Difference between revisions of "Aftermath of Betrayal"

Latest revision as of 06:54, 21 May 2023

Aftermath of Betrayal

After Bunker Juliet’s attack on Bunker November was repulsed, it was necessary to begin the cleanup to allow operations to return to normal.

AJ was informed that one person within the base was unaccounted for. The missing person was Jordan McKellar, Fayth’s best friend, and one of the “sleepers” who had recently been rescued from the Gene Clinic in Olympia. His initial efforts to quickly locate her were unsuccessful, so he contacted Fayth, who was in the middle of patching people up in the sickbay. Since the bunker was currently under lockdown, Jordan had to be within its confines, and Fayth was stymied by a lack of omnipresence to the Bunker’s personnel tracking systems. Additionally, Jordan’s was not responding to her communicator. All she could determine was that Jordan had not checked in or out of any restricted access areas.

A short while later, Dr. Rhys noticed a slow, rhythmic thumping noise in his lab, seeming to come from the ventilation duct. He went upstairs into the “attic” of the bunker to investigate, where he found the missing Jordan. She was splattered in blood and had a hold of a man in uniform who she would periodically thump when he showed any sign of consciousness, causing him to slap back to the floor. This, clearly, was the source of the noise he had heard.

A tense and hilarious stand-off followed where Dr. Rhys struggled to gain Jordan’s compliance against the cybernetic compulsions she suffers from with her extensive augmentation. Before things turned violent, Rhys accidentally managed to distract Jordan by getting her to pine for some marijuana, and the situation was resolved without further bloodshed. It turned out that at the outset of hostilities, Jordan had rocketed up here and took out a few of the last marines to enter via the destroyed lift overhead. She had stayed up here for the remainder of the fight to play whack-a-mole with the unconscious marines, and because she has vertigo-like issues when it comes to climbing down ladders and the like, so in this sense she found herself much like a cat who has gone too far up a tree and couldn’t get back down.

In the wee hours of the morning, the wounded were finally patched up by the medical staff, the dead were put on ice, arrangements were made for the captives, and people were allowed to return to work. AJ walked home with his wife, as their home was not far away from the bunker. They were both exhausted from the stress and action of the previous night, and the aftermath that ensued. Naomi broached the subject of possibly moving into the bunker when the new housing was completed soon. They could sell their current home (since the apocalypse had essentially wiped clean all mortgages), or even keep it if they wanted to be bougie and have a private getaway. She talks him into returning to the bunker to check out the future accommodations, and maybe have an unauthorized sleepover there.

The next day, Fayth calls a meeting of the bunker’s command staff to discuss future plans. AJ expresses hesitancy to range their forces too far from the bunker if threats like Juliet and their Marine Raiders can bring the fight to them. One question that keeps popping up is the motivations and goals of Vladimir Gurov and the Red Hand. AJ volunteers to try and contact Gurov to see if he can get some answers out of him. Fayth opts to reach out to XT Marauder at the Resistance News Network to see if she can get the word out about Commander Alexander Nilssen and the threat he poses.

AJ is able to have a face to face with the local Gurov who lurks nearby. The Russkie is predictably cryptic and roundabout with his answers but implies that he largely has the same goals as X-Com: to fight off the alien invasion. However, he intends to do so utilizing methods that X-Com would likely never opt to employ, as he is rather cavalier about technologies such as cloning and psionics. He explains that for his forces, manpower is not so much of an issue. The Red Hand takes more umbrage with the loss of materiel and resources than it does with the lives of its soldiers. Hence, why they have been rather catty when it comes to things like losing out on capturing the alien base or having their gunships stolen by X-Com, but why they have sometimes been helpful when it comes to them both engaged against a common foe.

Later in the morning, after Fayth radioed in her interview with XTM, the group endeavored to discover how the Marines penetrated Elma’s defenses. Checking the Great Wall of Elma, they came up with ideas to further secure the perimeter (as it stands, it was primarily erected to fend off waves of chryssalids, not humans). Eventually, a spot was located that indicated the marines had simply scaled the wall en masse, indicating they had not been air-dropped behind the wall.

At this time, Fayth received a call from Elma’s new police chief, Ryan Cristelli. He informed her that they had gotten a tip from a resident about suspicious activity at an abandoned residence near their location, and wanted to give X-Com first crack at investigating. Also, Cristelli really didn’t want to investigate, since if it wasn’t nothing, it would likely be very dangerous, and the guys and gals from X-Com were infinitely better equipped to deal with that sort of drama than his patrol officers.

We begin with the X-Com scouting team closing in on a supposedly abandoned home, wonder what—if anything—they will find there…