Monday March 20th, 2084

Summary

The 4 squads deployed in a fairly standard fashion; snipers in front of the door as far from the UFO as possible, HE Autocannon and Minilauchers along the sides, a Hybrid in a flying suit hovering above the central area, and everyone spread out to cover the troops with the explosives. Our first encounter with Skeletoids occurred as some of the agents were still moving into position. It appears they are capable of flight, although they didn't make it very far out of the UFO doorway. A barrage of disruptor blasts, incediary autocannon rounds, and minilauncher high explosive missiles brought down the visible Skeletoids, and a secondary explosion from one of the Skeletoids finished off anything there that the snipers couldn't see.

Due to the heavy smoke in front of the UFO, John planted a proximity mine to cover the entrance, but no more aliens emerged until the smoke had thinned a little.

Since the proximity mine simply replaced all the smoke that had thinned out, one of the agents on the ridge tossed a stun gas grenade to the area in front of the ship to discourage approach. The aliens apparently found the stun gas to be useful cover, however, and attacked anyway. A pair brainsucker pods caused some concern for the sniper group, but only one of the brainsuckers managed to attach to Sarah's head, and John shot it off before it could bore through her helmet. In the meantime, the attacking Anthropod was psionically stunned by the hybrids. The smoke had become so thick that a second Anthropod that was firing from outside the UFO was completely hidden. John went prone to avoid the incoming fire while Megan charged the entrance and sliced the Anthropod in half with her power sword.

Megan stayed near the entrance to monitor alien movement within the UFO on her motion sensor. Once the smoke cleared, a group of spitters became visible. While it would have been much safer to pick them off from a distance or fire a missile into the UFO, Megan decided to charge them with her sword and disruptor instead. For some reason, she seemed reluctant to slice open the spitter that was directly in front of her, but she managed anyway.

Megan tossed her motion sensor to Marcus, who led Taina's squad (from the rear) into the UFO. The only signals he was picking up, however, were moving at high speeds, and since their movement was accompanied by an audible popping sound, Taina ordered Scott to move in ahead of her squad in his flying suit. After flying up the grav lift, Scott very slowly drove most the poppers out of the main section of the UFO towards the ambush Taina had set up for them. Due to his mobility with the flying suit, there was no way for the poppers to reach him. Borrowing one of Lane's autocannons might have allowed him to be more effective at killing off the poppers, however.