Please, if you can, see this video before reading. See it as an intro for the chapters.
X-Pony Intro
Enemy Unknown
Walking through the forest, I glanced back at the rest of my squad for a moment before motioning two Pegasi to scout ahead. My tail twitched as they flew slowly towards the pillar of smoke we knew was the downed UFO. Was something watching us? The fur on my back stood up as I floated the pistol along at my side, trying not to mutter about the lack of decent weaponry available to us, especially since we only had one rocket launcher between us, and that was in the hooves of one of second squad’s Pegasi.
Still, even with that being said… or muttered as the case may be, at least we managed to bring down one of the strange ships; the Razor Talons hasn’t even managed to catch a glimpse of one in the air during their time in operation. X-Com one, Razor Talons, zero. Something made even better by the fact we were now getting ready to scavenge anything we could from the downed vehicle.
Breaking out of the forest near the foot of the mountain, my ears flicked back as I heard the soft sound of rustling leaves behind me. Turning back, I noticed one of the bushes we had just passed starting to move, something metal looking poking out of it.
Yelling a warning, I watched in horror as a bolt of green energy flashed across the area, almost hitting one of the other unicorns in the head as she threw herself flat on the ground. The bolt blew a chunk out of a tree above the unicorn, causing a large oak to crash down along our path as the bolt burned a hole the rest of the way through it, green flames licking at the wood.
Bringing my pistol to bear, I fired into the bush, getting a groan of pain followed by the sound of running feet as the others gathered themselves and opened fire with their own weapons.
As the creature ran, in the direction of the Skyranger, unfortunately, I caught a glimpse of it. It looked like a slightly older than baby dragon, but without the wings and scales. Dull grey skin covered it from its bulbous head to its flat feet.
A quick motion of my head and first squad went after the alien, jogging through the forest back the way we had all come, this time pausing behind trees to avoid getting a face full of green fire as the creature shot over its shoulder at them.
The rest of second squad followed me up the mountain towards the crash site, though none of us were eager anymore. After seeing what the green… thing had done to the tree, I couldn’t say that I blamed them.
As we reached the crash site, a dozen more of the projectiles came out of nowhere, causing all of us to throw ourselves flat while the pegasi dodged and wove through the air in an effort to avoid them. Unfortunately, it wasn’t enough for one of the pair as another green bolt hit him in the side, causing him to give a horrible scream as his flesh boiled away from his bones. I flinched as he fell from the sky and lay dead, the horrible smell of burnt flesh hanging heavy in the air.
One of the unicorns threw a grenade in the direction the green bolts had come from as the remaining six of us took cover wherever we could, sheltering behind rocks or cringing in dips on the ground as more bolts flew at us, right up until we heard an explosion from the grenade.
At that point, we thought we had won, several of the others glancing over at each other with triumphant grins on their muzzles that was until we heard the sounds of flat feet slapping on hard ground. Risking a look out from the small rock I was hiding behind, I spotted another one of the grey-skinned things from before. This time though, I could make out more detail. Its bulbous head had no muzzle to speak of, just a tiny mouth and huge black eyes, ones bigger than any other creature I had ever seen. In its thin forelegs, it was carrying some kind of… something; I couldn’t tell what it was supposed to be.
Ducking out of cover, I flinched as a green bolt splashed on the rock one of the others was hiding behind and opened fire on the creature. Fire flashed across my vision as the gun went off, followed by a howl of pain as the grey thing dropped what it was holding, green gunk oozing out of a hole in its shoulder. It turned to look at me for a moment with its soulless black eyes, before another bullet made its head splatter on the ground behind it, leaving it to collapse.
A whirring noise from the UFO distracted me as a hatch slid open, another plume of thick black smoke joining the stuff coming from the top of the craft. Bringing my weapon to bear on the new opening, I watched as a third one of the things staggered out, more black than grey thanks to the amount of soot. It collapsed into the open air, coughing and hacking before lying still as the others emerged from their hiding places, all weapons pointed at the opening in the damaged craft.
My ear flicked back as something exploded in the forest. Looking back over my shoulder, I spotted a Pegasus flying up into the open sky, pumping a hoof in celebration. Apparently that was three of these things down, I would have to remember to congratulate that Pegasus once we got back to base.
Turning my attention back to the UFO, I frowned, studying it as I waited with the others for the smoke to clear or more aliens to come out, whichever happened first. Beyond the hole in the roof, or what I presumed was the roof, there was a fairly large set of holes in the side I could see, probably from Interceptor 1’s chain gun, along with dirt and muck from a rough landing. Still, the shape shouldn’t be able to fly, unless it didn’t work under the type of physics we understood.
After several minutes, with no more activity from inside, the smoke thinned to the point where we could get inside without getting instant carbon monoxide poisoning. Twitching my tail as I floated my pistol back near me, I ordered one of the pegasi to guard the unconscious alien and groaned when he promptly pointed a missile launcher at it, talk about overkill. “You do realise that’s a waste of good missiles, right?” I asked him as the rest moved carefully to the door of the UFO.
