A little more 'fun' this weekend than I bargained for, unfortunately. Past time to get caught up here.
OPERATION DEVIL'S HAMMER
Germany
0454, April 8
Devil's Hammer? I wonder if we are the hammerer, or the one being hammered. Tensions are high. It's a forested area in northern Germany, so at least civilian casualties are not an issue. Coming back alive is.
It isn't light yet, and we approach through the 'crash path'. My goal as always with a crashed UFO is to sweep the perimeter first. I don't want to be 'surprised' by anything once we get inside. At first we hear sectoids ... and something else. Something we've not heard before. It sounds somehow larger and more dangerous than a sectoid or thin man. As if we needed another reason to be shaking in our boots.
Around the right of the UFO there seems to be more room to maneuver. We head that way, hoping to get a fix on where they are. Soon Deschamps spots them ... flying enemies of a new kind. We call them the 'floater'. They seem ... almost cybernetic ... in appearance.
Naturally, the doctors put in their two cents ...
Vahlen: 'This is a disturbing development to say the least. It's hard to differentitate where the organic entity ends and the machine begins.'
Shen: 'They're not going to win any beauty contests, that's for sure. '
Beauty contests. That's lovely. We have no good place to retreat. It's kill or be killed here. First up is Kim. The one on the right is entrenched behind a tree, but he's got the range to deliver a close-range shotgun execution. One down. The leader is a bit too aggressive and has exposed itself, getting that last one behind the log is going to be the challenge. Pena tosses a HE grenade, and it has no log anymore.
It's up to the other four now to shoot these bastards.
Deschamps drills the middle one, and now it should be a piece of cake. Carter drops the leader. She had another burst, and Brodie/Burke didn't even have to do anything. Wow. I wish all engagements with new enemies went so well. Nobody missed, but they were all near-gimme shots. The floaters were just way too aggressive and overconfident. Hopefully they all are. A clean three kills, and we've created a bit of space in which to operate now.
Everything we are hearing ... canisters, enemies, movement .... seems to be coming from the far side of the ship. No reason not to keep moving in this direction. Movement inside the ship, and we also hear more floaters out there somewhere as we progress.
We work away around, still hearing movement only from inside the ship. Burke snags a canister(5 oz.) from the edge of it, but we're not going in until I'm sure the perimeter is clear. When we reach the other side, a cliff prevents us from having enough room to safely skirt it though. We've gone around nearly half the ship and found nothing else. It seems there's nothing for it but to raid the craft itself now. It's big enough to have internal doors and compartments, not the one-room scout we are used to.
We move through the outer door and nothing. A V-shaped hallway splits right and left, with all the sounds coming from the left for quite a while now. Gradually we move that way to another, smaller door. We approach it, starting to hear thin men ....
Pena reports sectoids behind us, outside of the ship, pretty much exactly where we landed! Damn it!!
We have no sign that the aliens in the ship have spotted us yet. The sectoids retreat out of range. We need to move out that way, I don't want to fight on two fronts if we can avoid it. There's basically no good cover between us and them, so a longer maneuver back outside the main outer door is indicated.
The leader advances, and Pena makes him pay but a pair of telepathic attacks still land on her. She panics. Brodie moves over to heal ... 'rubs some dirt on it you wimp!'. Not sure how you are supposed to rub some dirt on your brain, but ok.
Pena wounds the advancing sectoid from her position just inside the alien craft
Carter and Deschamps fire high. We continue to hear movement in the ship, but have other problems as we move outside for better firing positions. One of them misses Burke, the others take defensive posture. Two more bursts from Carter, and the second ends one of the support sectoids. Burke draws the fire of the second while Kim moves in for an execution of the leader.
A flashbang keeps the remaining enemy at bay while we try to approach. Meanwhile we see a couple of floaters in the opposite direction, but they don't see us. More footsteps inside the ship. There's a lot more action yet remaining in this one. Burke moves in close to take out the sectoid, not close enough to use her sawed-off shotgun but the SMG takes care of it.
With that front cleared, we reposition to ready for the floaters. Not a moment too soon, as they are aggressive again, upon us almost immediately! It's kill or be killed again.
Once again the floaters don't give us time to discuss the situation in committee
Burke flanks the leader ... and misses! A bit of a long-range shot there for an SMG but still a bad, bad miss. Deschamps misses badly with a shredder rocket. Carter drops the exposed one but misses well high and left on the leader. Pena drops an AP grenade behind the wall, and both are injured but still alive. Kim can only take one of them out, so to finish them off we need a clutch shot from who ...
Deschamps places the rocket blast precisely where it will do the least damage .
That's right,
Lily Brodie. You already know the result. The leader is dead, and soon the Korean shotgun specialist goes execution style on the other. We hear the sound of annoyed thin men inside, but cannot yet see them.
That's nine enemies down. That was tense, there was likely an injured or dead operative upcoming if Brodie didn't land that SMG burst. It was basically a 50-50 shot, but she showed once again why she's XCOM kills leader.
We set to move back in, only hearing thin men now. Seems to be coming through that door, but a ways behind it on the other side of the ship. Hopefully they stay there and give us time to reload and get in position.
Nope. They burst through the door. Pena wounds one, but they scatter and we've got a scramble fight on our hands.
After a long game of cat-and-mouse, the thin men show up immediately after the floaters have been dealt with ...
The leader is outside, Burke moves to a safe distance and he's gone in a cloud of acid as her burst is right on the mark. The other two, less bold, retreated inside past the door. Deschamps is too far away, but the other four are close enough. We should be able to finish them off. Carter misses, then hits, and Pena finishes off the last one. She's got an acid problem now but that won't matter unless more show up. That could happen, as we still aren't finished with a full dozen of the enemy down!
We move through after the acid clears ... and hear something just outside the ship. Can't tell what it is, which is strange. Burke moves in and spots them ... outsiders at the edge of the ship! That's right, outsiders. Not one, but two. This is just splendid. We have two flashbangs, both on Kim who will be needed for fun with his shotgun.
A new brand of hell -- multiple outsiders bracketing our scout
A well-placed(for once) rocket annihilates the cover for both of them ... and exposes Kim as well. Carter takes out the close one, Kim dashes to take out the second, but that could easily have gone south.
POST-MORTEM
14 of the enemy killed, a new record! Pena, Carter, and Kim are all promoted to lance corporal, giving us five now at that rank. The former is injured for nine days, but that's the only casualty. The key part of this mission was taking out the sectoids and the second group of floaters quickly and efficiently before the thin men showed up. It was tense, but we never had to fight more than a few at a time. The rocket blast against the outsiders was important as well. It reduced our haul, but saved something more valuable -- the lives of our soldiers, which were in serious jeopardy at that point.
Artifacts Recovered
3 Sectoid Corpses
6 Floater Corpses
3 Thin Man Corpses
19 Elerium
13 Alien Alloys
14 Weapon Fragments
9 MOG
1 UFO Power Source
4 Alien Flight Computers(all damaged).
1 UFO Power Source(damaged)
9m is added to the treasury from sale of the damaged components.