PmWiki | XcomAcademy / Mission35a

Our satellites aren't equipped for video, but after a number of phone calls to the Canadians, Bradford gives us a composite feed from surveillance cameras. It looks like the small UFO has landed just within the town limits, sliding down an overpass. The overpass was blown up on top of it by unknown agents -- weird, I could've sworn WE are the unknown agents -- and the UFO is currently being assaulted by Mark 1 SHIVs armed with lasers. One of them is carrying a radio repeater and what looks like a generator instead of a weapon.

We're getting the Skyranger ready to get to the crash site, but all we can do is keep an eye on the situation. For once I'm glad about the pervasive security camera that have been springing up in Canada lately, as they let us watch what's going on; we feed the video to our software, and it quickly springs up a target tracker. I wish we could be sharing this information with whoever's steering; for now, it will help us identify the drone tanks.

By the look of it, they're very close to Toro from Battlebots, or our original design - covered wheels, an actuated flipper that can also be used to aim the weapon up and down and to recover from being flipped, and a whole lot of armor on top.

(OOC Note: A random rookie is being used to represent the command tank. To simulate older aiming software, I'm using overwatch rather than aimed fire.)

OPERATION

The tanks roll past the pub, which looks intact, and into a parking lot, in tight formation; an alien MEC with a sectoid attendant is looking around, perhaps trying to find a way into the pub. The barrage of fire from the tanks has little effect but to make the little alien go to ground and get the MEC to prepare for a firefight. We note that what we assume is a command tank stays behind.

The brief Mexican standoff is broken by the three tanks in front; they fire at the same time on the stationary target, and burn it to a crisp. My guess is that someone is steering the command tank, and the others have been programmed to escort it. A yarnall decloaks to take a potshot at the command tank - we know yarnalls can home in on radio, and it's not like it has anything to strangle -- and is promptly blown to bits.

The tank group forges on, on the rough terrain under the elevated highway, and separates a little; the lead tank is shot by the Sectoid minder, and takes the hit without reaction, then rotates the damaged armor plate on its backside and replaces it with a fresh one from there. Looks like the SHIVs are running a somewhat older version of our system... but who got the data on it?

The unmanned vehicles park themselves in two lines again, and shoot the sectoid to pieces by sweeping away the concrete fragment it was hiding behind; we refoucs the surveillance cameras to look on, and spot the UFO. There's a big chunk of overpass on top of it, pinning it down - it looks like the engine section of the saucer has been thoroughly buried.

That's three bad guys out of six, that we know of anyway.

The tanks keep driving ahead slowly - our guess is that they are being controlled by cell phone, and signal quality is degrading the further they go out from town. Another yarnall appears when they drive around to the collapsed section of highway; three SHIVs take it down without issue.

"Barely a scratch so far. Imagine what a few dozen of these could do. Pacify a city."

I nod at Dr. Shen's remark. "Agreed, but pacify it against who? We still don't know who's steering these drones."

Theories start flying about. X-ALT false flag operation? The Canadians leveraging the technology we shared? The drones fan out in front of the UFO's only accessible door, with the command tank staying behind on top of a road section. Probably as a relay.

The tanks enter the UFO and fan out, finding a lich and a bodyguard in it - the lich turns and runs.

The bodyguard, true to its job, rushes forward... and four tanks' worth of motion reaction zero in on it.

"The lich is all alone. I wish we could catch it." We only have one camera that can see that far, and the lich - not cowering, but visibly hidding behind the ship's NAVCOM -- is barely in the field of view.

"Ha! Nothing for you to mind control, you shriveled asshole!"

I had to say it, didn't I? The lich turns around, raises its hands, and closes them to its body - and a maelstrom of distortion, a vortex, appears between us and it. We see two of the tanks explode. Just like that.

Someone says "sphere of annihilation" and the D&D metaphor is more than consistent.

From what little we can see, the other two robots are barely hanging on - one's thrown a track and won't go anywhere any time soon.

The lich points at the command tank, heading towards it, and it's the last thing it does, because the movement of its robe was enough for the damaged tanks to have something to aim at. The... rift that the creature caused must have taken out its own shield, because the laser beams strike true; the lich is a charred corpse before it hits the ground.

Worryingly, the rift takes a full twelve seconds to dissipate.

"I guess robotics aren't a silver bullet against these things."

"Start analyzing the video immediately! And someone get me a 2nd edition Monster Manual."