The Man in the Back Says "Everyone Attack!" (Revised & Updated)
"Brace for it!"
That was the only warning the four troopers of Strike-1 got before a white wave of pure energy slammed into the back of their Skyranger. The transport rolled onto its left side and dropped like a stone, and for about fifteen seconds Colonel Alex McKay was convinced this was it. Six months fighting a war against the alien invaders, more missions than he had a right to survive, finally landing a killing blow on the Ethereal Collective that might just bring peace, and he was going to buy it in a transport crash five minutes before everyone had it made. It just wasn't fair.
Then the 'Ranger lifted up again, leaving Alex's stomach to catch up as they straightened out. He kept his lips clamped as tightly as he could. If one of them started puking in the tiny space of the Skyranger's troop cabin they'd all be doing it, and that wasn't the way he wanted to spend the ride back to base. Once he was sure he was going to hold onto breakfast, Alex punched the wall intercom button.
"Nice flying, Dusty. We in the clear?"
"I…think so." The Skyranger's pilot's voice was hesitant. "We're flying instead of falling, so that's step one. But that blast must have scrambled most of the other systems. I've got no comms with Central, no telemetry, no GPS- heck, even civilian air traffic control isn't talking. We're going to have to find somewhere to land soon, because I'm not taking this thing hypersonic with most of my cockpit out to lunch." Alex winced a bit, but nodded to himself. The Skyranger normally cruised somewhere around five times the speed of sound, which was not something you wanted to do with a compass and a map.
"Allright. Keep me informed." Alex released the intercom and switched his Titan armor's radio onto the squad channel. "We're in the clear, people. Electronics are a little fried, but she'll hold together until we hit the coast of Brazil. And wherever we touch down, we're going to throw one damn big victory party."
"Kate?" It was the first word Liam Doyle had said since they took off from the disintegrating temple ship. He'd kept the ramp covered in his Paladin until the very end, hoping to see one more figure sprinting for the back of the Skyranger. It hadn't come. Alex shook his head.
"Didn't see her after the ship started coming apart." Which wasn't quite true, but he wasn't sure if he was willing to tell that story yet. "Anything's possible, though." Which was more true than usual when it came to Kate Hill. She'd been far and away X-COM's strongest psion even before she'd melded with a piece of alien technology, and after that she'd just been plain scary.
"Uh, Colonel?" It was Dusty again, breaking in on the squad channel. "I think you'd better take a look at this." Without waiting for a reply, an image appeared on Alex's heads-up display. Alex took one look. Took another. Then hit the button to share it with his squad as he shook his head.
"Oh now what the hell is this?"
It was daylight below them, and they'd taken off after nightfall. It said a lot about their situation that the time difference was the least weird thing about the picture. The ground was mostly gently rolling grass, with some impossibly big trees dotting the landscape and a few fluffy white clouds. Coming up on their nose was what looked like a decent sized settlement- but it was composed entirely of thatch-roof houses that looked like they came out of a historical drama, connected by dirt roads. No sign of cars or industry.
Or for that matter, people.
As Alex watched through the Skyranger's cameras, he could see a number of inhabitants down in the settlement below. It looked like they were running errands, making deliveries, buying, selling, talking, laughing- everything you'd expect to see in a small town square. Except that none of them were human. They were equines, like a shrunken horse with incredibly long multicolored manes and tails, clopping along on four hooves as they talked animatedly back and forth. Alex keyed the comm.
"Straight answer, troops. Everyone else see tons of pastel-colored ponies down there instead of people?" Dead silence, followed by a mumbled chorus of "Yes" from the other troopers. Well, there went the hallucination theory. Which was a shame, because it was actually one of his better alternatives right now. "Allright. We're dealing with a potential first contact situation. Remember, we cannot assume they're allied with the invaders. That means we-"
"Sir?" Dusty broke in, and Alex fought the urge to bite his head off. "I think we can assume they're not." The view from the Skyranger's cameras panned over, moving to the other side of the settlement. Alex saw something familiar there, and suddenly wished he hadn't. Because what he saw were metallic cubes on the ground, tendrils of green slime already heading for the nearest ponies, and beyond that an alien scout craft preparing to set down. Abduction run.
