This is story is taking a very wordy B-movie (minus the camp) approach, as you could've guessed from the title. Of course, things might change.

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|Please input your identification name and number. This terminal is secured under security protocol 10178-4692, implemented August 03, 2053.|

- comm officer romuald wyczolkowski/co-7234-1111/definitelycanintospace

|Analyzing inputted text... analyzed. Welcome, BASE OPERATIVE: WYCZOLKOWSKI, ROMUALD. What would you have this system do?|

- access file #83664674

|Loading file… please wait…|

98%... _/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/

|Warning. File corruption detected, possible outside tampering detected, multiple unregistered programs detected. Your file is incomplete by an estimated 2.0563%. The Director would like to extend his apologies for your inconvenience.|

- troubleshoot/run file/input date: a-1961-j-2157

|Understood. Running…|

Timeline of events starting from: 1961, AUGUST to 2157, JUNE

August 30, 1961: Elerium 115 had been unwittingly discovered by the French scientific community. The discovery of this 'super-element' was hastily covered up by the Council of Nations before sending agents to covertly retrieve the element sample from its containment facility to send it to the Raven Rock Mountain Complex for study.

February 29, 1962: It was the height of the Cold War between the United States and the USSR. Prior to the significant series of events that changed the face of the world, President John F. Kennedy of the United States gave the order to authorize the formation of the Bureau of Operations and Command, led by Director Myron Faulke. Originally an organization intended to coordinate American military forces in the event of a Soviet assault on US soil, instead of being sent off to fight the Russians, the Bureau found itself as a bulwark against a more powerful, more insidious threat than communism: the Outsiders.

The Outsiders were a hostile extraterrestrial force composed of a myriad of alien species, but most prominently, the zudjari species. Disgraced CIA Agent William Carter played a crucial role in winning humanity's first contact war with the extraterrestrial forces, but he was of questionable mental health. In the end, Agent Carter was executed for****#########DATA CORRUPTED#########****and Faulke was possessed by an ethe****#########DATA CORRUPTED#########****tsider forces were forced to stand down and assist in rebuilding the areas they've damaged before being exterminated to the very last.

Numerous scientific and military advances were made thanks to preserved Outsider technology, but advanced "world-changing" technology such as plasma and beam weapons, alien warmachines, computers and aircraft were eradicated. Every single piece of evidence pertaining to a covert alien invasion of Earth were erased from history, with only Bureau personnel and top world leaders as the sole keepers of the knowledge of how humanity narrowly avoided extinction. Finally, the sleepwal****#########DATA CORRUPTED#########****not be treated, even with Dr. Alan Weir's assistance. They were left in hospitals for the remainder of their lives.

The Bureau was nearly destroyed in an earlier Outsider attack on their headquarters, but the organization clung to life. Soon, it was rechristened as the Extraterrestrial Combat Unit, or XCOM.

April 11, 1964: Director Faulke parted ways with the etheri****#########DATA CORRUPTED#########****ffering from the trauma he was put through, Faulke shot himself in his office with a smuggled laser pistol. Senior Agent Angela Weaver was named as the new director.

May 19, 1964: Director Weaver was forced to leave from office after being judged as mentally unstable, letting Dr. Weir take her place. She was killed after the plane she was taking, United Airlines Flight 823, crashed near Parrotsville, Tennessee after the plane caught fire, which was later found out to be induced deliberately - via a plasma grenade.

December 09, 1967: The last of the sleepwalkers were euthanized after a lengthy debate on whether letting them live was a decision that could still be considered merciful. In total, fifteen thousand people died to the sleepwalker virus. Relatives of the deceased were allowed to mourn privately, and were made to promise an oath of secrecy as to the precise details of how their loved ones died.

October 17, 1974: By now, the entirety of North Vietnam is under combined American and South Vietnamese control. Armed with advanced ultramodern equipment and ballistics weaponry reverse-engineered from Outsider technology, the US army utterly crushed their Viet Cong opponents, stamping out yet another communist insurgency, much to Director Weir's disapproval. News agencies and other militaries around the world tirelessly searched for the source of the US military's recent advances in technology, but XCOM undercover agents kept them at bay with false information and fake leads.

