Operation Torchlight
XCOM:_Gray_Dawn#Recaps
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Day 5
A brief look back on a potential future
Some years in the future, if mankind ever has its own history that is not burned and forgotten or retold by conquerors, it might tell how the resistance against the alien invaders began in a small American town, and that its founders were just a small group of regular Americans who refused to be slaves and fought. Fought for their families, their homes, their people...their world. Because, by God, if anyone is going to wreck this place, it's damn well gonna be us. We got dibs.
Sometime down the road, someone might look up "Going Brock-Mode" on [Urban Dictionary], and read how it means to face withering punishment with a bloody gleam in your eye and still knock a muthafucka out. How many people whose lives are saved at Fayth Wilson Memorial Hospital will find it ironic that a place of healing was named after a woman who slew so many in defense of her fellow man? Will the next generation of scientists compete to see who will win this year's Kjelstad award in applied [phlebotinum]? Will some young leader-in-training be offered a serving of knuckle sandwich from his betters for scoffing at the name of that building over yonder at the New West Point campus, Kamastafall Hall? Granted, no one will likely remember Doug Wilson, or that he even had a part in all that juicy history, but in all likelihood, he'd probably prefer it that way; if the government can't find him anymore, you shouldn't be able to, either. Of course, for any of those hypotheticals to come around, the heroes of our story must first win the day. Not necessarily survive, mind you; just keep humanity in general from getting extinctified. The jury is still deliberating on that.
Every uprising has its opening shots, its Lexington and Concord. There comes a terrifying point at which the underdog trembles at the thought of what he is about to undertake and still does it with the utterance of one word that has changed the world so many times: "Enough." The opening of this uprising begins on the slopes and landings of Tiger Mountain--a mere five days after the Sweeps--when less than a dozen men and women stand against the looming darkness of the Blackout.
Back to the Present
The heroes of our story know the Blackout is coming, and have been given the onerous duty of stopping it. They know next to nothing about what sort of opposition they will face, or even the exact mechanism by which to prevent this apocalypse. Their mission is one of desperation; if they don't fight now, humanity's ability to fight later may be a foregone conclusion.
Doug is able to use drones to get a surveillance feed of the site. It shows the site at Tiger Mountain, but several spots are blurred out somehow, probably the effect of some kind of stealth or cloaking technology.
The disruption to the ionosphere from the alien devices is creating alarming weather patterns, with the intensity focused around the target zone. Wind, snow and lightning make flying the UH-60 Skyranger to the site treacherous, but on the plus side, the team hopes it will improve their stealth and their chances of infiltrating the site.
The team is presented with two avenues of attack: They can land closer but lower, or higher with a longer hike in. They choose to take the high ground; they will not wait for the cover of darkness and depart as soon as they can manage, so they can afford the extra travel time.
They cross paths with a park ranger and a few other people--hikers, possibly. These others are acting suspicious, furtive. The park ranger disengages, and Brock approaches the others, only to be shot at with no warning or provocation. The fight is on.
The hikers and ranger are quickly subdued, and Fayth is able to determine that the survivors are setting off her Lizardman Detector. These are collaborators of some stripe, much like the Governor probably was. The team gets little chance to digest this news, however, as one of Doug's nearby drones gives every indication of a patrol approaching their location. AJ scouts out defensive positions for the group, and they lie in wait...
A thundering behemoth stalks through the woods, seemingly following a scent on the wind. It is a huge, humanoid figure at least seven feet tall, and moves with alarming disdain for cover or stealth. Brock lines up a shot with his anti-tank rocket. When it comes into range, he lets fly. The alien is engulfed in fire and shrapnel...then roars primal as it surges from the heart of the explosion and returns fire!
Brock is caught by a full burst, but somehow manages to escape equally unscathed. Fayth stitches the monster up and down, as does AJ, but these injuries hardly seem to faze the beast. Sergeant Carville calls "Frag out!" and drops a grenade at its feet, which finally knocks it out of the fight, but does not kill it; Fayth doses it with a tremendous narcotic cocktail in hopes of chemically subduing it, and trusses it up with an astounding amount of pericord, just in case the drugs are ineffective.
This beast has handlers, however, which AJ, Brock and Carville do not hesitate to pursue. Doug takes a more active role in the hostilities with his drones, and even Marie bucks Brock's protectiveness a bit, and throws some fire downrange. Evidently, it's too late in the game for this girl to hide any longer!
After a harrowing encounter, the humans from Elma are victorious. They advance toward the target zone, and find some kind of generator/transmitter (one of the blurred spots on their surveillance feed) in their path. Clearly, this is one of the things pumping energy into the ionosphere. With a helping of C4 and luck, AJ is able to toss the thing into the "failed alien plan bucket," and the emboldened humans continue their assault.
They find the alien craft and make entry, sweeping through it room by room. Resistance is surprisingly light, until they find the approach ramp to the bridge. It is guarded by another behemoth. Brock tosses a grenade at it and ducks back around the corner. The blast obviously doesn't kill it, as it throws a grenade of its own back at them. Brock is hammered by a concussive blast, but does not fall. Carville looses his own AT rocket, which yields much more satisfying results than the one Brock used earlier. With the hallway clear, the team advances on the bridge.
The rank-and-file aliens aboard the ship, the Grays, are surprisingly ineffective and weak, falling to the humans' guns like wheat beneath a scythe. That is, until Gray Leader comes out from behind cover, and stuns Carville with some kind of mind-beam! Now is not the time to conserve ammo. Magazines are burned, and we find that aliens are bullet-degradable.
The death of the leader has caused several other nearby Grays to enter a spastic, screeching frenzy. They are easily dispatched. AJ sets out to take care of the other three generators, and Marie tears into the alien tech, trying to figure out how it all works. The generators are destroyed, the Blackout is averted, and the resistance has its first victory under its belt...
But as Doug is providing perimeter security with his flotilla of drones, trying to hunt down the other alien patrol, one of the flying rhoombas crosses paths with a squad of four humans in menacing power armor. Before one of them lashes out with a weapon to destroy the drone, Doug sees a face in the feed, a Soviet ghost from the dawn of the Cold War. Is it a secret ally who fired on alien tech? A foe who saw the drone for what it really was? Or something else entirely?
Only time will tell. But class? Please do take notes. If, through the triumph of our daring team, this story one day does become the opening chapter of humanity's new history, what comes next will probably show up on the first test.
