<\/div>I’ve managed to pick the distress frequencies up on my hospital monitor since we crossed the NFZ. I’m not supposed to, but I am the last great hope of humanity, so the medics don’t actually slap the thing out of my hand. After a few minutes of screaming and booming I kinda wish someone would.<\/p>\n
I’d been wondering why those two new rookies decided to sign up with XCOM, even though we’ve lost so many folks, but I guess the wailing speaker gives me a hint. There’s just nowhere safe to stand in this resistance. You sit up straight, you’re gonna be in the aliens’ sights sooner or later–and at least if you join the rank and file you get a gun to shoot back.<\/p>\n
I really don’t have it in me to regret signing up for this shindig. I mean, I’m an American; I used to have some ordinance that makes XCOM munitions look like a polite suggestion. I would’ve locked and loaded and got on the bus if the aliens had taken over a Burger King in Tallahassee, let alone the whole world, let alone the whole free <\/em>world. Honestly, I mean hand to God, I sort of figured all this was gonna happen. I mean, I didn’t know it was gonna be aliens<\/em>–but I didn’t know it was gonna be not <\/em>aliens, know what I mean?<\/p>\n But the thing is–that’s just me. Now I’ve seen two ops go south, and I’ve listened to a lot of folks die on radios, and not for myself, but for all those people in Rebel City, I find myself hoping we find some down-and-dirty on these aliens real soon. Find out they were gonna kill us all or fry our atmosphere or turn us all into toilet paper. We better find out they’re up to something real <\/em>bad, or I’m gonna have trouble looking in the mirror for the rest of my very short life.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n Commander’s palled Fisher up with three rookies. In an hour all four are going to come back with promotions and no injuries and we’re going to swivel, peel out, and hit that blacksite before breakfast with the brand-new A-Team. At least, that’s one way this could go, and Command is choosing to rule out all other possibilities as being unnecessarily negative.<\/p>\n The skyranger drops off the Avenger with a lurch I can feel. The TV’s been confiscated, which means I’m not gonna watch the mission from my bed like usual. Instead I’m gonna pull some skivs over my bare ass, wrap a blanket on my shoulders, and haul my medicated carcass up and down the hallway looking for an unsecured monitor. It’s not exactly like I want<\/em> to watch the mission, you understand. I just don’t want to hear about it in the morning. I take my suffering live whenever possible.<\/p>\n Heckle and Jeckle the medics are watching the only open screen on the level, and they give me a look when they see me coming that says, don’t push it, buddy. So I plop down at the table nearby like I just want a nice relaxing bowl of porridge, pull my blanket over my shoulders, and settle in. Then I turn and say, “So come on. What’s going on down there?”<\/p>\n Heckle’s about to tell me to go back to bed, but Jeckle says, “Nothing’s happened yet. They came in hot, so there’s no concealment…”<\/p>\n “Yeah, well, when is there. How’s Fisher?”<\/p>\n “He’s taking point…”<\/p>\n A few shots crack off. The medics’ eyes snap to the screen.<\/p>\n “Talk to me,” I say. “Come on.”<\/p>\n “They’re advancing…they hit a few Advent, who are falling back…”<\/p>\n “What kinda formation?”<\/p>\n “No real–Fisher’s coming up the front. Everyone else is keeping back behind him.”<\/p>\n “The hell is he sticking his neck out for?”<\/p>\n “They’ve got to move. People are being shot to death down there. Besides, his shotgun…”<\/p>\n Heckle squints and points. “Why are they running out of cover?”<\/p>\n I swear my blood runs cold.<\/p>\n “They’re running up to those cars and fences,” Heckle says. “What’s that going to stop? They need better cover. They’re under fire from the shack. What do they think they’re doing?”<\/p>\n “Where else are they gonna go?” says Jeckle.<\/p>\n “I don’t know, but they can’t go there, they’re going to get…”<\/p>\n A clipped-off roar bursts through the speakers.<\/p>\n I’m leaning off my bench. “Stun grenade? Did we stun them?”<\/p>\n “I think so…”<\/p>\n “Show me the damn monitor!”<\/p>\n Heckle’s shaking his head, not at me, at the screen. “They’re all split up. They need to shoot, they need to…”<\/p>\n “Show me the god damn monitor!”<\/p>\n “She has to hit this…”<\/p>\n A gun goes off. Another one, and a third. Heckle shakes his head, and as plasma fires, he turns off the monitor.<\/p>\n “Tell me,” I say.<\/p>\n Neither of them speak. Then Jeckle licks his lips and says, “They moved up too close and tried to finish a sectoid being covered by Advent. Menace 1-5 threw a grenade at him. Then, another one. They tried to blow up the car he was standing next to, and it didn’t blow. They tried to hit him, they all missed. They’re out of position, and…”<\/p>\n “And what?”<\/p>\n “And I turned it off. What do you mean, ‘and what?’ What do you honestly think happens after this?”<\/p>\n I don’t have to say anything. I just get up and go back to sitting on the bed and thinking too much.<\/p>\n So I don’t see what happens next, and I don’t learn about what happened until late into the night when the shouting’s so loud I have to go out and mind it.<\/p>\n Operation Driving Prince represented the heaviest fighting XCOM’s faced so far. The debriefing, which I find a copy of as soon as I can, describes the enemy’s emplacements as “determined, many, surprisingly well-organized, and relentlessly hostile.” Menace 1-5 had to move fast into a turkey shoot with little cover and no advantages. Everyone’s talking about what happened, and how things took a turn, and there’s one word that keeps coming up:<\/p>\n “Miracle.”<\/p>\n Someone, maybe everyone, should have come home from this in a bag. Instead we’ve got four healthy, hearty operatives and more than a couple healthy civilians. Miracle, say the rebels. Command doesn’t like that word–“miracle.” It implies we didn’t deserve to get what we got, which was four living operatives with four promotions.<\/p>\n Well, they don’t like it, they can take it up with the dictionary. I’m sticking with it–and hoping for another one.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Today Fisher was handed his release papers from Avenger County Hospital–along with a puppy sticker, a shotgun, and orders to jump over East Asia into an active massacre. Turns out Rebel City’s being hit by Advent stormtroopers, and if we burn every cloud between here and there we might just save a few of the […]<\/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-36942","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\/36942","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=36942"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.shamusyoung.com\/twentysidedtale\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/36942\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.shamusyoung.com\/twentysidedtale\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=36942"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.shamusyoung.com\/twentysidedtale\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=36942"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.shamusyoung.com\/twentysidedtale\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=36942"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}
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