Canberra, Australia

Riding fiery rockets, a floater blasted over the cityscape. Its cybernetically enhanced eyesight scanned a total of five humans spread out across the courtyard below. Tilting downward and reducing thrust, the legless cyborg dropped in low for a landing. Its intended position would put it on the high ground over the team, an ideal spot to hose the hunkering group's flanks with plasma.

Suddenly the floater shivered, experiencing an intense vibration in its chest. A loud crack split the air, and as the floater looked down, it found a large, pulpy hole punched clean through its chest. Electric pain coursed through the floater from its damaged implants, and the creature slumped to the ground as it rapidly bled out.

"X-ray down," said Lieutenant Shoke, the South African's voice as smooth as the hand working the bolt of his sniper rifle. A pity that only the assault rifle equivalent laser weapons were ready in time for this mission. The LWM-1 light machine gun equivalent and the LWS-1 sniper rifle equivalent were still in testing phases.

Still, from his lofty perch Shoke didn't think it was so bad. His current rifle was familiar, and provided he didn't need to bring down a Muton, adequate enough. He brought his binoculars to his eyes and scanned the street ahead, looking for any further hostiles. The aliens didn't care a lick about camouflage, and glowing green weapons tended to be a giveaway as well. "Looks clear."

"Affirmative," said Major Ruiz. "Telsia, Ozawa, forward." Sergeant 'Banzai' Telsia lead the way, her laser rifle and her eyes searching left and right as she advanced. Ozawa, one of the new recruits, followed along behind her.

Bolts of plasma suddenly slashed out from a nearby store front. One of them caught Ozawa in the chest, burning through his armor and slamming him to the ground. The rookie cried out in pain, while Telsia darted to cover. "Two Sectoids!" she called out into the radio. "That one's a good shot, I bet they're mind-linked."

"I've got this," said Ruiz. "Keep them occupied."

"Don't think that'll be a problem!" Telsia yelled back, ducking down as one plasma bolt after another burned rapidly through the concrete divider she was hunkered behind.

Slipping up to a side exit on the restaurant the Sectoids were lurking in, Ruiz quietly pushed the door open. The Sectoids hadn't yet noticed him, leading the man to smirk deviously. Slinging his machine gun, he drew his sidearm. No sense wasting the LMG on soft targets, and with the magnum loads they packed, XCOM's sidearms made quite the manstoppers. Well, alien horror stoppers.

Ruiz snapped off a pair of rounds, the first going wide but the second punching through the abdomen of one Sectoid. With a hiss, the alien turned toward Ruiz, but the commando was faster. Another two shots followed, both drilling into the head of the Sectoid that was already wounded. Ruiz adjusted his aim to take out the second Sectoid, but the creature had already stumbled. It gave a strangled cry and clutched at its head before slumping to the ground. Standing over it, Ruiz put one into its chest just to be sure. "Central," Ruiz said into his radio. "This is Casino. Make sure we tag this gray for autopsy, I think we just found out an Achilles heel in that mental link."

"Affirmative, Casino," replied one of the technicians.

"Ruiz, this is Bashir," said the unit's field medic.

"How's our patient, doc?"

"Another happy recipient of the best medicine lots of money and no red tape can buy," replied Bashir dryly.

"I'm fit, Major," said Ozawa.

"Try to be more careful next time, eh?" said Ruiz.

"Yes, sir."

"Alrighty then." Ruiz cracked his neck to both sides and readied his machine gun again. "Shoke, how's it look?"

"... Looks clear," said the sniper, with a trace of amusement in his voice.

"I hear gunfire," said a man, holding tight to his wife's hand. This was supposed to be their honeymoon, a chance to play tourist and live normally even if there were aliens invading. Instead they now found themselves in this awful mess, aliens all over the place, death and chaos in the air, and their odds dwindling to those even a gambler would pass on.

"It means someone's fighting those things," replied thew wife. She froze as she heard noise behind them. Slowly she turned, and saw three figures standing on the front steps of a nearby bank. Her first instinct was relief at the sight of other humans in all this insanity, but already warning bells were going off in her head. The trio moved oddly, as though their bones were made of something less rigid. Their eyes gleamed strangely, and patches of skin at their temples seemed scaly. Most telling of all, however, were the glowing green weapons they wielded. Those weren't anything human. "Shit..." she said, her voice faint.

Turning, horror dawned on the husband's face at the sight of the three aliens. Hissing and screeching, the aliens ran down the steps, their gaits loping and inhuman. On instinct the man moved to shield his wife, even though he knew anything he could do would probably only buy her milliseconds.

