XCOM 2

by Rick Barba

  Her name was Dr. Moira Vahlen, and she hired Marin into her XCOM science lab.

  The appointment gave him a great sense of purpose. It also saved his life. The Pendleton family compound—and most of the Pendleton family—fell victim to the gruesome incendiary attack that basically melted an entire Midwestern American city off the map.

  “So I’m on patrol up in Greenland, and this guy shoots me in the face,” said Danny.

  Marin laughed. “Great start,” he said.

  “It gets better.” Danny leaned his forearms on the bar. “Sure you don’t want a little whiskey in that soda, doc?”

  Marin held up a hand. “Sober seventeen years.”

  “I got the good stuff here, man.”

  “Last time I drank . . .” Marin paused, looking at his glass. “It’s a bad story. I’d rather hear yours.”

  Danny nodded. “Okay,” he said.

  “So you’re in Greenland.”

  “Freezing my ass off,” said Danny. “Because I’m walking on the largest ice sheet in the world. Did you know that Greenland is, like, seven hundred thousand square miles of ice?”

  “I did, actually.”

  Danny just stared at him. “Of course you did.”

  “Sorry. I’m a huge nerd.”

  “Well, I didn’t know it was all ice. I thought it would be, you know, green up there.”

  “Iceland is green,” said Marin. “Greenland is ice.”

  “See? If I’d paid attention at school, I’d know that. And I wouldn’t be stuck here tending bar.”

  Danny Roman, of course, was much more than just a bartender. He was an XCOM lieutenant, Grenadier class, one of the best heavy weapons specialists in the agency. A number of the Avenger-based soldiers took turns tending the ship’s bar in off-hours. It was a great way to decompress after deploying on yet another tense covert operation, the only kind of operations XCOM engaged in now in its role as a hunted, heavily outnumbered, underground resistance force.

  As Danny continued his story, Marin glanced over at the glass display case next to the bar. On the top shelf sat a framed photo of XCOM’s original “A” team. In the center stood Dr. Vahlen in her white lab coat. As XCOM’s chief scientist, she’d pioneered the study of psionics, Marin’s current area of expertise.

  On her right stood the late Dr. Raymond Shen, XCOM’s legendary first chief engineer. To her left stood a considerably younger-looking version of Central Officer John Bradford, the only one of the three here now aboard XCOM’s new Avenger base. Referred to simply as “Central” by everyone in the agency, Bradford now sported a nasty facial scar, along with a darker, more cynical take on things.

  * * *

  Half an hour later, Dr. Marin was wrapping up a game of Chicken Foot with two guys from Chief Lily Shen’s engineering lab. As he slid two dominoes into place, he said, “It’s looking good for me, boys.”

  “Not fair,” said one of the engineers, a stout, bearded fellow named Jack Maples. “You’re using science to cheat.”

  “How?”

  Maples shrugged. “How would I know? I’m just an engineer. I deal in real-world applications, so I’m incapable of cheating or even understanding the concept of cheating.”

  Marin grinned. “How are things down in your lab?”

  The other guy, Kenji Kojima, tapped his lone remaining domino. “Doing good on plasma,” he said. “Not so good on the new alien biotech.”

  “Really?” said Marin. “The science was such a straight line.”

  Kojima shrugged. Then he said, “What’s up with PERG?”

  The Psionic Energy Research Group (PERG) was Marin’s lab. Like the mobile Avenger base that housed it, PERG had come a long way in a very short time. Since the massive alien supply vessel was discovered at a jungle crash site in the shadow of India’s Western Ghats, the Avenger had been secured (at great cost); overhauled with front-edge stealth absorption and refractive index technologies, reducing its airborne spectral signature to that of a large crow; then retrofitted and transformed into XCOM’s flying operations center. The Avenger and its small Skyranger fleet—by then XCOM had recovered and refurbished three of the old troop transports—were virtually invisible in terms of both optical and electromagnetic wavelengths.

  In like manner, PERG had grown from a single dedicated scientist—Dr. Marin—to a small team of experts from around the globe. The group’s research proceeded along two basic lines of inquiry: detection and latency. Latency research was based on XCOM’s old GEIST Program; it focused on tapping latent psionic sensitivity in human subjects. Detection research sought to develop tools that could find, trace, measure, and even tap into psionic sources out in the field.

