Mega-Primus, Earth
X-com Base: Hope
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.

<Human, you can not win, soon we will be everywhere>
<Return the human’s mind or I will kill you>
<The human no longer has a mind, its destruction is an unfortunate effect of the process>

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.

<This will not work, my mind will remain in control, the one Called Sutton will never return>

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: Hope
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 then hit the intercom button, "All agents report to Valkyrie 1, we have some unfinished business".

End two.