"Allright, boys and girls!" The other three troopers jerked their heads up, plainly still confused by the images from below. Well, he was too. But suddenly it didn't matter. "I'll be straight with you. I don't know what happened or where we are." He paused, going over his last sentence. "And the crazy-colored ponies? Flat-out no idea. But we all know that sound." Alex gritted his teeth and patched into an exterior microphone. It was the most familiar and most horrible thing they'd heard since coming here. The low hum of the abduction cubes. The high, inhuman clicking of Sectoid speech. And, just starting, a chorus of screams that sounded completely human. "And that means that personally, I don't give a flying fuck where we are. The invaders are down there, so we do what we do best. Hit dirt, save everybody we can, and turn anything that gets in our way into a grease stain." At least the objective would be familiar. "Vigilo!"
"Confido!" The squad all gave the response back as they started pulling on helmets, powering up their armor, and charging their weapons. Alex keyed the intercom again.
"Big Sky, we'll take a straight in delivery to the first LZ you can spot. Looks like we have a job to do." Dusty acknowledged, and Alex felt the big Skyranger reef into a turn, slowing as it prepared to drop the troops. As the ramp came down and he prepared to charge plasma fire for a bunch of anthropomorphic ponies, Alex shook his head and quoted their other, unofficial motto to himself.
"That's X-COM, baby."
Author's Note
It's probably been done. But I have a bet.
Revising for relaunch. The profanity filter idea didn't turn out to be nearly as clever in practice as it was in theory, and I've got a more gradual buildup of events planned. Chapter 2 relaunching shortly.
We've Got Fun and Games (Revised & Updated)
"Aw, come on Twilight! Tonight I'm trying out my extra-special experimental carrot cupcakes and I need someone to test them out on."
"Uh…sorry Pinkie. But I can't." Twilight Sparkle felt a little bad about lying to her friend, but the last time she'd volunteered to taste one of Pinkie Pie's "experiments" it hadn't ended well. "Besides, I thought rabbits like carrots. Shouldn't you be trying them out on Angel and his friends?"
Pinkie's face lit up. "Oh hey, great idea!" Then she let her head droop. "Oh, but Fluttershy said I'm not allowed to test things out on her friends anymore. Somethin' about unethical experimentation and crimes against ponydom."
"Uh…huh." Should have counted on that. "Well, Spike and I-" she nudged the dragon walking alongside her- "have a report due for Princess Celestia."
"That figures. Twilight Sparkle, you're probably the only princess in the whole wide world who still gets homework!"
Twilight shook her head. "No, this is different. Ponies have been disappearing from all over Equestria in the past couple weeks, and the Princess wants me to see if anything like it has ever been recorded. There have been all kinds of other phenomena going along with it- strange noises, lights in the sky-"
"Uh." Pinkie raised an eyebrow, craning her neck to look past her friend. "You mean...kinda like those?" Twilight frowned. At first all she could hear was the normal sounds of a pleasant Ponyville day- wind in the trees, birds singing- but then she heard a low, throbbing hum coming from the edge of town. She whirled around, and saw a group of strange blue lights descending from the sky towards the edge of town.
"They're here! Spike, get a letter off to the Princess!"
"Right!" Spike took off for the library at a dead run. When Twilight turned back to Pinky, she saw the other mare was smiling.
"Don't worry Twilight. I have a plan for just this sort of situation!"
"And that is?"
Pinky jumped into the air, all four hooves flailing as she shouted. "PANIC!" In an instant she was gone in a cloud of dust, heading in the direction of the town's market screaming something about "Everypony for herself!"
"Wait, Pinkie!" Twilight ran after her friend, but just then a giant screaming sound filled the air, like a griffon's cry magnified a thousand times over. Twilight threw herself to the ground as wind stronger than a rainstorm's threw up the dust around her and the noise got louder, crossing her hooves over her head before sneaking a look with one eye. Something else was landing next to her, vaguely bird-shaped with silver skin and making the most terrible racket Twilight had ever heard. Some kind of ramp banged down from the back and four gleaming two-legged figures raced out, three times the height of a pony and covered from head to toe in gleaming metal armor. A fifth figure followed, a skeletal giant made of metal with arms wider than the gorilla who had once come as an ambassador to Princess Celestia's court. The pitch of the screaming increased and the bird-thing started to lift off, climbing back up into the sky.
