Bigger Things

Firestorm proved its worth once again. Solid funding from the Council allowed us to equip the already-powerful Firestorm with more and more crazy armament and proof of its worth came into realization as soon as it took off to chase what was the biggest UFO seen on the sky yet. The supply ship looked like a small dog's home comparing to it. Two or three shots from the fusion lance and the UFO went down in USA. Swift and hard, plowing acres and acres of forest in its wake, finally grinding to a halt. The alien craft was so big that Skyranger had to land on a platform on top of it to drop the squad in.

Inside, the squad operated swiftly and efficiently on the corridors. Not really knowing which way to go for the jackpot, they chose to start the sweep from the left side. Not too far in the first two groups of mutons appeared. The squad was so airtight that the mutons decided to fall back after getting almost completely decimated in a matter of few seconds. The falling back mutons were chased down, but this brought chryssalids and muton elites on the scene. 44 had accustomed himself to Harmony Lad's and squad's ways of working so amazingly well, that even this committee of hostility got dismantled as soon as it emerged. Working tandem from top of watchtowers did not leave the aliens any changes. Not even the dreaded sectopod, that rumbled on through a corridor, trailing a handful of chryssalids. Chryssalids ran directly into Broden's alloy gun as he kept on pumping alien metal in return mail as fast as he could and the sectopod met its end in the crossfire of Harmony Lad's plasma sniper rifle and Ironbay's alloy gun.

The ship was huge, but that actually worked on the benefit of the team as the snipers could see everywhere, picking off majority of the aliens that were trying to offer resistance. After September's disasters, this seemed like a whole different ballpark for what it came into the squad's effectiveness. All of a sudden, things started to look up, once again.

Not even aliens launching terror in Cordoba, Argentina, a berserker punching Hipster's gut in or the accompanying cyberdisc distracted the squad even in the slightest. Hipster surely needed a new titan armour, but survived with seven broken ribs and a collapsed lung. Midnight abduction shop in Tokyo was closed down with the aid of another new recruit - Tommi "Goose" Hourula - who quickly became a support stunt for Megawatt. Another mission saw also a reinforcement from to join the ranks from a mission in Mexico: support specialist Petri "Helldorado" Paananen.

October rolled on and the Council report was again favourable. Now it was definitely time to roll for the next big step - the alien base deep in Siberian ground in Russia.

Accumulated stats over eight and a half months of campaigning would look like following:

Col. Michael "Ironside" Ironbay (assault) - ORIGINAL 4 - 55 kills
Col. Artturi "Harmony Lad" Kyrömies (sniper) - 81 kills
Col. Pontus "Broden" Svensson (assault) - 41 kills
Col. Martin "Hipster" Bedard (heavy) - 32 kills
Col. Meghan "Megawatt" Watt (support) - 17 kills
Col. Jason "44" Black (sniper) - 15 kills
Cpt. Chris "Snake Catcher" Cockburn (sniper) - 11 kills
Cpt. Petri "Helldorado" Paananen (support) - 0 kills - no field action yet
Sgt. Ellen "Branca" Williams (assault) - 5 kills
Sgt. Tommi "Goose" Hourula (support) - 3 kills

Sq. Marlon "Mad Marl" Wihlborg (sniper) - 3 missions - 1 kill - ORIGINAL 4 - KIA on Mar 15, 2015
Maj. Sébastien "Proxy" Pacetti (heavy) - 15 missions - 25 kills - ORIGINAL LEADER - KIA on Jun 5
Col. Frédéric "Sureshot" St.Laurent (support) - 23 missions - 26 kills - ORIGINAL 4 - KIA on Aug 18
Cpt. Talia "El Fenrir" Poulos-Åström (heavy) - 9 missions - 9 kills - KIA on Sep 6
Cpl. Hilda "Hildifer" Lidén (assault) - 4 missions - 3 kills - KIA on Sep 22