September 30th, 1982: By pure chance, a Chinese science team stationed in an Antarctic research facility discovered a crashed space ship encased deep within a gigantic glacier. Hurriedly extracting the vessel from the ice and storing it within their base, the Chinese were more than happy to spread the news around via radio. The undercover XCOM agent embedded within the Chinese scientists confirmed to her superiors that the alien vessel isn't of zudjari design. She was given further orders to neutralize her colleagues through any means to cover up the undeniable evidence of the existence of aliens, but the agent refused (and was subsequently marked for death for her insubordination) for personal reasons.

Meanwhile, a nearby self-funded American xenotechnology team, upon hearing of the news from their Chinese contemporaries, scrambled to get to the foreigners' base a few kilometers to the west. When the Americans arrived there, however, they came upon a grisly scene: the Chinese research base has apparently been burned to the ground, its occupants grotesquely mutilated and the alien ship's cockpit area smashed open with tremendous force from the inside, most likely by its occupant.

Soon, things started to turn downhill for the Americans. It appeared that the occupant of the alien vessel was running free inside the facility, and had the ability to assimilate the biomass of any living thing it touches down to a molecular level. The alien even seemed to perfectly mimic the quirks and mannerisms of the people and animals it absorbed, and what's worse, with enough biomass, this alien creature can make completely autonomous copies of itself.

This alien was also extremely hostile to humans. Very soon, the Americans were forced to distrust one another, for fear that their colleagues might be have already been assimilated by the alien(s). One by one, the humans started to dwindle in numbers, until a heavily armed XCOM bioweapons unit arrived to secure the area. All that's left of the American research team were rounded up at gunpoint by flamethrowers and were planned to be herded into a secure location, where the XCOM agents waited from the safety of reinforced windows until either some of scientists revealed themselves to be disguised aliens, or they all succumbed to starvation.

But before they could be ushered into their containment cell - the same cell with the alien ship, every single one of the Americans promptly mutated into horrible, living masses of terrifyingly hostile biomatter, before ravenously attacking the XCOM team. Fortunately, the agents were all equipped with wrist-mounted flamethrowers, and the aliens themselves were very susceptible to flames.

By the end of the day, all alien hostiles were neutralized and the science facility twice sterilized by flames. A larger XCOM force arrived at the facility the next day, gathered the surviving agents' reports and detained them to see if some of them were assimilated in secret (All members of the BWD unit from Detachment L:29 were summarily executed shortly after giving their reports. Director Weir stepped down from office after issuing the order). As for the charred remains of the aliens and their relatively intact craft, to this day, they were locked away in an undisclosed location for extensive study.

January 01, 1984: An attempted takeover of XCOM Headquarters by a disgraced former field agent calling himself "Big Brother" was easily foiled. Security in and around the base's perimeter has been increased by 150% as a result.

February 23, 2014 - June 05, 2014: After several major engagements, a combined force of NATO, EU and US forces (with the latter equipped with advanced versions of the weapons they used in Vietnam) ran down the majority of Russia's military forces, dashing the Russian Federation's hopes of annexing neighboring countries. Just a few weeks after Russia's failed venture, the same military forces that defeated the Russians were forced to protect its territories from attacks by neighboring vengeful nations. It was another several months before matters started to revert back to normalcy.

March 01, 2015: The XCOM Initiative has been reactivated once more, on the grounds of another, far less covert extraterrestrial incursion. It was unknown at first, but discerning from recovered alien wreckage, crashed ship logs and captured alien personnel, the aliens - called the 'Ethereal Collective', and led by the 'Ethereal Ones' - were trying to "uplift" humanity for "what lies ahead". During the invasion, XCOM Director Dietrich Thierfelder copied the Bureau's tactics (reverse-engineering salvaged technology from the aliens) to maximum effect, while simultaneously trying to keep the public unaware of XCOM's existence. The bulk of Earth's militaries did most of the heavy fighting, while elite XCOM field agents attacked weak spots in the alien warmachine and performed crucial operations that other human parties could not do themselves.

During the course of the invasion, an ancient organization calling itself EXALT rose up, with the purpose of aiding the aliens in their goal in their bid to assume control of the world.

