Goose woke up. It was dark, as usual, but this time it felt different, as if there was something lurking nearby. A loud klaxon went off somewhere and he heard scuttling noise. Instinctively, he ducked to find cover, but he only managed to bang his head really hard on the metal wall, after which he heard a voice. Or rather, felt a voice inside his head. It was 44 that was talking to him from somewhere and Goose realized that he woke up from in the psi lab tank as many times before, only today to realize that he was gifted with psionic powers.
Next weeks the squad executed routine missions on rather special setup. While the combat-hardened veterans got some rest before the storm, eggheads' new toy tank was sent to various places all over the world alongside with snipers, who would be watching Goose's and two new recruits' backs. Julien "Guls" Wéra and Sami "Surmuri" Rautaneva were the newest additions to the squad, carefully screened through the recruitment process as possible psi-level soldiers. The toy tank was not your standard robot with a pellet gun. It was a heavy-duty hover tank - imagine a bomb-disposal robot sized battle tank - armed with a plasma cannon and it did its job marvelously.
While the hovertank was fast and deadly, it was still unclear, whether it could ever surpass a seasoned veteran on the battlefield against aliens. The tank was tested toe to toe against a sectopod, and while expectations were high, only piles of scrap were carried away from the warehouse in Osaka, where aliens had a terrorfest going on. While Guls and Surmuri proved worthwhile soldiers and were gaining ranks rapidly, the pressure towards the usage of Gollop Chamber was rising. Council was pushing on us very hard, but we could maybe buy off another month. That would simply mean more crash sites, abduction, terror and scouting missions. The timing for the final assault would need to be perfect.
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