"Okay, people!" That came from one of the bipeds, in a voice that could somehow yell and be completely calm at the same time. "Fan out, check for survivors, shoot any hostiles you see. You know the drill!"
"Uh, Boss?" That was from the giant, his voice somehow harsh "How do we know what's hostile?"
The one they'd called "Boss" looked around at the scene for a moment, then shrugged. "From what we've seen so far? If you've ever seen it before in your life, shoot it. Otherwise, hold off." It took Twilight's brain a moment to realize something else was strange about the scene. She could understand the metal creatures' language just as easily as Standard Equestrian. It didn't seem possible, since they looked like nothing she'd ever seen or heard of in Equestria.
Equestria...that's it! The metal creatures were shaped like the humans she'd lived among briefly during her adventure with Sunset Shimmer, although they looked taller and much heavier. Could they be related? And if their language was enough like humans' for her to understand it, was it possible they could understand her?"
"Um. Excuse me?" Boss wheeled around, the metal tube he held in his hands pointed at her, then relaxed and pointed the end of it up at the sky. "Who are you? And what's going on here?"
***
It could talk. Well, of course the purple unicorn could talk. Colonel McKay wasn't sure why he'd expected anything else, really.
"My name is Col- my name is Alex." Best to keep to basics for now. "As for what's going on here, I wish I knew. But those things over there-" he pointed one hand towards the outskirts of Ponyville, where green lights were starting to flash and buildings beginning to burst into flame, "-they're our enemies. We're going to make sure nobody gets hurt and make them go away. Don't worry, you're safe Miss-"
"Twilight Sparkle. And I don't care about being safe."
Alex leaned down towards her, pulling his helmet off. Maybe she'd be less frightened if his voice wasn't coming through the suit speakers. "Well, Twilight, maybe you should be. We're going to be fighting down there, and that's no place for-"
"I'm not a foal!" Twilight leaned up at him, and Alex was surprised to feel himself take a step back. Twilight might come up to his knee and sound like a twelve year old, but there was determination in her voice that made Alex rapidly revise his initial estimates of her. This was no child. "I'm coming with you. I need to-" she came to an abrupt stop, her eyes going wide. "You...you're human!"
***
Twilight's irritation at Alex's tone disappeared as he took his helmet off. The head underneath looked almost comically small against the wide shoulders of the armor he wore, but it was without a doubt one of the same creatures she'd encountered during her mission on the other world. She managed- barely- to stifle the flood of questions that began to race through her mind. Screams and a menacing sort of sizzling zip were starting to sound from the edge of Ponyville, and as Twilight watched some kind of glowing green fire shot towards them. It struck a mature tree a few feet from them, and with a crack as loud as thunder the tree blew apart, leaving only a pony-high stump and smoldering chunks of wood. This wasn't the time to indulge her curiosity.
Instead she leaned up towards Alex. "Can you stop this?" The human looked past her for a moment, eyes defocusing as he took in the chaos that was starting to spread over Ponyville's outskirts. Then he nodded.
"Yes."
"Good." Twilight turned towards the fighting, glaring at Alex over her shoulder. "Then follow me. This is my town, and I'd rather it didn't end up looking like that." She lifted a hoof at the tree stump, now wreathed in smoke as the burning splinters around it set the grass afire. He watched her go for a moment, then shook his head and pulled his helmet back on as he turned to his squad.
"Welp. You heard the lady." Captain Li Ming Xu cocked her head to the side and raised an eyebrow.
"We taking orders from a purple horse now, Boss?"
"She knows friend from foe, Smash. That's better than we were doing five minutes ago. Now c'mon." Alex gestured at the flashing lights ahead. "We're still on company time."
***
Alex sprinted down towards the fires, rifle snapped up and sensors on alert. Plasma bolts were still coming from the direction of the grounded UFO, but still no sign of the shooters. One part of his mind ticked off Xu and Hawkins spreading out to cover the flanks as they passed the first group of buildings, dodging their way through terrified ponies running in the other direction. Then he was past the building and behind a tree trunk, already burned to charcoal from an earlier plasma bolt. Still, it was cover, and it gave him a look at the scene below.