  As head of PERG, Marin oversaw both efforts, but his hands-on work was with the detection team. Resources were limited, so PERG’s psionic sensor grid was limited to North America and had many holes in coverage. But the group had been tracking a growing scatterplot of psionic anomalies for months—strange hot spots, sprouting up far from the New Cities where alien psionic power was concentrated.

  “We’re getting really high-activity readings in some odd places,” said Marin, studying the domino layout on the bar.

  “Define odd,” said Maples.

  “Like, out in the middle of east jesus nowhere,” replied Marin.

  “So ADVENT is pushing out into the hinterlands?” asked Maples.

  Marin shook his head. “We cross-check everything with the military intel guys,” he said. “None of the hot spots correlate to ADVENT troop movements or to any alien activity. These are weird psionic wells. They suddenly bubble up in places where no one goes.”

  “Like where?” asked Kojima.

  “The first odd pings were way north in the Canadian Rockies,” said Marin, “Then they started moving south. We picked up blooms in Wyoming and Colorado the last few months all up in the backcountry, crazy high elevations.” He slid a domino into place. “Chickie fours.”

  Maples slapped his forehead. “You just shattered my play,” he said.

  “I bet it was a good one, Jack.”

  Maples sighed. “I hate scientists.”

  Kojima kept tapping his only domino. “You want to drop more sensor pods up there in the Rockies, Will?” he asked.

  Marin cocked his head. “Well, I know you’re strapped,” he said.

  “Right,” said Kojima. “But this sounds promising.”

  Marin smiled. Kenji Kojima had always been a good partner with the science division. Some of the engineering team had a turf war mentality, always scrapping and competing for the meager resources available to the Avenger labs. But Kojima appreciated good science, and he had the chief engineer’s ear. Thanks to him, Lily Shen had offered generous help in the past.

  “Thanks, Kenji,” said Marin. “I’ll let you know.”

  Lieutenant Roman stepped out of a small inventory closet behind the bar.

  “I’ve taken stock, gentlemen,” he announced. He took a deep breath. “It’s not good in there.”

  Maples frowned at his empty whiskey tumbler. “Danny, can we fly to Scotland and restock?” he asked. “Like, right now?”

  “Sure, Jack,” said Danny. “I’ll let Central know. He’s a connoisseur of the Highland single malts.”

  Suddenly, a voice blared over the ship’s intercom:

  Dr. William Marin, please report to the Research Division immediately. Dr. Marin, report to Research immediately.

  Kojima raised his eyebrows. “That sounds urgent,” he said.

  “It does,” said Marin, standing. He pulled a cell-comm out of his pocket. “Ah, no wonder they’re paging me. I turned it off.”

  Danny grabbed Marin’s empty soda glass and waggled it. “Sure you can drive, doc?”

  Marin grinned. “I’ll call a taxi.”

  * * *

  The XCOM Research Lab wrapped around the Avenger’s pulsing power core. It was surprisingly airy for a shipboard facility—in fact, half its space was still undeveloped. As the lab’
s security doors whooshed open, Marin rushed inside and nearly ran into Dr. Richard Tygan, XCOM’s new chief scientist.

  “Ah, Will,” said Dr. Tygan, nodding.

  “Hello, Richard,” replied Marin.

  “Your team seems very excited,” said Tygan. “Maybe you can brief me after you meet. I’ll be over in the autopsy bay.”

  “Sure thing,” said Marin. “Who are you cutting up today? Anybody I know?”

  Tygan grinned. “We’re just running a pathology report on tissue samples from that new Muton breed.”

  “Ah,” said Marin. “That explains the smell.”

  Tygan grimaced. “Yes,” he said. “I’d heard about the famous aroma, but this is my first one.”

  Dr. Tygan was a true outsider; he not only had no history with XCOM but also came directly from a stint in ADVENT’s infamous gene therapy clinics. But Tygan’s preinvasion resume at both the University of Chicago and Trident Pharmaceuticals was stellar. He was well-known in the scientific community for groundbreaking research in immunosuppressant drugs used for organ transplant procedures. Like many respected research scientists, he’d had no choice but to take work offered by the ADVENT government.

