Recruitment Drive, part II
XCOM:_Gray_Dawn#Recaps
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Game #20 10/25/14
Day 23
Recruitment Drive, part II
After meeting with Lt. Easton and the Skyranger at the landing site in Nisqually, the group sets out further up I-5 in search of their prey, the elusive Homo Sapiens Eggheadicus. They make contact with one Dr. Omar Bradley, who signs up for the team provided they can airlift him and his family; his residence is rural, and the roads leading out to his home are cut off. This is what prevented him from joining up with the others in Seattle several days ago.
Dr. Bradley is a medical research scientist, so Fayth is elected to meet with and recruit him. The group goes to the nearby Tacoma Mall, which has plenty of wide-open space for the Skyranger to land. It also has a bunch of abandoned cars that Marie and Doug use to hone their B & E skills while waiting for the helicopter to show up. This works just fine until Doug accidentally sets off a car alarm, which draws the attention of a chryssalid roaming nearby! They hear its distant screech, and spot it rounding the corner of a nearby restaurant. AJ is in one of the two Humvees, manning the SAW in the turret, and cuts loose. The beast is terrifyingly quick and manages to dance between the shots as it runs at him, colliding into the Hummer and clambering up at him. It takes a couple frenzied swipes, but misses. Doug swoops in with his assault drone (freshly reloaded, thanks to Marie's research!) and hammers it from above with a shotgun-needler blast. The fist of armor-piercing flechettes drive into its head, and lays the beast low. AJ drags the twitching carcass off a ways, cracks it open with his combat knife like a dungeness, and drops a white phosphorous grenade into its shell. When it blows, he is walking back to the team, silhouetted by vengeful flames! Duh-da-DUHN! (If only the RZA was here...) The Skyranger picks up Fayth and her security detail (Carville, natch) and they go to meet Dr. Bradley.
When Fayth meets Dr. Bradley, he tells her about an effort among some of his colleagues to try and get together. They were using radio and daisy-chaining cell communications to spread the word and stir up interest. He had heard that the majority of the organizing was being done from the apartment of a Dr. Richard Halvarson in Seattle, and that some of the people may have gathered there. He couldn't join them, though, because of the road situation, and lost contact several days ago, presumably when they traveled outside of cell range.
They pick up the doctor, his wife and young son, Cooper. Meanwhile, Doug is scouting forward with the drones. The name and address of Dr. Halvarson has come up twice now, so Doug plugs the coordinates into the drone and sets it on autopilot. The drone pings him when it is on station, hovering above the high-rise apartment building in north Beacon Hill. When he takes control, he sees a flash from the observation deck of the Columbia Center Tower over a mile away. The shot passes close enough that the projectile's vacuum trail buffets the drone as Doug takes evasive maneuvers and drops down for cover. Another shot passes by, missing wide, and nails a building downrange. Doug realizes that this is most likely a railgun weapon seen employed by Red Hand power armor soldiers. This complicates things tremendously; the Columbia Tower is the tallest building in Seattle. If the railgun(s) on top of it can reach out for miles, the group will have to be extremely careful when they travel.
Doug manages to get his drone inside the building and finds Dr. Halvarson's apartment. It is unoccupied, and cluttered. Doug finds a series of handwritten notes left haphazardly around the living room, the literary equivalent of someone talking out loud. From these notes, he and Marie learn that the author was waiting for "Rick" to return, but is finally convinced he is lost. The author left here to go to his/her lab, the location of which is easily discovered, the Paul G. Allen Computer Sciences and Engineering Building (CSE) on the UW campus. The group heads there in search of the only name they have, Dr. Halvarson. (Even though the notes they have access to paint Dr. Halvarson as being missing, the anonymous author has not supplied them with his/her identity yet...)
It is early afternoon by now, and it is beginning to snow, which covers old tracks and makes new ones painfully evident. Inside the entrance to the CSE, the team finds a dead state trooper speared up in some Temple of Doom-esque trap. AJ and Brock make entry. AJ searches the dead trooper and finds another series of notes, written in the same hand as the ones found in Dr. Halvarson's apartment. These notes tell how the author met up with some students here and they begun trying to figure out what the strange "background signal" they've detected is. They also made contact with other scientists, but before they could regroup, they watched them get apprehended by the WSP. Because of the troopers' strange behavior, the author says they are relocating, to keep safe and to keep an eye on their lab. Much to his surprise, AJ also finds a chryssalid avoidance beacon on the dead trooper!
Marie figures out that if the eggheads set up relays to transmit data, she might be able to figure out which building they went to. The team also finds a ham radio tuned in to a repeating broadcast of some menacing coot taunting the aliens. Otherwise, the building is empty. No eggheads here.
Across the way is the heavily barricaded Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering building. AJ tries to climb up to a second-story window (since Marie scaled all three stories of the CSE so easily). AJ quickly realizes he doesn't have the spider monkey perk, however, and almost breaks his neck. A few more tries, however, and he's inside.
This building is also infuriatingly devoid of eggheads, occupied only by a chryssalid trapped in a supply closet (?!). The temptation is strong to just pick up and go home. Another batch of journal entries are found. The author is revealed as Dr. Lucille Kristoff, and her final missives detail some of the strange goings-on, and the efforts of several groups to gather the scientists up. Most notably, X-Ray Tango Marauder from RRN was trying to get them to a Cold War cryptology exhibit to try and decipher the signals they have finally isolated while they await "The Cavalry."
Marie, with her eidetic memory, recalls an RRN "News from the Front" broadcast not too long ago that contained an odd "commercial message" advertising a "Secrets of the Cold War" exhibit at the Pacific Science Center. Because this information was highlighted on the screen of the Ref's laptop and shown to Anna, Marie is convinced it's pretty darned important!
Doug scouts ahead once again, being extremely cautious with his drones because the PSC is not far from the Columbia Tower or the Westin Hotel, another suspected Red Hand stronghold. At the PSC, he finds the State Patrol have formed a cordon around the area and are corralling several chryssalids there. The rest of the team meets up with a man named Ian Church, supposedly an X-Com field operative called in to assist by Lillian Kjelstad to try and round up some scientists so her team of "Cavalry" could extract them. He is working with his partner, Dean Vickers (who was mentioned in the last of Dr. Kristoff's notes), but Church has lost contact with him. Doug tries to infiltrate a drone into the PSC grounds and finds Vickers protecting approximately fifty scientists.
With the chryssalids roaming, the WSP screening and the threat of the Red Hand looming from their formidable crow's nest, the team must find a way to navigate these perils and get the eggheads to safety! Or, you know, let them fend for themselves, because sometimes saving the world is hard and stuff.