May 24, 2016: By now, a large number of Earth's beleaguered militaries were now equipped with reverse-engineered plasma weaponry and rudimentary powered exoskeletons, with limited access to the creation of MEC troopers. Humans are now evenly matched against the ethereal threat, but Director Thierfelder could not help but feel anxious about the Advent, and how they seemed to be holding back their most powerful weapons.

September 08, 2016: EXALT has been thrown out from play after XCOM field agents ransacked their hidden headquarters in Japan. Priceless works of stolen or lost art were given back to their rightful owners, or were donated to collectors for funding. Salvaged EXALT tech were supplied to Earth's militaries, since they were inferior to XCOM's own. However, EXALT research concerning super-advanced gene mods were destroyed, on ethical grounds.

December 03, 2016: XCOM agents assaulted and cleared the aliens' headquarters, which was later found out to be just an outpost. However, new technology salvaged from the base helped Dr. Viktoria Vahlen discover psionic potential in humans. Captain Ferdinand Schultz was the first human psionic, followed by Director Thierfelder himself as the second human psionic.

March 12, 2017: As dubbed by Central Officer Bradford, the "Temple Ship" that the aliens have been using as their headquarters had been marked for death by the director. Three days later, four squads of XCOM's most talented and most elite troopers were deployed inside the ship, with Colonel Schultz as the designated Volunteer. Fighting their way across the long corridors of the Temple Ship, only four soldiers ever made it to the alien leader - the Uber Ethereal. After killing the last of the ethereals, the Temple Ship unleashed massive amounts of dark energy, which could have turned the vessel into a black hole, consuming the planet below it whole. For reasons only the three surviving veterans of that battle knew, the Temple Ship inexplicably flew into space, where it detonated in a much less spectacular fireball.

Colonel Schultz was presumed killed in action, and his family was informed of the circumstances of his death almost immediately. The petition to turn March 12 into a global holiday by an overenthusiastic American politician has been turned down for security and secrecy reasons. Within months, the leaderless remnants of the alien invasion had been fought off.

Director Thierfelder went against the decision to confiscate or destroy alien technology this time, his reasons being that if aliens attack once more, Earth's defenders will be ready. Soldiers in Titan Armor, holding plasma rifles were now a common sight, and along with reprogrammed Sectopods and Cyberdisks, they patrolled the ruined streets, serving as the temporary lawmen to restore order from the chaos that is the Great Ethereal War. Scores and scores of alien bodies and salvaged technologies in the field of cybernetics were donated to colleges, scientific communities and medical institutions, bringing in new wonders through their inventions, making life significantly easier for everyone. Spaceflight-capable ships reverse-engineered from alien tech soared across Earth's skies, keeping an eye out for anymore alien incursions. Drs. Vahlen and Shen continued their in-depth study of alien technology, and soon, human technology found itself flung forwards by several centuries, ushering in a new technological "Golden Age".

November 10, 2018: Production of MEC troopers had been halted this day. Already, significant improvements upon the brave volunteers' base augments have been made, allowing them to live their lives more or less normally, but with many more disadvantages still, with the most persistent being that MEC veterans can't taste food very well, and they don't have a sense of touch. As a result, MEC troopers have been extremely militaristic as of late, reminiscing fondly of the "good old days".

September 30, 2019: By this year, Earth's forces have phased out the tank, favoring manned armored walker designs based on the Sectopod, with focus on size increases and armament improvements. In large numbers, the Lotus, an unmanned attack drone design based on the original Cyberdisk, had been deployed in orbit of Earth and the Moon, acting as the first line of defense against another alien invasion. On a side note, "Alien Alloy" has been formally named as Ilyushinite Alloy, in honor of the first XCOM agent to die, after a means to produce them in large quantities was found.

March 02, 2024: With aid from superior technology and weapons systems, South Korea takes over North Korea, after the latter provoked the former with frequent aerial bombardments using obsolete, 21st century weapons technology. Everyone in the world laughed at the bested country's expense.

February 16, 2025: A new headquarters to house XCOM personnel on the Sea of Tranquility on the Moon had begun construction. It was planned to be used as the organization's main HQ, in addition to serving as a training ground for new XCOM operatives, and a factory for making Crusaders (a new breed of Sectopod) and Voidlances (an improved version of the Firestorm). Construction of the base, as usual, had been done in secret.