Gunfire erupted and the man braced himself to die. The gunfire continued and the man thought it strange that he felt no pain. He opened his eyes and saw two of the aliens lay dying, twitching like poisoned insects.

The third, panicking, tried to run. Bringing her head up, the wife looked around, and saw two soldiers clad in full armor run up alongside them. One carried a familiar assault rifle, but the other held some sort of energy weapon. The one with the energy weapon fired on the move, chasing after the fleeing alien. "It's okay!" said the other soldier. "You'll be safe now!" Then he was off. Almost as quickly as the soldiers had come, they were gone again.

Ozawa grimaced as a blast from a heavy plasma rifle melted a meter-wide hole in a nearby wall. He'd already been wounded once on this mission, and even the drugs couldn't dull the memory of the pain that had accompanied the first hit.

Swinging out of the alleyway, Ozawa squeezed off a shot from his laser rifle. The targeted Muton however ducked, the beam grazing the side its face and burning a furrow into its shoulder armor. These things are formidable, thought Ozawa. He retrieved a grenade from his vest and primed the explosive. Odds were it wouldn't kill the beast, but even those brutes surely couldn't ignore a dozen bits of red-hot metal digging into them.

With an expert arm, Ozawa landed the grenade within two meters of the Muton. It raised an arm to ward off the blast, but the concussion alone sent the creature reeling backward. Ozawa heard a chuckle in his ear, and realized it was Shoke. The Muton had just entered the sniper's line of fire.

Dazed, the Muton shook its head, hate burning in its eyes as it sighted on Ozawa. With primal fury the creature roared, pounding its chest like a furious silverback. Fear trickled into Ozawa's stomach as the Muton stomped toward him, but the creature's stance faltered as four high-velocity rounds impacted its face, neck, and chest. The chest impacts deflected off the creature's armor, but yellow blood squirted out from the wounds in unprotected areas.

The Muton leveled its plasma rifle at Ozawa, and the rookie's panic flared up. He squeezed the trigger of his laser rifle again and again, sending ruby lances stabbing into the Muton's existing wounds. Haggard breaths came from Ozawa's lungs, and he kept squeezing the trigger even when the weapon stopped firing and beeped repeatedly at him to indicate it was out of charge.

Sprawled dead since about the third laser burst, the ashy Muton stank horribly of burnt flesh, and sections of its armor bubbled, made molten from the heat.

Forcing himself to take deep breaths, Ozawa ejected the spent power cell and slapped in a fresh one. The familiar action helped calm Ozawa, and he felt reassured when the power meter filled with green again. He keyed his radio. "Ozawa here. X-ray neutralized."

"Copy that," Ruiz's response was marred by the sounds of gunfire and inhuman shrieks. "We found some Thin Men and Floaters trying to close in on some holed-up civvies. Bashir's been hit but Banzai patched him up."

"Ozawa, three o'clock!" Shoke's panicked transmission made the rookie snap his head around. A creature with glowing eyes stalked toward him, its flitting motions reminiscent of an insect. It had four slender legs and a purple exoskeleton, clawed arms and a slobbering maw with clicking insectoid mandibles.

"Shoke!" Ozawa called for the sniper to take it out as well even as he opened fire on it as well. Ozawa's first shot went wide, and the creature surprised him by leaping some five meters to land atop a nearby car.

The sniper's response was marred by the echo of gunfire Ozawa could hear in the air. "Busy here!"

Ozawa swung his gun around and fired again on what he thought of as a stalker, and saw the shot char and warp exoskeleton over the creature's midsection. The alien jumped again, landing atop a light pole. It swung gracefully under it like an acrobat, and lunged at Ozawa. The rookie ducked and dove to the side, making it overshoot.

Landing hard, Ozawa twisted and brought his weapon up. He would hopefully have a few seconds to bring the creature down before it could recover and turn around. Another shot from his laser rifle caught the creature in the back, but then one of its rear legs speared him through the shoulder. Immediately Ozawa's arm went numb, and the creature seemed to draw vicious glee from yanking its clawlike leg from the wound.

Unable to aim his rifle one-handed, Ozawa went for his pistol. Shot after shot snapped from the weapon, striking the creature as it turned around. It lunged, its mandibles tearing through Ozawa's armor with sickening ease, and the flesh beneath just as well. The alien hissed as it stood over Ozawa's lifeless corpse, then turned toward where its kin had pinpointed the enemy sharpshooter.

"Like hell," snarled Ruiz, having arrived just in time to see one of his men eviscerated. Again he lowered his light machine gun, anger driving him to draw his as of yet unused missile launcher. Practiced hands extended the weapon to its ready configuration.