  “So we finally scored a new Muton for autopsy?” asked Marin.

  “Sadly, no,” replied Tygan. “One of our Rangers sliced off a Muton fillet during a scrum with one of the monsters. Good DNA sample.”

  Marin winced. “How’s our guy doing?”

  “The Muton clobbered him good, but he’s alive.” Dr. Tygan waved him on. “Hurry,” he said. “Your people are jumping around over there.”

  “Any idea what it is?” asked Marin as he turned toward the lab’s psionics alcove.

  “I was hoping they found Dr. Vahlen,” said Tygan.

  “Ha!” said Marin. “My guess is Moira won’t be ‘found’ until she wants to be.”

  Tygan nodded. “I’d love to meet her,” he said. He smiled slyly. “She could be the boss, and I could get back to my petri dishes.”

  Marin laughed. “You’d like her, Richard,” he said.

  “I bet I would.”

  Months earlier, back before the Avenger had been found, Dr. Vahlen had barely dodged a brutal ADVENT ambush of XCOM’s secret Wunderland research facility in Antarctica. After she escaped, she went dark. Once it became clear that Vahlen was staying off the grid, the Shens had approached Dr. Marin about stepping into her role as chief scientist. But he’d respectfully declined. He knew his limitations; he wasn’t a visionary like Vahlen, and he couldn’t juggle the roles of wily administrator and uncompromising advocate like she’d so expertly done. He was pleased when XCOM recruited Tygan for the job. So far, so good.

  Marin did, however, retain the job of managing the psionics group. The work was intense, riveting, and critically important. And his people were a great bunch. Young, smart, oddball. It was a job that he relished every day.

  “What’s up?” he asked as he approached a long console studded with multicolored LED lights and digital readouts.

  A shaggy-haired young tech named Jared Gilmore stood on a chair, gazing up at the huge monitor above the console. The screen was blank. He was just twenty-eight, but his work had already taken the global detection grid to an entirely new level.

  “What are you doing, Gilmore?” asked Marin. He turned to another member of the team, thirty-year-old Bonnie Lopez, sitting at the console with her hands hovering over the touchscreen controls. Purple hair draped from her baseball cap. “Lopez, what’s he doing?”

  Still staring at the screen, Gilmore pointed down at Lopez.

  “Okay, sis, let’s tap NavSat 36 for the CX-10 video,” he said. “Now!”

  Lopez clicked a control button. An old-fashioned hourglass icon started filling on-screen, marking the time to connection.

  Dr. Marin’s eyes widened with alarm. “Video?” he said. “That’s a lot of bandwidth.” He frowned at Gilmore. “This better be good, buddy.”

  “Oh, it’s good, boss,” said Gilmore, his teeth flashing big.

  NavSat 36 was one of several hundred geostationary satellites that served as conduits for ADVENT’s global psionic network. Insanely massive amounts of alien data bounced off this orbital web every nanosecond; XCOM had learned it could tap into the stream in short intervals without getting detected.

  The PERG team used this method regularly to monitor Gilmore’s field sensors. Each sensor pod included instruments to detect and measure psionic energy readings plus a digital minicam for surveillance footage if a strong signal manifested.

  On-screen, the words “SENSOR UPLOAD ROUTING: NavSat 36” appeared in a window. After just thirty seconds, it ended.

  “Okay, out,” said Gilmore.

  Lopez tapped the touch control and the connection window disappeared.

  Gilmore grinned at Dr. Marin. “Dude, things are popping,” he said.

  “You picked up another psionic bubble?”

  “Bubble?” Gilmore cackled like a witch and looked at Lopez.

  Lopez swiveled her chair to face Marin. “What do you drink, boss?” she asked.

  Marin squinted. “Club soda?”

  “Right.” Lopez raised the brim of her cap. “It was like an entire glass of that stuff.”

  “That’s . . . a lot of bubbles.”

  Gilmore hopped off the chair with a dramatic landing.

  “The most bubbles ever,” he said. He held his arms out wide.

  Now Lopez started typing madly on the touchscreen. She glanced up at Gilmore and said, “While these video files are compiling, let’s show Will what we just saw.” Two satellite map images popped open in windows on the big screen.