August 18, 2029: This day, it had been discovered that the alien substance "Meld" possesses some harmful properties, which resulted in a quarter of the Great Ethereal War veterans developing a debilitating amount of diseases, resulting in quite a few deaths. However, with recent advances in gene modification technology, the Meld Recombination Project has been improved in every way, resulting in more powerful gene mods with less adverse effects. Still, Meld is considered a dangerous substance, only to be handled by qualified personnel.

October 05, 2030: A third World War had been narrowly avoided today. Terrorists planted and detonated a plasma bomb in Marseille, France a week ago. The explosion destroyed the city utterly, killing hundreds of thousands of civilians and destroying several trillion euros worth of property. Several pieces of evidence found at the site of the explosion implied that the US government, supported by the Russian, Australian and Chinese governments, had organized the attack, for seemingly no reason at all.

XCOM agents covertly investigated the area of the explosion and found enough evidence to condemn the attack as part of an EXALT-made ploy to start a nuclear apocalypse. Disguised as French officials, another group of XCOM operatives exposed the evidence their colleagues found. The French people almost immediately withdrew their accusations against the United States, the Russian Federation, the Commonwealth of Australia and the People's Republic of China before swearing bloody vengeance against EXALT. Supplies, construction materials and monetary support from XCOM were secretly handed out to the French government, under the guise of extremely wealthy entrepreneurs.

April 14, 2033: EXALT's hidden main headquarters, located under the Caribbean Sea and protected from discovery by an advanced system of highly-discreet laser and plasma defenses plus anti-satellite screens, was accidentally discovered by a Brazilian Voidranger patrol. Almost instantaneously, military aid from France, Germany and the Philippines arrived to support the main XCOM offensive to eradicate the base. Substituting elerium-based weaponry with railgun-based weaponry (as elerium appeared to turn inert when exposed to saltwater), the joint allied forces dived under the Caribbean waters with sectopods and cyberdisks for support. After a few days of protracted fighting, the main EXALT leadership has been killed, and the base they used razed to the seafloor. The chances of EXALT ever regaining their former glory seemed very remote after this day.

December 25, 2034: After finally undoing the damage done to Earth in 2031, the world's governments had made the decision to turn their gaze skywards, with plans to coalesce every government into a single governing body in the future. In Christmas Day, 2034, the first colonization attempts were made in Mars, just a year after constructions on Schultz Base on the Moon were finished. Everything seems to be going smoothly so far, but no one was prepared for the discovery that the terraformers in Mars had found, several years later; an alien facility sporting an aesthetic design much more different than those of ethereal architecture. What followed was the shortest recorded reactivation of the XCOM Project. From 2035 to 2040, volunteers for the MEC Trooper Project and the Gene Aug Project have both increased from nonexistence to 40% and 55% respectively.

Before anyone else could get access to the facility, several teams of veterans from the Great Ethereal War had already dropped on Mars, via Voidranger. They were sporting enough equipment to be considered a small army, but once they managed to get inside the facility itself, they were relieved to find that it was abandoned, most likely from several thousand years ago. Inside the facility is the famous Mars Archive, where XCOM field scientists learned everything about the creators of the facility, which was another alien species called "protheans". Soon, the facility and the area around it were declared off-limits to civilians, with the guards having authorization for lethal applications of force.

April 22, 2036: Dr. Raymond Shen passed away in his sleep after a protracted battle with Parkinson's disease. It was reported that Meld augments might have saved the doctor's life and prolonged it to some degree, but he refused the augmentation offers, believing that there was no point in enhancing his life artificially. XCOM forces everywhere are in mourning at the death of a very important figure in repulsing the ethereals from Earth.

Dr. Markus Wallis replaced the good doctor as XCOM's chief engineer. Weeks later, a way to replicate Elerium 115 and Meld in vast quantities was implemented using Dr. Shen's research notes, posthumously accomplishing the doctor's goal.

January 07, 2037: After continued deciphering and studying of the prothean ruins on Mars, though most of the information in the Archives still remained untranslated and off-limits to human access, XCOM scientists have discovered a warning from the protheans themselves. Apparently, they were wiped out by a machine race of sentient starships called the Reapers, and they left pieces of their own technology to help anyone who found the ruins in the next "cycle". Director Thierfelder didn't take the warning seriously, dismissing it as a long-past threat. However, with his approval, reverse-engineering and implementation of prothean technology was started.

