Jump 387: XCOM

Jump #387: XCOM
>King of Wands, reversed: An artist whose depraved love of chaos causes him to take hold of destructive ideas and make them appealing to the masses.
>Age: 29
>Location: Europe
>Identity: Engineering (-100)
>Drawbacks: (+600) Green Rookies, Enemy Within, Exalted
So as close to the actual game as it gets. Okay.
>Human Peak Technology (1400)
Having an exhaustive knowledge of all turn-of-the-century technologies is .. well I already have that from experience, but if I have it as a PERK, I can bestow it on others, whether instantly or spending years training them to have said knowledge. (Thanks, Metal Gear!)
>Customized Weapons (Free, Engineering)
Meh. Okay.
>More With Less (1250, Engineering)
With all these perks to cut corners, I feel like my tech is more Ikea than Ikea. At this point my efficiency with materials has reached overunity, I'm taking a tree branch and turning it into a room's worth of furniture.
>Enhanced Training (950)
I have green rookies. This is a MUST.
>Reverse Engineering (350)
So if I find anything that isn't turn-of-the-century technology, I can pick it apart and figure it out? Awesome.
>One Man Assembly Line (50, Engineering)
Well, at least when I need to make something the old fashioned way, I can do it rapidly.
>Motion Sensor (Free, Engineering)
>Arc Thrower (0)
Equipment slots are bullshit - these both need to be mandatory for every mission.

So, it appears I've assumed control of a branch of XCOM after branching out from engineering. I can't really say this sort of situation is completely unprecedented, but frankly... it seems a simple enough thing to me.

Really, it's remarkably easy to deal with the aliens when you have an idea of the nature of things. Screw playing by the rules - staying in one base is a great way to limit yourself until the inevitable insanity happens.

And so, using the best superpower, that is, truly ridiculous amounts of money and some smooth talking, I made sure that all the member nations of XCOM were still contributing as expected while we opened a number of bases. This proved to be a wise decision considering the volume of alien activity, but we're talking several bases on each continent rather than a single massive base. Each base had its own specialization, but each had its own core staff and sufficient soldiers to have fire teams on standby at all times for rapid deployment, constantly training and drilling. Even with the hilariously low quality of the soldiers we got, they were whipped into shape in weeks. Aside from some hiccups with the rookies at the start, things went remarkably well.

When you get new alien artifacts, you spread them out between bases. Plasma weaponry? Multiple teams of scientists can collaborate in different locations, and give more fruitful results than simply trying to reproduce the weaponry. Multiple teams of engineers can handle base modifications in each location, while certain ones specialize in the manufacture of different materials, just happening to be better. Redundancy. It proved a wise decision when the aliens attempted to tear us apart from the inside - if they'd had only one base to attack, they would have probably sent dozens of UFOs to overwhelm us eventually. Having to attack them all... they were repulsed, most effectively, and the counterattack netted several UFOs on the ground and new technologies.

It took about eighteen months in total, but they were dealt with, in the end. Technologies from XCOM filtered out to the world at large, inciting a leap ahead on the scale of the transistor. Alien alloys, synthetic elerium, medical technologies, all adapted to human society, rather than aliens, subverting and destroying races for their own gain.... and okay, perhaps I might have meddled to permit the replication of synthetic elerium, but who wouldn't?

In any event, the political reality mandated a unified government in the face of potential hostile extraterrestrials - I helped grease the political wheels to make the transition smoother, but it was an undeniable reality. Within a year of the aliens disappearing, orbital satellites with fusion torches were in place for defense; within five more years, spaceships were starting to explore the solar system, in preparation to scout nearby stars.

Humanity had defended itself, and was preparing to excise the cancer that was the xeno threat.

And what of EXALT, you ask?

Well. They interfered in an operation, but survivors were brought back for interrogation, kept sedated. I went down and interviewed them personally, brought my own abilities to bear. They tried to kill themselves and found the cyanide tooth implanted in their jaw was a normal tooth. Other similar contingencies were likewise useless, especially in the face of a precog. I addressed them by name, I outlined every last detail, I used my abilities to explore their pasts and future.

What I found disgusted me: these were men with day jobs, seeking their own gain. They wanted to use alien technologies to assume control of the planet themselves, and did not care in the least who they destroyed to do it.

I feel I was merciful in my reaction. I traced their history, I tore out their memories to verify everything from their motives to their supply caches, and then I obliviated them of all of that before sending them back home, and then I moved on and dismantled their entire network, one obliviation at a time. Sure, they might have still had the same friends, the same motives, but they never had the understanding that they'd had in the beginning, and they'd never have the opportunistic timing either. Hilariously, some eventually ended up signing on with XCOM, and they were welcomed (although an eye was kept on them, of course).