The half-dozen Floaters and Sectoids in front of them were spread out over a wide front, burning down any ponies that tried to flee from the matte black abduction cubes that had dropped into the middle of town. The ground was already littered with the outlines of ponies encased in slimy green cocoons, and Alex's stomach tightened involuntarily at the sight. For an instant he wasn't there, looking down at this strange new battlefield. He was back in the alien base on Earth, the first time they'd cleared one of those labs, finding the tanks full of abductees, the pinned-open bodies of surgical test subjects, the red-pink paste that leaked from the ruptured alien food containers-
No, dammit! Alex shook his head, squeezing his eyes shut and forcing himself to concentrate on the present. The alien formation was well-suited for catching as many fleeing ponies as they could, but it also meant the invaders were too far apart to support each other. They weren't expecting opposition, which meant success lay in killing them before they realized there was any. After a moment, Alex keyed his com.
"Smash, Magnet, go wide. Get their flankers then start rolling up the center." Xu and Captain Jessica Hawkins took off in opposite directions, their suits glinting silver in the firelight. "Hinge and I have the center." Doyle nodded and slapped the loader on his particle cannon, lighting his MEC's arm with a pale blue glow. "Floaters will probably try to go high and flank us. Horseman-" Alex turned and grinned at Captain Lazaro "-when they do, get me some heads. Check your targets and do not use explosives without permission. Let's not have our first impression here be lots of collateral damage." Clicks from the comm system as the squad acknowledged, and a quick glance up at his HUD confirmed that Xu and Hawkins were in position. "X-COM! Ready...steady...GO!"
The early days of the Long War had been brutal for X-COM. Abduction forces like this one had cut a swath through the world's best soldiers, sending Skyrangers back half-empty and adding more and more names to the Memorial Wall. A few of those soldiers had survived and learned how to fight a merciless enemy. Strike One consisted of five such survivors, equipped with the best weapons and gear Earth had developed during the war. And within thirty seconds, they showed just how far they'd come. Green plasma scythed out from the human positions, killing most of the abduction party before they realized anything had gone wrong. One Floater tried to drop in behind them, only for Lazaro to take its head off with a single neatly placed shot. Its partner, slightly smarter, dropped down behind a ridgeline, and Alex frowned. The book said fix and flank, but that might give it time to get away with information or abductees. So-
Before he quite realized what he was doing Alex was on his feet, pounding up to the ridgeline and dropping down the other side. His position covered him perfectly from the Floater, and a single shot sent it crumpled to the deck in an orange fireball-
And, unfortunately, did very little about the extra trio of Sectoids who'd been hiding a bit further back. They dove into cover, weapons coming out, and Alex's position against the side of the ridge gave him no cover from that direction. The muzzle of the first one's pistol tracked in on him, glowing green...
A purple glow surrounded the aliens' weapons, jerking their muzzles to the side. The shots went wild, glassing the ground around him but leaving Alex unharmed. For a second, he just gaped in disbelief. He'd heard about missing a ninety-percent shot, but this… Then he bared his teeth.
"My turn." His rifle snapped up and picked off one, as his squad reached the top of the ridgeline and opened fire. Seconds later, another alien was dead and the last was running empty-handed back for the ship.
"Boss, do we follow?" Doyle was still firing his particle cannon, picking up the pace as the alien drew away from everypony.
"Negative." Alex picked himself up off the ground, turning back to face his squad. "I'm not doing anything else until we figure out what's going on here."
"Indeed." Alex started and whirled around. Dammit, there hadn't been anything there thirty seconds ago. It wasn't fair that there could suddenly be some kind of flying chariot with a pair of *glowing* unicorns in it, flanked by a long line of stern-faced ponies in golden armor. Alex opened his mouth to demand an explanation, then caught the expression the bigger unicorn, pure white with a rainbow mane, was wearing. Then he was reduced to hoping that look wasn't directed at *him*.
Princess Celestia, absolute ruler of Equestria, narrowed her eyes. "We would, very much, like an explanation for today's events."
The look on her face told Alex that he had better start talking very, very fast.
Author's Note
Last revision, I promise. But I needed a MEC trooper.