Another technological revolution was kicked off, but most of the protheans' technology was considered inferior to what humanity already has, especially in terms of weaponry and equipment. Fortunately, some of the protheans' technologies could be used for civilian and law enforcement use. Additionally, a new element, dubbed "Element Zero" (Element One was proposed, but it was turned down because Hydrogen was already Element One), was implemented into existing human technologies, after its ability to change mass after being exposed to electromagnetic fields proved indispensably useful.

Dir. Thierfelder, after hearing about the report about a massive artificial construct orbiting Pluto, considered taking the object apart for study, but upon also hearing about the report that entailed that the structure is impenetrable to concentrated fusion lance broadsides and volleys of blaster launcher blasts, he had decided to leave it alone for now.

October 01, 2041: The Mars terraforming program has been completed. Mars is now housing several hundred thousand people looking for a place to start anew, but the Mars Archive is still considered off-limits to civilians, but with the "shoot on sight" policy being rescinded. This is the only instance in history where civilians can see XCOM operatives in plain view, but the Archive personnel were still on orders to keep their mouths shut about what they are or who they worked for. So far, about 3,719 civilians have been either executed on the spot or psi-washed to forget about what they saw (punishment for entering the Mars Archive area entirely depended upon the amount of resistance the unauthorized person provided), after they were sighted within the Archive area, whether they ended up there intentionally or not.

November 04, 2041: In the next month, after discussing plans to retire and settle down with his wife and children, Dir. Thierfelder ordered a flotilla of Order-class cruisers to escort an Everest-class "dreadnought", the very first of its kind, to explore the construct orbiting Pluto. After an amateurish accident with the ship controls, one of the Orders, the Paulus Augustus, veered off-course, straight to the construct's rotating rings. What followed next could only be described as horrifying as the cruiser appeared to have been "sling-shotted straight to hell" as one of the ensigns in the dreadnought wrote in his report. Everyone assumed the worst, but then suddenly, the Augustus reappeared next to the construct, seemingly no worse for wear.

On the crew of the cruiser's report, they said that they were propelled to another part of space, right next to another, similar looking construct. They immediately repeated their actions after concluding that the construct must be what the protheans used for FTL travel. Dr. Viktoria Thierfelder, in collaboration with Dr. Hongou Marazuki, dubbed the construct as a "mass relay", that functions just like how the Mars Archive described it on its respective article; as a means for faster-than-light travel, using copious amounts of Element Zero as a main power source.

On a more serious note, EXALT forces have turned a lot more aggressive as of late. Furthermore and more worryingly, their agenda seemed to have transitioned from "helping alien forces take over humanity" to "incite a massive conflict so as to have humanity collapse upon itself".

February 18, 2042: Director Thierfelder retired from XCOM, along with his wife, leaving his eldest son as the only member of the Thierfelder family still in XCOM's ranks. The iconic duo were replaced with Jonathan Cross as director, and Dr. Reginald Powers as chief scientific researcher. As of now, Venus, Ganymede, Callisto, Titan, Europa and Mars were already inhabited by small settlements of humans, with each planet/moon having two hundred units of Lotus attack drones as protection from possible ethereal comebacks. Also, every single family of colonists that expressed the desire to possess firearms to protect their loved ones needed to pass a test to determine if they're capable of handling a single Sunray laser rifle, which is mostly just for self-defense from fellow humans and morale than actual weapons that could damage refined Ilyushinite alloy armor. Humanity continues to grow and expand, with the intention of becoming as great and powerful as the protheans had described themselves as, and with the second intention of avoiding the same fate, if the Reapers ever come.

September 07, 2074: Acting over a decades-old plan, humanity's governments have relinquished control of their countries over to a single governing body to administrate the human race - the Federation of Mankind. Naturally, persuading the world's leaders to give up their powers to an organization just recently founded would be a futile effort, so to ensure the smooth progression of their long-term plans, the Council of Nations instead used their psionic operatives to initiate a covert takeov****#########DATA CORRUPTED#########****rebranding themselves as the 'Council of Systems', and by using mass relays to propel themselves forward, humans have left their home system in order to expand. Over the course of several decades, humanity now stands massively stronger than it once was back in 2015. The current director, the youngest one to take office - Tyrone Faust - had theorized that if the ethereals tried attacking humanity now, they would be effectively eradicated from existence over the course of a single year. Still, there had been no contact from extraterrestrial life, which most have considered a blessing.

