Gray New World
XCOM:_Gray_Dawn#Recaps
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Day 4
Doug discovers that the restroom facilities in his lair are lacking, what with the abundance of "guests" he is now hosting. He finds himself having to limp outside and whiz behind a bush more often than he would like. This morning, his potty-break is cut short when a kidnapping plays out before him on the road a couple hundred yards away.
Rushing to finish, Doug then scoops up his ballistic vest and rifle, and without a word to stunned onlookers in the barn/lair, he rushes off in his old jalopy pickup. This causes a stir among the rest of the group who make chase after Doug to find out what has pushed him several gears beyond "hobble."
A couple of the local racist hill people lead them on a chase down the country road to an abandoned house in which they are squatting. A firefight in the driveway ensues, and the kidnapped girl (one Janelle) is rescued. A search of the house uncovers more squatters and another fight. AJ is shot, but his vest stops the shotgun blast. A truckload of dry goods from the grocery store heist is found and returned to the community.
Later that day, Draco asks the group to meet with him for an important discussion. He has discovered that none of the advance scouts he sent here decades ago are responding to his communications. He can only assume that they all failed in their tasks, and that there is no point in waiting or trying to rally their assistance. His trip to Earth has proved doubly disastrous; not only does he not have the support for a sure-fire counterattack that he had meticulously planned for, but by coming to this unexpectedly inhabited world, he has brought the people of Earth to the attention of the Collective and put their lives and freedom in great peril.
He sees great willfulness and tenacity in humans, though, and feels confident that they don't need someone like him to lead them to victory. They just need some breathing room. He wants to right the wrongs he had done by taking the Collective's superweapon (that he has modified) and use it against them as per his original plan. His goals are twofold:
One, if he is able to deploy the weapon, the Psionic Feedback Disruption device would cause their entire civilization to implode. The only branch of the Collective that would be immune might be the fleet already certainly deployed toward Earth.
Two, using the weapon would cut off the fleet sent here from reinforcements, and enable Earth to win a war of attrition with the remnants of the Collective. Draco leaves as much info and tech as he can behind for the humans to use and study, including the plans and research for the MacGuffin (or Alien Space Bat, or even BDO, if you will). You know, in case we someday need to make another one...
Shortly after Draco leaves, Fayth receives a call on Draco's communicator (as she is the one who has been carrying it around). The call is from a female with a British accent, hoping that whoever picks up speaks English. After a confusing and cautious exchange, the other person introduces herself as Abigail Blythe. She claims to be a civilian. She and a small group of other people came to investigate the military facility from which she is calling them after what sounded like a battle had taken place there. She knows it only as "Groom Lake." Fayth--through her association with her paranoid brother--recognizes the place as none other than Area 51...the same locale that Draco had picked up comm signals from one of his scouts.
Abigail explains that upon arrival, they learned some God-awful battle had taken place here, and most of the base was in ruins, but they found a hidden bunker, along with the few remaining staff. The man in charge had been wounded in the fighting, and with some coaching from Fayth, she walks them through long-distance first aid and gets him revived. With Marie's assistance, Fayth and the tech-savvy girl are able to tweak the Alien "Lizardman Detector" ("Lizardman" being Doug's currently favored term for human collaborators/slaves) to operate at range. They determine none of the survivors at Groom Lake are corrupted (in an extraterrestrial manner, anyway).
The man they revived identifies himself as General MacArthur Nils. Doug distrusts him because of [Reasons!], and because he supposedly disappeared along with his F-4 Phantom II on a mission in Vietnam. AJ distrusts him because of a prejudice against people who have last names for first names. Nils confirms what Abigail and her science people have observed from the monitoring equipment here in the Bunker, and her original reason for reaching out to the survivors in Elma: A massive energy signature is building up near Tiger Mountain. Nils says that the ionosphere is being artificially charged, and when the energy waveform collapses, it may act like a world-spanning EMP.
This immediately causes Doug to try any and every argument and ploy he can to fly off to HAARP in Alaska and try to derail this alien plot from there, which certainly seems a lot safer than Nils' proposal (Though dubious in its chance of success, as Doug's plans all revolve around numerous conspiracy theories being true in that HAARP is something other than a mere research facility): The formerly MIA General tasks them with stopping whatever is causing this anomaly, most likely a small alien craft.
Nils says they will only be able to assault with a small force--if the alien sensors are anything like what they have studied already at Groom Lake (!), the enemy will easily detect and wipe out a large force. He says they will have to exploit blind spots in their enemy's high-tech defenses with low-tech force. He uses some of his remaining assets to locate an operational UH-60 Blackhawk and its crew to aid their assault.
The world teeters on the edge of the Blackout. If our intrepid survivalists fail, the people of Earth face the possibility of waking to a Gray New World...
No pressure, guys. Just like a drill.
