XCOM: Mercury: Chapter 1

Chapter 1: Raid
Suez, Egypt, 3:00 AM

A group of armed men stood outside an old run down building, dressed in light body armour with night vision goggles and red bandanas. Nothing was expected to happen out here, but there was always a chance someone within their organisation was a traitor, giving their location away. A light breeze picked up, blowing small clouds of dust and sand around under a starry night sky. Suddenly one of the men groaned and crumpled to the ground, the others moving halfway through raising their weapons before they also hit the floor with a dull thud. From the shadows an armoured figure emerged, quietly dropping sprinting across the ground towards an open roller shutter and quietly peering inside.

"Alright give me a second, ok I've got two on the ground floor, shotguns I think. Another three on the balcony above, I can't see what they've got, just six feet, but they've got downstairs easily covered." a strong Hispanic accented voice crackled over the comms.

"Looks like they haven't noticed their transmitter's been hijacked yet." commented another voice, more neutral, but with a slight Eastern European tone. "We might want to do this before they realise what's going on."

The armoured figure grabbed a small cylinder from their belt and popped the top off before rolling it into the room, seconds later a thick white smoke began to fill the room followed by panicked shouting. The assailant drew two pistols and rushed inside, shooting the men on the ground floor straight in the chest at close range. The team on the balcony peered through the smoke to try and see what was going on amidst the confusion, one of them noticed a small round object fly towards them and land with a clatter at their feet. He looked at it, puzzled before he suddenly realised what was going on, but it was too late. The grenade exploded, violently throwing the three men into the air and onto the ground with a sickening crunch. The figure walked towards a bank of computers on the far side of the room as the smoke cleared, pulling off their helmet to let down long braided Titian red hair, revealing themselves to be a young woman in her mid-twenties.

"Jeez Locke, did you have to make a mess like that?" asked the Hispanic voice.

"I've never known you to care Vido." replied Locke with a grin as she started tapping away at the keys, unaware that one of the men had survived the blast and shakily raised a pistol at her back. A shot rang out and the man collapsed to the ground, dropping the weapon, Locke hadn't even flinched.

"I don't, but you know what I've always said, 'A clean kill is always a sure kill.'" replied Vido, lying on the ground several hundred metres away from the building, peering down the barrel of a sniper rifle. "Now hurry up and get the data, before some other loco tries to take a shot at you."

"What can I say? Gene mods must have paid off, well, sorta."

Locke plugged a small USB stick into the PC while she looked through the files, grabbing anything which looked like it was of value, she copied the data onto the flash drive and quickly pulled it out.

"Got it." she said, stashing the drive away in her suit.

"And the device?" asked the other voice.

Locke rolled her eyes at the question. "Working on it Alexsei, it should be somewhere around..." she looked for a desk or workbench, spying a flat rounded object lying on top of it, built out of a strange metal alloy. "here. Found it."

"Good work, I'll bring the truck around. Sit tight." said Vido.

"Nicely done, I gotta say I didn't expect EXALT to have moved into the middle East." said Alexsei as he looked the stolen device over. "At least you didn't blow up the package."

Locke shot him a glare and Alexsei shuffled away slightly, fully aware of what this woman was capable of. He picked up the object and climbed into the back of a grey six-wheel drive truck, strapping it down to a large table inside.

"We'll head to Cairo, the client wants us to deliver the package to them so they've arranged transport to Switzerland for delivery. Naturally they've paid for the additional services besides, procurement." commented Vido, a large map of the area unfolded on the hood of the truck. "Our ride's ready and waiting, so keep an eye out for security sniffing around, it should be sorted though."

Alexsei stuck his head out of the doorway. "All set, we should go before they realise what happened. I'll sort through the data, see if anything valuable was on there."

The others nodded and climbed into the truck's cab. Within a few minutes they were speeding off to the capital.

