Volare!

When we last left off...

Day 5

Operation Torchlight (the name given to our group's mission by General Nils at Groom Lake) was a success. The world-spanning EMP was prevented by an unlikely group of heroes, and the human resistance can carry on.

In the aftermath of the assault on the alien vessel, Fayth Wilson finds herself on the bridge of the captured ship. She is treating the wounded and checking on Sgt. Carville, who was hit with some eldritch alien mind-beam. At this time, they get word from Doug, nestled safely in his lair controlling their flotilla of air support drones, that he has lost contact with one of the flying Rhoombas. It was destroyed by one of the mysterious men in power armor approaching their location. The unknown force is on the mountain between them and the Skyranger, which would make escape tricky, even if they did want to abandon the ship.

Out of nowhere, the ship seems to come to life! The ramp folds in, the hatch closes and the landing gear retract. The craft begins to hover as computers come to life on the bridge. The group looks about in shock to see that Fayth has sidled up to the main console and is touching a small orb embedded within that is pulsing with red light. She momentarily has a glassy-eyed, trancelike look about her, then informs the group that she has accessed the ship and its systems. She is less forthcoming about how or why she has done such a thing, but time is suddenly of the essence, and questions will have to wait: The ship has informed her that its perimeter warning is going off and it wants to know whether she should override its defenses. Certain parties are reluctant to use the ship's weapons against unknown targets, so Fayth trips the override.

Several bogeys scream by overhead. Two are making a beeline toward Elma, while the third launches a missile at the ship! Fayth tries to engage the repulsor drive to evade the incoming fire, but fails miserably, lurching to one side and gouging a cliff face. The ship is protected by an energy shield that is weakened by the impact and the missile strike. AJ and Brock decide this is as good a time as any to throw caution to the wind and they attempt to use the newly activated targeting consoles to defend themselves.

The bogeys appear to be F-22 Raptors, but Brock--an experienced pilot and aviation buff, sees the high-G maneuvers being pulled off by the fighter engaging them and concludes that the plane has either been somehow modified from spec or they are not being piloted by humans at all. Doug tosses in the possibility that they may be drones. A dogfight ensues, and our gunners finally score a hit on the Raptor. An energy field (which was probably not installed by Lockheed-Martin) crackles around the fighter. Much of the incoming fire was deflected, but the plane is damaged, and unable to pursue. Fayth takes off to follow the other two planes heading toward her hometown.

Under Fayth's control the alien craft is as graceful as a flying football stadium, but it is fast. They are closing on the fighters. AJ and Brock attempt to engage them, but discover that the range of the ship's guns is kind of pathetic. At this, the planes split up and approach Elma from two directions. The flight path of one will cross over the Wilson farm while the other will pass over the Kjelstad home a mile or so away. A choice has to be made; they can only reliably tackle one of the planes. Fayth plows toward the one headed for her home and her brother.

They take the plane down as the other launches air-to-ground missiles at the Kjelstad home, blasting it to rubble. Marie sees her home disappear in fire, and frantically uses the ship's sensors to hunt for signs of life, hoping against hope that she can find her mother, who--she has been assured repeatedly in recent days by her father--is "taking care of things at the house."

The delicate sensors are able to pick out three readings. They are underground (which is odd, because Marie didn't know her house had a basement) and two of the faint signatures appear to be fighting with a third. Fayth lands the ship nearby and the team is away to investigate. They find a hidden bunker entrance that is blocked by rubble. Brock tries to gain entry, but his sheer manliness alone is insufficient. Fayth, watching from the bridge is appalled by Brock's poor form and is compelled to ditch the craft for a moment and help nudge the debris away with her circus-strongman-like skills. She minimizes her contribution so as not to bruise their Tank's ego.

Down below is a tunnel with tight quarters that makes AJ's skin crawl and forces him to take up rear guard. The sounds of a fistfight echo down the concrete hallway from a nearby chamber. The team moves forward cautiously...except for Marie, who rushes ahead hoping to rescue her mother. She slips past Brock's protective grasp like a buttered cat.

At the entrance to the sole room down here, Marie finds one dead man in tactical gear on the floor with a combat knife sticking out the side of his neck. A few paces away, another man is trying to beat the tar out of her mom, who is fighting back in a fashion that one wouldn't expect from the June Cleaver school of hand-to-hand combat. At this affront, Marie cuts loose a blood-curdling "KI-AI!!!" and sweeps the intruder's feet. Mrs. Kjelstad takes this opening to rip her pearl necklace off (which also turns out to be a garrote--way to go, Double-Oh-Donna Reed) and strangles the man into submission. The two men bear no identification, but their weapons are of Russian manufacture. Oddly enough, they look to be identical twins. The live one does not tweak the Lizardman Detector. Marie's mom is hurt, and they rush her to Fayth, who needs to get her to the med center set up at the Development Park.