  “We got two good bursts in sequence,” said Gilmore. “These recordings are at five-minute intervals, both triggered by the same sensor, CX-10.” He pointed at the left image. “Check this out.”

  Lopez tapped a button, and the map image came alive. Clouds drifted over a rugged landscape.

  “Where is this?” asked Marin, watching.

  “Colorado,” said Lopez. “We dropped this pod on Vail Pass. Way up high.”

  “Now add the filter, Bonnie,” said Gilmore, rubbing his hands together briskly.

  Lopez punched up an overlay designed to highlight psionic activity. After a few seconds, a bright purple dot pulsed on-screen. Then two more next to it. After a few seconds, a cluster of about two dozen dots started flashing nearby.

  “Holy mother of god,” said Marin.

  The purple dots pulsed rapidly. Then the feed ended.

  “Okay, now here’s the second one,” said Lopez, tapping another button. “Just five minutes later.”

  With the filter added to the second map image, the cluster of purple dots appeared to have fanned out in a circle around the first three dots. The furious pulsing continued.

  Marin stepped closer to the screen. “What the hell is going on down there?” he said. “Can you zoom in closer from overhead?”

  Lopez shook her head. “Unfortunately, no,” she replied. “But given the location and high activity, I’m betting we have ground-level video of the event.”

  “Whatever it is,” added Gilmore, eyes gleaming.

  Marin stared at the maps, thinking. “Those wouldn’t be ADVENT troops,” he said. “Not way up there. They rarely send their grunts out into the Wild Lands, much less high-value psionic units.”

  “It’s too wild out here,” whispered Gilmore, grinning.

  “Exactly.”

  Just then the console beeped.

  “Video’s ready,” said Lopez.

  As she tapped controls, Gilmore said, “We pulled two ninety-second clips that match up with the map sequences you just saw.” He glanced at Lopez. “Bonnie, can you mark the sensor pod location on the maps first?”

  “Gotcha,” she replied. Up on both map windows, a red dot appeared.

  Gilmore pointed up at it. “We dropped it on a ridgetop overlooking the old I-70 rest area, so it has a pretty wide-angle view of Vail Pass b
elow.”

  Two video windows opened on-screen. Lopez clicked the first one open.

  Dr. Marin frowned. “That’s elk,” he said.

  Sure enough, a small elk herd lumbered across the old freeway. The sensor’s minicam, programmed to track and zoom in on movement, followed the animals across the lanes.

  “Psionic elk?” muttered Gilmore.

  But within seconds, the elk plunged into trees on the road’s far side; the camera view swung rapidly left while pulling back into a wider shot. A pair of ADVENT Troop Transports were landing on the roadway. Squads of ADVENT Troopers hopped out, and then a team of Sectoid aliens popped out of a portal to join them. The mixed unit deployed toward the dilapidated outbuildings of the freeway rest area.

  “This is astounding,” said Marin, staring in shock.

  Gilmore looked at him. “Why are aliens at Vail Pass?”

  Lopez pursed her lips. “Hmmm,” she said. “Maybe they saw all the purple dots.”

  Marin nodded. “Maybe they’re tracking psionics too,” he said. “That makes sense.”

  The researchers watched as the troops fanned out and climbed a slope toward the remains of the rest area’s main shelter. Suddenly, the Sectoids halted. Clearly, they sensed something. Their trooper escorts crouched, tense now, weapons raised.

  The first video ended.

  * * *

  Marin exchanged puzzled looks with his team. He said, “How many Sectoids did you count?”

  “I saw three,” said Lopez.

  “Three,” agreed Gilmore.

  “Me too,” said Marin. “Three. That doesn’t account for all the psionic wells we saw in the overhead map.”

  Lopez reached to click on the second video. All three of them gasped at the opening seconds.

  “This is five minutes later?” asked Marin.

  Lopez nodded. “Good god,” she said.

  The outbuildings were in flames. ADVENT Troopers and their Sectoid overlords were taking fearsome incoming fire, seemingly from all directions. Most of the squad already lay twisted on the ground twitching or dead. The surviving troopers appeared to be in a state of panic, either cowering or making futile attempts to flee. Meanwhile, the Sectoids had conjured a spherical telekinetic field around them that was deflecting fire.