To Gray or Not to Gray
Day 2
The group intends to have a meet with representatives of the government of the state of Washington, the most supreme authority (and closest to federal contact) they can manage. Captain Newton at the nuke site can't offer much in the way of support in getting them there, but asks that Sgt. Carville from the Rangers (who has credibility on his side) be allowed to accompany them.
The Rangers have managed to clear a back road that will allow limited egress from Elma. The group piles into Brock's Dodge truck and AJ's Hummer and they make their way to Olympia. Sgt. Carville is able to bring along a few of the Rangers' goodies, and is able to equip some members of the group in excess weapons and body armor from the company's stores. Y'know, just in case the road to the capitol isn't all beer and skittles.
The group reaches exit 105, and at the entrance to the tunnel that leads to the capitol campus, they encounter a situation that makes the hair rise on the necks of Brock and AJ. The tunnel looks set up for defense. Brock halts the convoy, and shines his brights into the tunnel.
People are set up manning barricades made of abandoned vehicles. A representative of the defenders approaches, and dialogue ensues; dialogue that doesn't go well. Battle commences. At the outbreak of hostilities, Brock continues to try and get the defenders to lay down their arms while AJ maneuvers for tactical position. Doug, left in command of AJ's Hummer, peels away from the encounter with Marie and her father. Sgt. Carville leaps from the fleeing Hummer to stay in the action because he's a Ranger and he doesn't believe in running away.
With the suppressing firepower of AJ, Carville, Brock and Fayth, the defenders are forcibly convinced to cry uncle and allow the group to pass unmolested. They warn, however "Good luck with the WSP!" which doesn't make much sense until they reach the capitol campus.
Marie's father, a businessman who is well-versed in the arena of political influence, helps the group gain access to representatives of their government. While most of the group is expecting to find an audience with some junior representative (or maybe even the Lieutenant Governor if they are lucky), they find their presence requested by the Governor himself, Jay Inslee. At the governor's mansion, they find the WSP Executive Security detail is thick, and are ushered into the big man's chambers.
When they arrive, the governor is hardly fazed by the news of their findings, almost suspiciously willing to accept the extraterrestrial nature of the drones. All he wants to know is the location of the ET controlling the drones. The group realizes this encounter is not going well, and beg off, citing an emergency on the home front to which they must attend. The governor nearly demands they leave the alien tech they brought (Droney) to prove their point, and gladly cuts them loose.
With veiled hints to Draco (in control of Droney), he waits until they are well away from the mansion before hitting the self-destruct on Droney, which appears to blow up a portion of the governor's mansion, and probably assassinating Jay Inslee, or as Doug puts it, the lizard-man impersonating him (Doug has been torn between satellite mind-control or pod-person duplicate). The group is convinced that their government has somehow been corrupted by the collective, but they have no idea how far-reaching the corruption has spread, how it is achieved, or for how long it has been going on.
Upon their return to Elma, the group gets some much-needed rest. They sleep through the second wave of meteors that hammer the area, resting assured that--like yesterday--the alien weapons will be diverted from the local area. They all awake some hours later, evidence that they were not squished by space rocks. Yay, alien intervention.
During their next check-in with the local authorities, they find Officer Cristelli at the local supermarket. Jake the Snake has been murdered defending his store. Cristelli suspects that the Pershing Clan is behind the murder and robbery, but has no proof other than his gut feeling.
Peter Kjelstad chooses to pull back the veil of secrecy regarding some of the tech his company has been working with. He shows them a compound they call "Spraycrete," a heavy aerosol than can almost instantly transform raw dirt into something as sturdy as concrete, useful for field fortifications and even tactical deployment of cover. The group decides to nickname it "Medusa" in case they need to talk about it openly around outsiders. The other discovery is the excavator probe, a programmable device that can simply make 1000 cubic feet per hour of earth disappear. With some coaxing, Doug begins fantasizing about a secret underground lair beneath his barn...
Officer Cristelli of the Elma PD asks for the group's assistance dealing with a problem that has come up. A local has come to him asking for asylum. He claims to be a meth cook for the Pershing clan. He is a disgraced chemical engineer who has fallen to the Pershing's blackmail. He has taken the opportunity of the meteors and the ensuing chaos to break free. The group chooses to take him in, shuttling him off to the supervision of Captain Newton and the infantry for now in exchange for some information regarding some suspected Pershing storehouses and strongholds.
The time has come for the group to finally meet Draco face-to-face. They go to his location to find that the "building" in the middle of the woods has disappeared. They find much freshly sown earth, and several quadrupedal machines moving vegetation around to cover the large hole in the forest. The machines seem rather positively disposed toward Fayth, but (literally) brush off Doug who comes to them with the universal greeting of "Baw weep granna weep ninny bong!" Presumably, his lack of energon goodies was the undoing of his offer of peace.
An underground path is revealed, and the group goes down the offered stairway to find sterile metal and...the ET who is helping/antagonizing them (the jury is still out on Draco's true motives). Draco appears to be a robot until he removes his helmet and appears to be rather humanoid, save for scaly skin. He offers a tiny morsel (from what looks disturbingly like a Pez dispenser) and pantomimes eating. Brock is the first to oblige, and can suddenly understand Draco's spoken words. AJ and Fayth partake, but the paranoid Doug refuses (for obvious reasons) and Marie follows Doug's cues and also abstains. The group has many questions for Draco.
These representatives of Earth of course yearn for the means with which to resist the Collective. They inquire in depth about technology that Draco may provide, and the tactics of their new enemy. They also ask Draco how long he plans on being here, and whether they must completely defeat the Collective, or if they can alternatively put up enough of a fight that the Collective may decide Earth is not worth the cost and pass humanity up as slaves. Draco cannot give them a satisfying answer. He does exhort them to gather their forces and prepare for a fight. He seems certain that the Collective will not pass up on enslaving humanity for the qualities this race possesses.
The group decides to venture to Seattle and see if there is any talent to recruit from the UW campus (a locale both Fayth as a current student and Marie as a former student are familiar with). AJ and Brock look to the South Sound area as a source of transport, rapidly recruiting a local with a nice catamaran into the cause. From there, they espy a nearby island wherein is a hidden residence serviced by a floatplane. They make their way to the island, hoping that the plane may be ripe for the looting. They find the plane, and with some conflict with the rightful owners (and their security detail), they obtain ownership. Using the floatplane, Brock drops off Fayth and Marie near the UW campus.
At the campus, Marie finds Professor Jenkins, who points her to Professor Marlowe in the communications lab. Marlowe has pinpointed strange signals where there ought not to be any, and they are like nothing he has ever seen before. When Fayth listens in on the signals with her newfound Pez-dispenser polylinguistics, she overhears...orders, reports and the like that leads her to believe they might be signals from beyond this Earth. The point of origin is Tiger Mountain national park, southeast of Seattle.
As Brock evacs Fayth, Marie and the two scientists, a broadcast from the EBS blares from their radios, warning of an incoming nuclear attack near the King County area. From their aerial perspective, Brock sees a fast-moving jet exhaust streaking toward Seattle just in time to see an energy pulse from the Tiger Mountain area lash out to intercept the nuclear-armed cruise missile and destroy it harmlessly over the water. Miraculously, they are saved, and choose not to venture back into such a hot target zone as Seattle for the time being.
The group is gathered back in Elma for now. They have the warning of the coming "Blackout" from Draco, and must prepare for it. More rapidly than they could expect, order is crumbling all around them, and governments have decided to start tossing around nukes. The world seems a very uncertain place, and the heroes of this story will soon have important decisions to make... decisions that may affect the entire world and the fate of mankind.
