod jumped out from behind a pillar near him and both
Belov and the Anthropod fired together.  Belov's rounds hit and the
Anthropod slumped down dead.  The shell from the Anthropod's gun lay
motionless on the ground next to one of Belov's feet, as Belov turned to
look for it the pod burst open and another orange thing crawled out,
pausing only seconds before throwing itself at Belov.  

After a few seconds the orange thing fell off Belov's face, a hole clearly
visible in his helmet, the other members of Near squad took up positions
around him, their guns pointing at him.

"Drop your weapon Belov, we saw that thing get you"

"I'm an android ! do you really think it would have worked on me?".

X-com Base: Avenger
10:01 8/3/2084

Tatyana and Belov were sitting at their desks, writing their reports and
both proud from their recent promotions. As a result of the mission Tatyana
had been promoted to sergeant and Belov to squad leader. 

"Why do you think the purple disk was hovering over the flyer factory like
that," Tatyana thought aloud, "they did not attack it, or drop forces into
it. What do you think squad leader?"

"Maybe they did, after all, they can move their ships in between
dimensions, what if they can teleport units around as well?"

Tatyana looked directly at Belov and the hit the intercom button, "All
agents report to Valkyrie 1, we have some unfinished business".

End two.