June 04, 2079: Human populations on the colonies are steadily increasing. Cities have sprouted up and taken the place of towns in colonized planets. Recently rediscovered Outsider technology paired with plenty of time added more than a few advances in the indefatigable advance of human technology. The combined human military might amounted to several millions of soldiers, whether they be regular humans, augmented humans, Gifted humans or MEC troopers, be they part of the regular Earth militaries, or they're working for XCOM. Humans are now fielding different types of starships, such as frigates, cruisers, battleships, spaceborne fighter carriers and dreadnoughts, as based on prothean and ethereal designs.

In addition to these starship types, humanity had also created its own ship classes, like the hiveship, which is a medium-sized ship outfitted with several drop pods, an entire wing of Voidrangers and a respectable amount of Canary plasma assault cannons, or the terrifying, cruiser-sized devilship, which is armed with a dizzying amount of hull-mounted Unmaker blaster launchers all over its sides, in addition to being plated in refined Ilyushinite alloys.

The most revered ship in the fleet, the Cthulhu-class dreadnought, is a monster of a starship. There might just be a single Cthulhu as of now, but it stretched for almost 3.75/4 of the Temple Ship's original size. It was built around an oversized, 3-kilometer version of the Godfinger-pattern fusion lance, and it sported plasma precision cannons mounted on both sides of its hull. It was even capable of defacing entire landmasses on planets with a single discharge from its fusion lance.

Last but not least, exclusive to XCOM is the Dietrich-class fighter, which is what XCOM hunter-carriers used to do their job: the disablement of enemy ships, followed by capture. The Dietrich is both armed with EMP cannons and more conventional plasma cannons. Whenever a hunter-carrier is around, it is usually accompanied by a flotilla of hiveships and podbearers.

December 27, 2083: After Mark Bradford's death a year earlier, Dietrich Thierfelder dies of natural causes, having lived a good, world-saving (but sadly, classified) life. Dr. Viktoria Thierfelder died two days later. XCOM personnel briefly powered down all their facilities, left their stations and sang a song in honor of the people whom many considered as their heroes; Vigilant, reliable, fearless and immovable in the face of the extraterrestrial tide.

He was getting old and paunchy, and his hair is falling fast,

and he sat around the Hologlobe telling stories of his past.

Of the war he had fought in and the deeds that he had done.

In his exploits with his agents they were heroes, everyone.

And though sometimes, to his kids, his tales became a joke,

all his agents listened, for they knew whereof he spoke.

But we'll hear his tales no longer, for the ol' commander passed away,

and the world's a little poorer for its hero died today.

February 19, 2091: It's the start of the homesteader rebellions. Disgruntled colonists living in the fringe colonies, infuriated by the Federation's escalating militarism, have taken arms against the government to earn the rights to lead their own nation, far from the oppressive Federation of Mankind. As a response, the Federal Navy had kept these rebellions violently put down a single month after they rose up, but the rebellions have so far showed no signs of slowing down. Director Faust was against the idea of intervening at first, but after the rebels on the Zapustiniye colony retrieved plasma rifles from the local Federal armory and used their weapons to take over the local XCOM base stationed in the colony, the director was forced to assist the Federation in grinding these rebellions to the ground.

August 30, 2112: The last "regular" veteran of the Great Ethereal War had died. Recent advances in MEC trooper technology had allowed the human body to remain limbed to pilot a Mechanized Exoskeleton Cybersuit. Limbless veteran pilots of the old MEC models were given advanced base augments that allowed them to feel as if they weren't limbless anymore. Psionic training facilities have become commonplace in a typical human environment, where Gifted humans were taught to properly control their Gift, either in pursuit of their chosen profession, or to enlist in the military as a combat psionic. Gene modded humans have been observed to age significantly slower than unaugmented humans, but the cost of gene mods, the difficult implementation process and possible discrimination from regular humans kept applicants for gene mods just in the tens of thousands, instead of the expected millions.

