X-Com's Finest (An X-Com 2 play through)

Operation Last Gift

Corbin had been manning communication recently. She wasn't an expert on it by any means, but had been 'volunteered' for the position by the lack of any other qualified participants. She had been monitoring alien communication when another code red came blaring in. She picked it up immediately and scanned the contents before looking up, "Sir, we have reports that the Avatar project just completed another step."

The Commander leaned back in his chair and sighed. It had been a quiet couple of weeks which wasn't necessarily a bad thing. All but the Rookie Pugh were out of the med-ward which was a nice change.

The Avenger had been criss-crossing the 'safe' part of the country collecting materials and people. They had made contact with the Western Russia / Eastern Europe resistance cell due to upgrading of the Avenger's communications array. They would have continued, but the lack of resources had slowed the effort a bit.

They had brought on another scientist and research had been proceeding nicely. Psionics had been researched and work had begun on clearing space for a psionics research facility.

The scientists had also completed work on upgrading the standard assault rifles. Magnetic assault rifles had been tested and found to be nearly 50% more effective than standard assault rifles and had been issued to the rangers and support teams. Additional work was required to upgrade the sniper rifles and heavy cannons. That research would be completed shortly.

The chief engineer had also been working on upgrading the standard equipment – starting with grenades. Dr. Shen was able to institute acid into one of the grenades that would eat away at an opponent's armor. She was planning to work on upgrading ammo as well, but ran out of raw materials, so that was something the Commander would have to look into here shortly. She had also completed work on the advanced skulljack. This thing could suck every bit of info out of the victim's skull. It would be useful.

Needless to say, the last few weeks had been productive. But the aliens had used it to their benefit as well.

The Commander looked up at the Avatar tracker – a small meter they had placed on the wall to measure the amount of time they think they had before things came crumbling down. It was over half-way right now, and they had only taken down a single Avatar facility so far. The next few facilities were known but were still a month away before they would be accessible. There was still nothing on the horizon.

The Commander scratched his chin at the latest news and looked thoughtfully at the geoscape. "Corbin, go get Watt, Pubentz, Pritchett, Svagerko, and Gunner".

Corbin paused before sending out the orders, then turned back to the Commander and paused again.

"Out with it Rookie."

"Uh, Sir..." Corbin scanned the list again, "Two...no, THREE members of this squad are one step away from the loony bin! And if one goes loopy, it could cause the entire squad to self-destruct."

The Commander looked over at Corbin. "And...?"

Corbin locked eyes with him and raised an eyebrow? "Are you saying I'm wrong?"

"Just make it happen."

Corbin just shrugged and went to collect the squad. She was happy she wasn't along for this particular ride.

***

Corbin could hear the clanging of weapons long before she reached the training room. The two rangers never seemed to get enough of trying to kill each other. Ranger Van Dyke was just a jerk, and Svagerko, well Svagerko had some aggression she needed to release. It looked like they were made for each other.