Oil Rig

From Martina Bernal, PIGSTY XO

Re: Oil Rig "Asgard" in Bohai Bay (+38.33 latitude, +118.19 longitude)[1]

We received a coded communication from an XCOM agent, Xu Qiong, who was recently transferred from the oceanographic/meteorological research team to the military research division on the oil rig. The rig is owned jointly by the Chinese and North Korean governments and has ties to universities in each country; apparently the research team is under the auspices of Dr. Wei Yan, a respected ecological scientist, and he has approximately a dozen grad students under him. Xu Qiong is a good programmer and was hired to help design ocean current prediction algorithms for Dr. Yan. Prior to Xu's recent communication we only knew that the North Koreans were performing their own experiments elsewhere on the rig and their activities were under heavy guard.

Fortunately for us, a North Korean programmer came down with horrific food poisoning and had to be evacuated to a mainland hospital. Xu was the only person competent enough and with appropriate security clearance to take over for the sick programmer. There Xu found the North Koreans, under Colonel Park Jung-Hoon, were conducting tests on a new type of metal dubbed Neutronium by the research team. Xu has not actually seen the metal but reports it exists as a viscous amber liquid until subjected to a particular electrical charge at which point the metal sets into a very hard, but very light, form. He extrapolated this from the data he is debugging.

Neither the Chinese nor North Koreans are very forthcoming with information but we have gained some unclassified intelligence from the universities that claim the North Korean soldiers are there to protect the students from domestic Chinese terrorists who are violently opposed to Communism. There have been multiple attacks in the area and brutal crackdowns and martial law imposition in the past few months.

I suggest possible entry as a medical team (the soldiers know basic first aid but that is all) or environmental hazard crew (the oil drilling machinery is not active but was never properly cleaned and the well, though practically dry, is still leaking into the bay). Clandestine approach is also possible but the weather and ocean sensors on the rig are fairly stout and might make stealthy approaches more challenging but not impossible. As always, try to avoid civilian casualties and maintain our agent's cover where possible. We have plausible deniability for any...less discrete...actions by blaming Chinese terrorists if so required.

Finding out what this Neutronium is and what the North Koreans are developing should greatly help XCOM's efforts in weapon and armor development.

From Dr. Yokohama, Lead Researcher

I would love a sample, or more, of that Neutronium. Though the North Korean's research is probably horrible, I'm sure I can glean something useful from the mass of errors they call research data. Any hard drives or flash drives would be very handy. Do the North Koreans still use floppy disks?

Why don't you parachute in?

From LILI, Cell AI

Based on Agent Qiong's reports and what I've deduced from North Korean records, I believe there are twenty soldiers and twelve researchers aboard. There is a helipad with a single helicopter used solely by Dr. Yan for gathering weather data. There are at least two watercraft, one appears to be a modified speedboat and the other is a North Korean military patrol vessel.

And, Dr. Yokohama, kindly refrain from making flippant remarks.

Mission Results

The team met with Dr. Qiong in Tianjin to discuss infiltration and ultimately decided to have Charles and Jeffrey pose as Russian grad students coming to assist with the Chinese research. Thanks to Jeffrey's masterful and thorough document and other sundry forgeries, this cover story was bought completely by personnel on the oil rig. Anya and Brock, with weapons and mission critical gear, snuck aboard the rig in the middle of the night on jet skis. While Charles and Jeffrey made nice with the natives, the infiltration team found secondary access to the North Korean lab but nobody wanted direct confrontation so a canister of CO2 gas was acquired with the intent of subduing the lab workers to allow for easier pilfering.

This plan went into effect but Brock noticed another entity on the board the rig crawling insect-like on the underside of the rig's primary flooring. Later Anya saw the same thing and Charles witnessed such an entity chastising Colonel Park. Shortly after that, the North Koreans went on high alert and began trying to evacuate the lab but alien commandos (the same skittering buggers the team saw earlier) launched an organized assault and began to decimate the NVKD forces. Anya and Brock were eventually attacked by two commandos after exiting the lab with a cylinder of Neutronium. The battle was hard fought and the alien's technology was gradually starting to turn the tide but the team fought on. Straggler NVKD forces attempted a pincer attack but one was cut down yet the other one landed a vicious falcon punch that incapacitated one commando. He began fighting the other alien commando who was shot down by XCOM; to tie up loose ends Charles put a bullet into the North Korean soldier's head.

The team exited with a cylinder of Neutronium, a prototype power glove, other manufactured parts, and the bodies of the two alien commandos. No grad students were harmed but the other Neutronium cylinders were taken by the aliens and the research data was destroyed via plasma blasts.

Through the course of this, Jeffrey remained convinced the aliens were Chinese ninja terrorists.

Research Projects
Alien corpses
Alien commando armor (and gadgets therein)
Alien BOOM!erang and power source
Neutronium
North Korean power glove prototype