June 25, 2157: Roving asteroid miners from Shanxi, the most populous colonized planet outside the Sol System, had reported that there had been some strange readings coming from the nearby mass relay. As a precaution, Director Faust posted two Amerigo-class science ships escorted by four devilships to the erratically-behaving relay.

|End of file. Power this system down? Y/N|

...

XSV Indigo, Shanxi-Theta Relay

July 02nd, 2157

Captain Joachim Granger, XCOM commander of the S:E17 detachment to Shanxi - Section E:17

"What the bloody hell?!"

The alien ships just in front of Granger's fired broadsides, forcefully sending the Indigo shaking and dropping its shields down to 67%. Granger held on to his station's railing to prevent himself from falling flat on the floor.

"Holy hell, X-RAYS! We've got contacts, x-ray cruisers on approach! Two hundred Ks to the west, forty five contacts in total!" Rodriguez, the Indigo's chief sensor officer shouted as loud as he could, letting the crew know about the gravity of the situation they're in. "Sir, what do we do now?!"

Granger gaped at the numbers on the sensor screen. 45:6 isn't a good ratio to be. He left the railing and righted his hat. "Christ's blood, tell the devilship captains to form up on us. We're getting the hell out of here."

"Aye aye, sir!" Rodriguez immediately responded before resuming his duties over at his console. "Attention all ships, in case you haven't noticed yet, we're under attack! Have your ship regroup on the Indigo, we're falling back to Shanx-"

The alien ships fired again. This time, the projectiles broke through the Indigo's shields and gutted her unfortunate sister ship, the Henriette. An explosion tore through the Indigo causing more than a few hull breaches and causing Rodriguez to break his neck after his head was plunged into his own console. The devilships returned fire, causing damage of their own, but they were forced to turn around and fall back, just as the enemy cruisers prepared to fire another volley. Granger was just about to sound a full retreat, when the inevitable came.

Granger was knocked to the floor from the impact. His vision is blurry around the edges, his body felt white hot lances of pain dancing all over it, and the screams and shouts of his crew overwhelmed his hearing before slowly fading in intensity. His last conscious thought was that despite everything that happened today, he was honored.

Honored to be one of the first humans to initiate a successful by-the-book contact with an extraterrestrial force in the last century and a half.

Out with a bang.

...

HWS Disciple of Marr, Shanxi-Theta Relay

July 02nd, 2157

Captain Meril Regulus, captain of the HWS Disciple of Marr - Draius Ferlodinus Legion

"Very interesting..." Captain Regulus muttered as his command ship passed through the wreckage of the destroyed alien ships. Earlier, he was incensed that two of the Spirits-damned ships got away, and that they took eight of his own cruisers before escaping, but since he's now got his talons on some potentially game-changing technology, his anger quickly faded away. It appears that even with their obvious weakness in commanding their ships, these aliens undeniably possessed an advanced form of anti-ship technology, as well as a significantly durable type of ship armored plating.

"Navigator, put us nice and close near the wreckage." He quietly ordered, never taking his eyes off the ruined alien cruisers. "Have the salvage team suited up for a quick salvage run. The Heirarchy is going to like this."

The turian shipmaster watched with interest as his men emerged out of his ship in a shuttle. After arriving on a slightly damaged hull-mounted weapon, the salvage crew promptly left their shuttle and began working.

"Captain, we're dismantling the alien weapon, as you ordered." A lieutenant reported to Regulus. "This might take some time, though."

Regulus' mandibles clicked once and formed a turian frown. "It's alright, take your time. We should have all the time in the-"

A loud beeping sound interrupted the captain. It was coming from the salvage team's radio. "What's that, lieutenant? Found something significant?"

"I don't know, sir." The soldier reported back. "The whole ship seems to be-"

Regulus immediately knew what was going on. However, before he could so much as curse loudly, him and his whole ship were erased from existence by a plasma bomb, utterly destroying the wreckage of the ship and destroying any sort of functioning tech. Immediately after, the rest of the destroyed alien ships did the same, taking those unfortunate enough to be near them in death.

The surviving turians could only look on in horror as their victory turned sour on their mouths.

...