XCOM 2 by Rick Barba

Author:Rick Barba
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Insight Editions

AT SUNRISE the next morning, XCOM Grenadiers opened fire on the ADVENT troops and machinery clustered in the excavation site’s staging area. The carnage was swift and staggering. Perched on the ledge where Darox had first met Captain Thibideaux, XCOM squads Bravo and Charlie unleashed a fusillade from the canyon wall opposite the quarry entrance.

Meanwhile, the five Skirmisher squads swarmed the site’s perimeter defenses, blasting hissing Chryssalids into ribbons of seared flesh and butchering ADVENT Troopers crouched in unfinished perimeter bunkers. At the same time, XCOM Alpha squad quickly overwhelmed security checkpoints down the canyon and secured the entry road to the site.

As the battle raged below, Darox and his recon team worked laterally across the mountainside nearly one thousand feet above the quarry opening. Koros, in the lead, hopped over a narrow but deep crevasse. As the nimblest climber, he took point on most technical routes.

“I thought I was joking yesterday about finding a secret back door,” he said.

XCOM camera drones had marked activity in a darkened couloir cut into the back slope of Whitehouse Mountain. Intel analysis had suggested it was an alternate exit from the quarry cavern; the ravine was cleared of debris and graded, creating a smooth exit ramp.

Mahnk was deeply annoyed. “Do you hear that gunfire?” he grunted. “That is where we should be. Not up here, stumbling around like goats.”

“Goats do not stumble, idiot,” said Rika, giving him a push up a boulder pile.

Darox brought up the rear. Despite Mahnk’s complaints about the climb, it had been relatively easy going; Whitehouse was a moderate slope with natural switchback access routes. But the climb was the least of Darox’s worries.

He’d been assigned two objectives. The first task—to interdict the enemy’s emergency escape route—made sense for a small recon team. But his second directive was more complicated and fraught with risk.

Koros led the way up a tree-lined saddle to a promontory with a clear overview of the couloir.

“Exfiltration point below,” he said, pointing.

“Any movement?” asked Darox.

“Hard to see.”

The cleft was still in deep shadow; the sun hadn’t yet risen over the towering Maroon Bells to the east. Darox pulled out his ADVENT binoculars, wide-set for hybrid eyes, and handed them to Koros, who trained them down the ravine. Then Darox unclipped a small device from his utility belt. It was a fist-sized metal module with a handle and two short, needlelike prongs on top.

Rika stared at it. “Good god,” she said. “Is that it?”

Darox nodded.

“I’ve never seen one before,” she said.

Mahnk, hands on knees, refused to look. “Please do not let me see it,” he said. “I will disgorge my breakfast right down the mountain.”

Koros reached out. “Can I see?” he asked.

Darox handed the device to him. Koros held it reverently and examined it.

“Amazing,” he said. “The instrument of our liberation.” He turned to Mahnk. “Don’t you want to see why you’re a freethinker today?”

“No,” said Mahnk, staring in the opposite direction. “I do not.”

Koros handed the device back to Darox. “You have used it before?” he asked.

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