Telsia quickly scrambled to the side, lest she get caught in the backblast. Her skeleton armor might offer some protection, but she opted not to find out. Ruiz sighted in on the quadrupedal alien as it charged toward him, and fired. The missile screamed from its launch tube, reaching the target in barely a second. The explosion ripped the alien open like a wet paper bag, scattering shell fragments, blood, and what had probably been vital organs in all directions.

"This, uh, Central," came Bradford's voice over the link. "Scans show the area as clear. Well done, strike-one." There was a pause. "Remind me never to make him angry," muttered Bradford, apparently unaware his headset was still live.

XCOM Headquarters, Central Europe

Commander Chekov did his best to keep the sour expression from his face as he read the latest after action report. It wasn't any failing on the part of Major Ruiz, or any of his soldiers. He didn't blame the dead rookie – Ozawa – for the grizzly fate he had suffered at the hands of what the lab rats were now calling 'Chrysallids'. He didn't blame Bashir for getting wounded, nor Shoke, the force's best sniper. XCOM was winning or at least drawing most every battle they fought, but the aliens always conducted abduction runs on more cities than XCOM could cover, and Chekov had the constant anxiety that the war was a rising tide turned against them. XCOM was making progress, designing new weapons in the lab, refining tactics in the officer training school, and slowly growing their spread of interceptors, observation satellites, and early-warning systems. But the aliens continued to hold the initiative.

As a leader, Chekov had to mask his worries and give the orders to keep his nightmares from becoming reality. Preoccupied, Chekov didn't notice Bradford until the younger man cleared his throat. "You look like you could use a drink."

"If I started, I might not stop," Chekov said. He gestured to the map dominating one wall of the situation room visible through a glass wall in his office. "Even with the mission in Canberra, there's growing unrest around the world. Some cities have been all but abandoned after they were hit. Several countries are suspected of alien infiltration."

"May be true, sir," admitted Bradford. "Or it could be psi-ops. The aliens could spread false information to get us to turn on each other."

Chekov snorted. "If our destruction is their aim, humans nearly accomplished that ourselves during the cold war."

That was too true. "Anyway," Bradford went on. "We got a report from the science team. They finally cracked the signals used by that outsider shard. Tracing their sources, we found a major hub located in Africa. One of our satellites detected an underground structure. Nearly as large as this facility"

"They built a base?" Chekov's tone was half incredulous, half furious. He frowned, interlacing his fingers. "Why...?" Why would a species with ships that could hide in orbit have a presence down on the surface, especially a command center like that?

"If I had to guess sir, I'd say hubris. Just like their shelling stunt over a half-dozen capitals, it's to show us just how outclassed we are. Maybe they figure we'll surrender if it seems hopeless."

Chekov snorted. "They do not know us well," he said darkly. "It may also be simple logistics." He stopped and shook his head. It didn't matter if the aliens had built the base to start selling flowers and sweets. They had to deal with it.

"The base is protected by some kind of energy field," said Bradford. "But it appears as though the Outsiders have a way through. Doctor Shen's team is working on a device to allow our team entry into the base." He chuckled, then added, "They're calling it a skeleton key."

"Good," said Chekov. "Once it's ready we'll send a team."

The camouflage shutter retracted as Ji descended toward what appeared to be an empty stretch of rock. She eased back on the throttle and flipped vertical, lowering into the main hangar bay the same as the skyrangers did when returning. She had just returned to base from a successful interception, her second UFO kill. Voodoo three-two had taken a team secure the crash site.

Ji touched down and taxied back over to the support rack constructed for her use. Her cannon was returned to its bracket, and the whine of her jet engines died away.

"So," called out one of the nearby technicians, striding over as the hangar door ground shut again. "How is she handling?"

"Fine," said Ji, failing to notice the puzzlement on the tech's face for her unenthusiastic tone. Initially, she had been dubious about allowing the XCOM personnel to work on her striker unit. But her striker unit was naturally optimized for fighting Neuroi, not Sectoid UFOs. The radar pod had been modified to overcome the saucer's stealthier designs, and the engines had been upgraded as well. Her ordnance bays had also been loaded with a miniaturized version of XCOM's Avalanche missiles. "I must confess, I'm impressed by how quickly your personnel adapted to working with striker units."

The technician was joined by several others, pulling data, combing over the striker unit's dull gray surfaces for stress fractures and battle damage. The technician smiled modestly. "Well, we're used to dealing with alien technology here. Compared to stuff built by creatures whose smallest oddity is that they apparently have base sixteen math, learning the ropes of technology at least built by humans is actually kind of relaxing."

