Saturday April 8th, 2084

Aliens have spread from Nightingale Tower to several nearby buildings. We're going to clear them out before they spread even further.

Split into fewer groups and wielding explosive weapons to help with with the guards, X-Com agents began moving forward to scan for any moving objects. Squad 3 first spots one on another floor, and enters the nearby lift to track it down. As they enter, however, several contacts show up on the scanner, converging on their location, and they back off to avoid being trapped in the lift.

Squad 2 turns towards the lift to keep an eye out for anything coming down after squad 3. Squad 1, still with no contacts, begins to search their area for a way to the upper level while avoiding the crowded lift near squad 3. Several panicking civilians run through the area, making the motion scanners much less useful, and the spitter that Kevin eventually spots visually actually comes from the southern corridor leading to the lift.

Squad 1 runs into a Hyperworm around a corner, which Matt Metke cuts in half with his Power Sword. Another hyperworm in the next room, far enough out for Sarah to blast with a minimissile.

Squad 1 runs into a skeletoid almost immediately after. It is only armed with an entropy launcher, so the rest of the squad holds its fire while Sarah gets out of the way and Matt pulls out his toxigun. He takes his time, aiming carefully, and pops two darts into the Skeletoid, killing it. He does the same with the cloaked skeletoid that appeared behind it a moment later.

Squad 1, which seems to be getting all the action, is charged by several lower alien life forms from the front while spotting a couple eggs to the left. Matt, who forgot to pick up his devastator cannon, whips out his power sword to kill hyperworms and acts as bait to get brainsuckers to leap into the air, where they are easy targets for his squaddies. Chris picks up the cannon and throws it to him while the rest of the squad pauses to see if anything else is coming out that doorway.

Since squad 2 and 3 are now only registering clearly visible civilian movement on their sensors, squad 3 moves up the lift to investigate the upper level. Lane spots a spitter and switches to incendiary ammo. It moves away and down a lift before Lane gets more than one shot off, but Squad 1 is already up a nearby lift in position to ambush it from a balcony.

James eventually spots an Anthropod and a security guard. He goes after the guard, but runs into a few more, including some pretty heavy weaponry. He manages to duck a missile that takes out some behind him, however, and gets the rest with his devastator cannon while the hybrids fly over to deal with the anthropods above using their toxiguns.

We lost a shield in the last firefight but recovered three more due to the use of toxiguns. James was rather lucky in soloing the entire security force, even if they are terrible fighters.