This encounter begs the question: If these men were here and this place was targeted for destruction, what is going on at the Wilson Farm? They try to contact Doug, but get no answer. A valiant rescue operation ensues. Hopefully, he has not simply wandered out to pee again.

Doug's lair has been breached, and there is no sign of him in the barn. There is a third dead twin who has been shotgunned in the groin, below his ballistic vest. Someone notices that Doug's alien comm bracelet (that he refuses to wear) is missing from the gooseneck mic on his desk. They track the device and it leads them to a van parked nearby. Marie taps into it, activating the audio feed. They hear the sound of Doug being beaten while he resists efforts at interrogation. The group swoops in and neutralizes a fourth twin, the coincidence of which has now officially become ridiculous. These goons are officially labeled clones because, hey, why not? It that a weird concept now, or something?

None of the surviving clones tweak the LD, and the newly-freed Doug takes the human perception skill to literal new heights, performing an intense examination of this one's facial features to see if he might be an actual lizardman in human guise. He finds no lingering lizardyness, but does find that this kidnapper does come equipped with a suicide pill in a fake tooth. Doug also starts referring to these goons as MiBs, because they are--literally--men dressed in black. And they are trying to cover up secret stuff. MiBs and Conspiracy Nuts go together about as well as cats and ostriches.

Marie's mom and Doug are taken to get patched up. Marie is able to meet with her dad and learns that home life between him and her mother may not have been as idyllic as she always thought. He asks if this alien tech she is working on is starting to make sense to her. It is, and she has no explanation as to why. Peter Kjelstad seems to see some betrayal at this revelation, muttering "Damn that woman!" which might suggest that Marie's mom had some kind of agenda running concerning Marie that was not purely maternal...

Now that things have quieted down a bit and death is not lunging at them from every corner, the group gets the nagging feeling that they have forgotten something...something important. The Skyranger. They left it and her crew at Tiger Mountain! The group scrambles to a radio, hoping to make contact, and find that the helicopter is headed back to Elma. The craft is damaged, and they have wounded.

Both door gunners have been critically injured by a shot from one of the power armor soldiers, and the helicopter lightly damaged. The two rangers are still alive, and provided first aid until Fayth can take over for them. AJ and Brock take the two soldiers to fetch gurneys and additional medical personnel. Fayth provides immediate care, while Marie stands numbly by.

The cargo bay of the helicopter also contains a few alien corpses and captives the group managed to take during Operation Torchlight. Marie is roused from her daze when she notices the surviving Behemoth has somehow managed to get its hands on a knife and has used it to sneakily cut the last of its bonds. Fayth is easily within its reach. Marie screams bloody murder and shoulders her rifle. Fayth sees the hysterical girl fire off a burst a few feet from her head, past her in to the bay. Fayth spins around to see the knife-wielding monster attempting to stab her! Fayth draws her pistol and blasts at it, hoping her pistol can defeat its thick armor. Brock and AJ, rushing back to the helicopter already, hear the sounds of a gunfight, and all they can see is Marie firing wildly inside. Brock cuts around one side, AJ takes the other, and they see that their tech minx (thankfully) hasn't gone insane. The men deliver the coup de grace.

The question remains, however: How the hell did the behemoth get its hands on a knife from one of the Rangers? The Ranger with the missing knife proclaims his innocence. He doesn't remember how he lost it, but explains that with the fighting on take-off and the rough flying from damage to the helo, it might be possible that he got close enough that the beast grabbed it on the sly. The group is not entirely sold on this explanation, especially since this soldier tweaks the LD in a different way...he shows faint traces that are fading. With Lt. Spiers' approval, the Rangers are taken into custody and separated for later questioning.

With those details taken care of, the group gets back to the excitement of the day. The mystery bunker beneath the Kjelstad home draws their attention. They want to know what Secret Agent Mom was protecting down there before she comes out of surgery to hide or destroy it. They discover a hidden door that leads to a huge underground dome, that bears all the marks of being a secret base. A few of the features are identical to the background images they saw from the "secret underground bunker" at Groom Lake when they spoke via video-chat with Abigail Blythe and General Nils.

The team is left with the final question of "What is Project Covenant?" They want to know, because that is the question the clone was trying to beat out of Doug. The paranoid conspiracy nut claims complete ignorance, but he has shown to his friends and allies the depths of his suspicious nature. Can they really trust that he is telling them the truth? If the clones had bested Marie's mother, would this have been the answer? Questions abound, and answers are scarce, but one suspicion is shared by our increasingly busy and well-equipped resistance fighters: They have likely not heard the last from these clones and their ilk, and this will probably not be their last attempt to capture or destroy this facility.