{"id":36575,"date":"2017-01-17T22:52:47","date_gmt":"2017-01-18T03:52:47","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.shamusyoung.com\/twentysidedtale\/?p=36575"},"modified":"2017-01-17T22:57:26","modified_gmt":"2017-01-18T03:57:26","slug":"unfit-for-xcommand-ch1-gasping-king","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.shamusyoung.com\/twentysidedtale\/?p=36575","title":{"rendered":"Unfit for XCOMmand CH1: Gasping King"},"content":{"rendered":"

I don’t know what happens after you die, but I do know what happens when an XCOM soldier almost <\/em>dies–and whatever does or doesn’t lie beyond the grave, it can’t be much worse than post-apocalyptic guerrilla military hospital food. Today it’s porridge. You can make porridge out of anything, and apparently, they have.<\/p>\n

Fisher says he doesn’t mind it. Fisher is liar, and in direct consequence, one of the most reassuring members of the unit. He and I have some disagreements about Operation Gasping King.<\/p>\n

“It’s a simple clean-cut operation,” he says. “The rookies are ready to go, and Donny will be there to cover their backs. I say it’ll go down with no serious problems.”<\/p>\n

“They’re all gonna fuckin’ die,” I suggest.<\/p>\n

“You don’t have any <\/em>faith in the Commander. Operation Gatecrasher went down alright, didn’t it?”<\/p>\n

I look over the infirmary, current site of the Operation Gatecrasher afterparty, still going strong after nearly a week. “If the plan is for us to develop a tolerance to alien grenades, then we’re off to a strong start.”<\/p>\n

Fisher shushes me–the snow is clearing from the operations monitor set up by the surgical table. We’re not supposed to be watching this, since we’re in recovery, but the medics aren’t real doctors and they can all eat my ass.<\/p>\n

Not that I'm knocking them. After all, we're sure as shit not real soldiers.<\/div>
Not that I'm knocking them. After all, we're sure as shit not real soldiers.<\/div><\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

“Menace 1-5,” <\/em>says Bradford, “your objective is to destroy the alien relay and secure the evac. After landing, you will have eight minutes to get it done and get out.”<\/em><\/p>\n

“Eight minutes!” I wipe sprayed porridge off my chin. “Shit, why not grab some burgers first?”<\/p>\n

Menace 1-5 deploys, pretty covertly for an illegal uncleared VTOL, and puts the squad down tightly grouped a block or two from the objective. The Commander’s voice is pretty thin on our speakers, but I hear Mertens, Choi, Hawkins, and King copy and see them all begin to move up the sidewalk.<\/p>\n

So far, they haven’t been spotted. And as long as they take their time, check their corners, and move up nice and slow…<\/p>\n

“Menace 1-5, be advised you have seven minutes remaining.”<\/em><\/p>\n

“Seven fucking <\/em>minutes,” I mutter.<\/p>\n

<\/div>
<\/div><\/p>\n

King, the only one in the squad who’s actually seen an alien, receives a special order from the Commander. He slings his high-powered rifle over his shoulder, and while the rest of the squad moves up the sidewalk, he climbs a drainpipe.<\/p>\n

“Good,” I say. “Just stay up there. Nothing for you down there, Donny…”<\/p>\n

“I’ve got contact,” says Choi on the ground.<\/p>\n

<\/div>
<\/div><\/p>\n

Sure enough, the monitor picks up the first two bad guys of the day. One of them’s an Advent Soldier, and is for all intents and purposes some stupid mutant kid with a laser–not much more formidable than a single XCOM operative. The other one is a sectoid, and as best as command can figure, they’re cast-iron psychic sharpshooter wizards. The good news is, they don’t see Choi.<\/p>\n

A few quick orders crackle in the speakers, and carefully, but efficiently, the squad moves up into position to engage. And then King gets his orders, and he nods, and he slips back down the drainpipe…<\/p>\n

“No, no, no<\/em>, why is he doing that?”<\/p>\n

“He can’t set up on the roof without them seeing him,” says Fisher.<\/p>\n

“So send him to the back of the building! Don’t just have him run up with the rest of the squad, he’s a fucking sharpshooter!”<\/p>\n

“He can’t just hide in the back while time’s running out!”<\/p>\n

The audio channel blows up. It is instantly clear, even to totally untrained meatheads–which, that’s everyone in XCOM–<\/em>that Menace 1-5 is no longer concealed from anything. There was no ambush. There’s just a lot of screaming.<\/p>\n

Mertens is dead. Another squad of Advent is running up, and King is scrambling out of his useless cover and back to the evacuation. Choi is panicking, spraying fire out in the open, and a sure pick for next to get shot. Hawkins unloads his rifle at a gutter. For a second I think he’s cracked, and then I realized that one of the Advent bastards ran up onto the goddamn roof.<\/p>\n

Menace 1-5 went from covert to outflanked instantly.<\/p>\n

<\/div>
<\/div><\/p>\n

I hear the Commander’s voice, very calm. The three survivors start running–and barely a minute later, they’re being yanked out of combat in a haze of laser fire.<\/p>\n

On the bed next to mine, Fisher is silent. Then, after a while, he rolls over and goes back to sleep.<\/p>\n

COMMANDER’S SUMMARY OF ENGAGEMENT:<\/p>\n

Rks. Choi, Mertens, and Hawkins accompanied Sq. King in an attempt to disrupt an alien relay. Their squad (Menace 1-5) detected a pair of hostile combatants and took cover awaiting my instructions to ambush. They were instructed to open fire should their position be compromised.<\/p>\n

However, for reasons that are presently unclear, Menace 1-5 did not <\/em>open fire until after the combatants discovered them and fired first. This is expected in situations where XCOM operatives are outflanked by the enemy, but it is at present not clear how two aliens stumbling head-on into a diversely arranged and well-secured squad could be considered “outflanking” much of anything.<\/p>\n

Nevertheless, Mertens was killed instantly and Choi panicked, leaving the squad with two out-of-position and evidently outflanked members to confront both the original threat and an additional enemy squad that stumbled onto the action before anyone had time to respond. Of those two operatives, only Hawkins was capable of moving (which at this point was strictly necessary) and firing his primary weapon at the same time. King would not be able to use his high-powered rifle while taking cover.<\/p>\n

Therefore, in the certain knowledge that the firefight could not be concluded before the mission terminated, I made the difficult but informed decision to extract all three survivors. I am happy to say the retreat was wholly successful.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

<\/div>
<\/div><\/p>\n

So, hey. We killed one solider, they killed one solider. Let’s call it a draw.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

I don’t know what happens after you die, but I do know what happens when an XCOM soldier almost dies–and whatever does or doesn’t lie beyond the grave, it can’t be much worse than post-apocalyptic guerrilla military hospital food. Today it’s porridge. You can make porridge out of anything, and apparently, they have. Fisher says […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":5,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[242],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-36575","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-lets-play"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.shamusyoung.com\/twentysidedtale\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/36575","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.shamusyoung.com\/twentysidedtale\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.shamusyoung.com\/twentysidedtale\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.shamusyoung.com\/twentysidedtale\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/5"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.shamusyoung.com\/twentysidedtale\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=36575"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.shamusyoung.com\/twentysidedtale\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/36575\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.shamusyoung.com\/twentysidedtale\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=36575"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.shamusyoung.com\/twentysidedtale\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=36575"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.shamusyoung.com\/twentysidedtale\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=36575"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}