"My name is Amy Locke, together with Vido and Alexsei we're part of Mercury. Mercenaries for hire, well sort of. We don't do things like private security or assassination, our expertise lies in acquiring extraterrestrial technology and escorting it back to the client. It's sort of like Robin Hood, we steal tech from EXALT. Wait, maybe I should start from the top. Ok, so about twenty years ago Earth was attacked by aliens. Literally, UFOs and ray guns too, and of course they were intent on conquering the planet because 'Why not?'. Anyway, turns out a few nations had gotten together and started an organisation for combating aliens and the like, XCOM. Our supposed knights in shining armour who came in and beat those assholes right off of our planet. Thing is, while XCOM had been busy playing pest control a bunch of people noticed that the tech aliens had practically outclassed anything we had, so in theory if a bunch of humans got their hands on it they might have a shot at world domination, cue EXALT. While they weren't as well funded, EXALT was good at staying under the radar while they conducted operations, stealing XCOM resources, inciting panic and generally being a pain in the ass. Somewhere along the line EXALT's main base got shut down by XCOM, effectively shutting them down and the invasion was stopped. There was a lot of internal crap after that, civil conflict over Elerium and alien tech and so on. Eventually things calmed down again and the world went back to the good old days from when aliens weren't trying to invade and everyone wasn't at each other's throats. Until recently that is, EXALT managed to keep quiet for quite some time, moving around stolen alien tech without anyone noticing, but a second invasion was too enticing for them and they went straight back to stealing alien tech out of XCOM's hands. So that explains where we get it from, but there's more. Remember that civil conflict I mentioned? A large part of that was about how only XCOM's funding nations had access to the tech they salvaged, but eventually people started to wise up. If they couldn't get advanced technology from XCOM, they'd take it from EXALT. And that's how we fit into things, there's no patriotic spirit here or a mandate to protect the planet at all costs, it's just business."

The truck sped across the open plains, the first rays of sunlight beginning to emerge over the horizon. Locke sat curled up in the passenger seat, she had taken off the top half of her armoured suit, leaving a black loose-fitting T-shirt exposed.

"You ok Locke?"

Locke nodded before sitting up stretching forwards, revealing a small tribal tattoo around her left wrist.

"It's this goddam heat." she yawned. "Makes me feel drowsy as crap."

Vido nodded, keeping his eyes on the track, to him Locke seemed a lot like a cat; vicious and unstoppable one moment, entirely innocent and non-threatening the next, though she always seemed to have a playful attitude, even when holding a gun. He wasn't sure if this came naturally to her, or a facade to keep people from seeing what she really felt. A ringing sound from the central console broke the silence, Locke picked up the phone, grinning at the ID on the screen.

"Moshi moshi." she said, answering the call.

"God dammit Locke, how many times have I told you to stop doing that?" a woman's voice replied on the other end, speaking perfect English but with a distinct Asian accent.

Locke stuck her tongue out, despite the caller not being able to see it. "What's up Toshi??"

Toshiko sighed and let it slide, realising there was convincing Locke to speak to her seriously. "A contact of mine just called, seems the boys in blue just arrived at that EXALT base you were at. I take you procured the item before they arrived?"

"Yeah we got it, no sweat. What did XCOM want?"

"Not sure, but we might not have been the only ones scoping the place out, it's not exactly their style though. But I still don't like he fact that they arrive just after we hit them, it seems, suspicious."

"And not our problem." replied Locke, as far as she was concerned it was all above her pay grade. "Unless your next sentence is there's an XCOM Skyranger tailing us, in which case you'll need to talk to the client about the deal."

"Well, no. But I want Alexsei watching your data taps and see if they've left an eyeball on you."

Locke scoffed, loudly and rolled her eyes.

"Yes 'mom'. Look we'll keep an eye out during the handover, but we're hardly a prime target, I mean we just screwed over EXALT, again."

In her office, Toshiko spun around in her chair, looking out over a skyline of steel and glass buildings. She sighed and stood up, walking towards the window.

"Ok fine, we'll discuss this after the handover. Get back to the Bastille, I've arranged your flight plans. I'll tap the network, see if someone knows."

"Appreciate it, talk later then."

Locke hung up and placed the phone down. She leant forwards and opened the glove compartment, pulling out a small black object and a pair of headphones. Plugging them into the top of the player, she sat back and let the world outside fly by.