The Pegasus frowned, but shouldered the launcher and pulled a pistol instead, pointing it right at the creature’s head.
“That’s better,” I commented dryly.
Making my way inside, I chuckled as I heard the Pegasus -- one called Bomb Wing ironically enough, I wonder if his parents ever thought he would do something like this when he grew up – mutter “Kill joy.”
Entering the UFO carefully, the first thing that struck me was that there was the remains of a fairly large fire in the middle of the craft, bits and pieces of furniture including five chairs scattered around the single room. What had been the cause of the fire? Whatever it was, it had probably been important so we would have to keep an eye out for it in the future.
Checking around the room, I found two more aliens, or rather, most of one and the head of the second. Glancing around, I spotted a green stain under some toppled machinery. Four dead aliens, one unconscious outside, that were five in total and there were five chairs here. Unless any of them stood in flight that meant there were no more aliens here. We had done it, our first mission and we had succeeded in clearing out an alien vessel and capturing it.
Making my way back outside, I nodded to the other three. “Search it; get whatever you can carry back to the Skyranger. The scientists will want to look at all of this stuff.” I ordered, flicking an ear as all three ponies saluted.
Moving to where the alien I had killed lay, I poked it with a hoof, still not quite believing that these things had caused so much havoc around the world, scowling as I noticed slits in the skin of the torso.
Using my magic, I opened one and grimaced at the sight of ribs underneath when I looked inside. Something had added these ‘pockets’ surgically, but it begged the question of what purpose there was to them.
Checking them all, I found several strange looking metal items, ones that looked sort of similar to the clips for my pistol, if I turned my head to the side and squinted really hard at them. The other thing I found was some sort of grey and orange ball with what looked like an area that could be pressed, something that I carefully did not do. It didn’t look like it would be any use to anypony, but that said, there had been an explosion earlier, one that hadn’t sounded like any of our grenades, and none of us had carried high explosives that I knew of. “Could this be some type of alien grenade?” I asked myself, twitching my tail as a shudder passed through me. The gun had melted a pegasus’ side to the bone, I really did not want to find out how much damage these orbs could do first hoof.
Putting what I had found in a sample saddlebag, I rechecked the alien’s pockets and found nothing more. Turning my attention to the thing the alien had dropped when I shot it, I used my telekinesis to pick up the blue tube thing. It looked little bigger than a couple of grenades on its longest side, but the way it had been held suggested that it hadn’t been something to throw around. Maybe this was what those clip-things belonged to. If it was, then this was likely the weapon that killed my comrade. Much as I wanted to leave it here for that, we would need everything we could find if we were to have a chance of beating these aliens, even using their own weapons against them. I added it to the samples in my saddlebag as the rest of the squad exited the UFO and sighed, time to clean up and return to base.
*****
On returning to Treetop Base, we handed over everything we had managed to lug back to the Skyranger over to the scientists, who told us they would “get around to it,” I hoped that wasn’t a euphemism for throwing the samples into a black hole, but they were trying to research new weapons and a couple of useful pieces of equipment, namely an improved med-kit and a motion tracker.
Bomb Wing, along with two others had a great deal of fun putting the unconscious alien into a containment cell and ensuring it would not be getting out any time soon. Unfortunately that meant it was time for the funeral of the pony we had lost today.
The ceremony was rather simple, and rather cold given we had to cryo-freeze the body before putting it into the morgue on the lower levels. It had been agreed by the higher ups that we would have a proper funeral in a temple graveyard once this war was over, but doing so now would attract unwelcome attention, both from the aliens and from the press.
Locking the draw, I looked at the monitor on it with a sigh. It said:
R.I.P
X-COM soldier
Whirlwind
Rank: Private
Killed in battle at age: 35
1st January 1999
“You call that flying?”
*****
"Commander Kim F.'s log
1999 January 1st: Night report
Our first battle against the aliens went well; we now know that they can be killed as well as what they look like. Even better, we have managed to capture an almost intact alien craft and a living alien. Hopefully the haul of technology or the alien will reveal something about them."
"Unfortunately we don’t know how resistant these things are. Their weaponry is certainly more powerful than ours on a size by size comparison, more powerful than anypony expected. The sooner we get the first prototypes of our new weapons into action, the better. If we take too long to kill these things, then we will end up losing more ponies than we can replace and our morgue will be filled with the bodies of those like Whirlwind."
"It was also lucky that Interceptor 1 was out on patrol at the time the UFO was spotted; otherwise we likely would have missed it, it being as small as it was. We need to upgrade our radar systems to cover a larger area and increase our general technology level; otherwise it is likely we will be defeated inside a year. We need to start recruiting drives as well; we will need the soldiers very soon if this keeps up."
"X-Com Commander Kim F. out."
To be continued
Credit to Ghrathryn for making it 120% more awsome.