Ji jumped down from her striker unit, but paused to run a hand over the side of her striker unit. It was originally derived from an older design, but had been modernized with internal ordnance bays, re-engineered hull geometry, and built with a radar absorbent coating. Such 'stealth' striker units had become all the rage, the same as regular jets, but Ji felt a tiny amount of pride at being able to hide herself from the visual spectrum just as well as her striker hid them from radar and infra-red. Mariya's striker unit, the sleek tank-type that it was, actually had a similar coating. Ji shook her head slightly. Stealth on ground armor. The Orussians had strange ideas sometimes.

"Ji!" Mariya's voice called out from near the hangar exit. Ji couldn't help a sigh. Sorties and even practice had been wearing her out and leaving her sore lately. She'd been hoping to slip off to her quarters to have some quiet, but Mariya had been trying to get her to come out once in awhile. Ji always blew her off, but as Mariya grabbed her by the arm, Ji knew that wasn't going to happen this time.

"We heard about your second UFO kill," said Mariya, offering the sky witch a smile. "There's a Royal Marine down there who wants to buy you a drink."

Ji gave a dry snort, her expression remaining blank as she let herself be lead toward the base lounge. "Is Yaira with the retrieval team?"

Mariya shook her head. "She's down in the firing range. Wanted to try out one of the laser rifles after she heard how much more effective they were than the standard ballistic weapons."

Ji snorted with slight amusement, but did not smile. That sounded like Yaira. She would probably want the first laser cannon installed on her Merkava tank striker unit.

The doors of the lounge parted as they approached. The chatter of voices and the tinkle of glasses wafted out to meet the witches. A knot of people were clustered around the memorial wall, pinning the photo of the dead rookie up alongside their other fallen. The conversations quieted somewhat however as a relayed news broadcast came up on one of the televisions.

"Early this morning," said the thickset, pasty newscaster. "The Australian capital of Canberra came under alien siege. While the attacks in other cities simply consisted of high-altitude shelling, Canberra saw the deployment of alien foot soldiers. Casualties have already topped ten thousand, and that number is expected to rise sharply as stock is taken."

What followed next was grainy footage, pulled from cell phones, and stuttering, sometimes black-and-white footage from security cameras. It was footage the XCOM operatives would know well... considering it showed them in action.

"A supersonic aircraft penetrated the cordon and deployed soldiers of unknown affiliation to the region." A blurry image enhancement of an operator's patch appeared on screen. "The troops engaged the aliens." Footage followed, the recordings marred by dazzling weapons flashes. "And defeated them before vanishing as mysteriously as they came. These 'Force X' soldiers have been spotted around the world, typically wherever the alien menace has struck, but this is the first occasion they have taken direct action to protect imperiled civilians."

Several clips of interviewed Canberrans followed. "They saved us," said a young woman, part of her face wrapped in bandages.

An elderly man was next. "I thought we were all done for," he shook his head slowly. "But then these people showed up, before the military managed to deploy, and sent the bug-eyes packing." He hesitated, but then looked at the camera. "Whoever you people are, thank you."

"Indeed," said the newscaster. "While the origin of Force X remains unknown, it seems their intervention saved many lives."

"See?" Mariya squeezed Ji's arm slightly. "XCOM is making a difference, and we can help them."

"I know that," Ji said, her expression souring slightly.

"Can't you at least smile? Something?" said Mariya, tilting her head.

Ji scowled at her. "I don't see the others celebrating too much. XCOM saved one city. The panic index might have dropped in that region, but the war is far from over."

"Our world is at war too," Mariya said. "That didn't stop you from taking Captain Wilcke out for ice cream after her thirtieth kill," said Mariya. "Or from sneaking off base that one time to see Metalstride in concert." Ji's teeth clenched, apparently unaware she had been rumbled on that particular occasion. "Or playing your guitar." Pain stirred in Mariya's eyes, not for herself, but for her friend. "I know you're worried about Lisbeth. But we're all missing home, our friends, our squadronmates, our beds, letters from family. I'm even missing Elina's weird cooking experiments, so why is it just you acting like such a hardass? Please, talk to us."

"Leave me alone." Ji's tone left Mariya with a chill, but not because of anger in the sky witch's voice. In fact, there wasn't anything in it at all, flat as paper and dull as gray. No sadness, not even irritation. "I'm fit to fly and kill the enemy threatening this world. That's all that matters." Ji spun on her heel with military precision, and marched out of the room.