Sounds like a personal problem, Coffee. Not my department.
OPERATION UNCEASING NIGHT
Beijing, China
4.4.2015
We start in a dangerous starting position. Enemies could come from any direction on the street and there is little cover. Using the vehicle as a staging point to get to that pipe and up on to the roof is the goal.
Sectoids and thin men can be heard out there somewhere. Banerjee makes it up to the roof without incident. The rest of the squad moves down the street towards a canister, some just out in the open as there's nothing available to make crossing the intersection easier. Murdoch reports hearing sectoids out that way.
Roguru takes the lead and approaches the canister, still spotting nothing. Banerjee comes down off the building on the near side, but a couple minutes later there is intermittent contact with a thin man and a pair of ... well, I don't really know what to call them. Shen is in my ear calling them 'seekers'. They appear to be partly-mechanical flying squid with tentacles. Super. This calls for defensive fire positions, which we really don't have right now.
Roguru snags the canister(5 oz.) and Banerjee heads up top again on the far side. Another canister up here, but there's bigger fish to fry at the moment. The thin man approaches and the seekers just flat-out disappear. That's ... disconcerting, to say the least.
Roguru is close enough to risk an approach ... he executes the thin man but pays for it. The cloud of acid envelops him. We hear nothing from the seekers. Roguru hunkers down and tries to wait out the acid, while the others approach. Three up top and three below.
Then the seekers strike. One goes for Murdoch down by the van, another for Garner up on the roof. They didn't approach first. They were just upon us all of a sudden. It appears that they have, for lack of a better way of putting it, some type of 'cloaking device'. Things are getting worse all the time. All of our reaction shots are either absorbed or miss. Superb.
**Things have gone from bad to worse, with a new enemy that appears to have the ability to completely disappear!**
Gale drops the seeker up top with her first burst, which helps. Hoo and Roguru both hit the one down below, but for minimal damage only. The canister expires, and two sectoids move up the street and spot us from the other direction. This is getting real.
** For the love of ... We've still got seeker problems, and now another pair of enemies move in to flank!**
Hoo fires and gets his burst absorbed, but Roguru has better luck bagging the second seeker.
**The seeker essentially explodes in a shower of sparks, releasing Roguru's strangled comrade. The rookie has saved the life of at least one soldier today, or should we say at least prolonged their pain. PFC Hoo can only look on in the background as his shot was less effective. **
Still on the roof, Garner has a good shot at one of the sectoids but misfires. Banerjee gets back up there and wounds one of them. Gale has a clutch shot in nearly killing the second, and we're looking ok here. That was the leader, and a fairly tough angle for Gale so she did very well in that situation.
They fire at the roof and land a ridiculously tough shot right into Garner's head ... he's gone!! Gale and Banerjee both miss. They seem content to sit back and try to hit us as we advance, but Murdoch ends any thought of that with an accurate burst and the final one retreats. Up top, Banerjee finds it further up the street and uses the height advantadge to end this part of the battle.
Everyone moves up to the roof, where we eventually hear movement back to the right, around where the alley between the two buildings is. Gale moves and spots them ... three thin men, who jump up on top of the other structure. A three-story jump. How do they DO THAT?
He retreats to better cover, they actually have the high ground here. Banerjee is able to wound one of them, and Hoo another.
[i]**The absurd and distressing mobility of the thin men turns a situation in which we had the drop on them into a tense rooftop firefight.
Dean Hoo is seen here attempting to improve the odds.**
We can only see two of them now, one misses and another goes into defensive fire.
Another fine shot by Banerjee earns her another kill. Hoo misses high, but Gale ends the other wounded one. The leader is still up there somewhere. He moves forward, bathing Gale and Hoo in acid. Two with one shot. Asstwerp!
**Acid, acid everwhere, but not a drop to drink ... **
We've little choice but to go for broke. All we get with three shooters is a modest wound by Murdoch ... but the thin man jumps down off the building into a defensive position on the street!! What in the world?
Roguru has the best look, and puts an end to resistance here.
** This gratuitous shot shows the business end of the mission's final moments.**
POST-MORTEM
PFC Stephen Garner is the second XCOM soldier to be killed in action. A badly wounded sectoid completely pulled an insane bullseye out of his posterior to make that happen, ruining an otherwhise solid performance. 8 of the enemy killed for one of our own. We have four promotions, and nobody else was even injured.
It could have been a lot worse. We encountered seekers, a new enemy with frightening capabilities, and the thin men showed a harrowing ability to strike with acid cloud attacks and a mobility that truly boggles comprehension. Given these revelations, we probably should be grateful that we won the day without more casualties, but every lost soldier is a body blow.
Artifacts Recovered
2 Sectoid Corpses
4 Thin Man Corpses
2 Seeker Wrecks
1 lb. Elerium
2 lbs. Alien Alloys
6 Weapon Fragments
6 oz. MOG