Trespassers

Fayth, AJ, Dr. Rhys and Ranger Oscar Fillion circled around the rural residence they had been directed to, the supposedly abandoned home that a local had seen some activity at earlier. When the X-Com team had gotten a lay of the land and determined the best direction of approach to avoid detection, they moved in from the east.

The team crept up to an abandoned RV parked next to the garage, and after determining it was unoccupied, slinked along the back wall of the garage, planning on making entrance into the man-door on the garage’s back wall. AJ could find no boobytraps from this side of the door, which seemed to show some marks that it had been jimmied open in the past. Rhys used the new laser cutter in his cybernetic hand to quietly slice the door around the knob out, and gently, quietly pull the entire locking mechanism free.

What he did not count on was for the locking mechanism to be broken, and for lock parts to spill out noisily onto the concrete pad at his feet. This did not happen, and they were not given away by a jangling cacophony in the middle of the relative silence of the morning rain because AJ was able to doff his helmet in a flash and catch them in its comfort-padded confines.

This opportunity proved too great a temptation for the enemy nearby who had AJ in his crosshairs; with his armor removed, a suppressed gunshot lashed out, and would have nailed AJ in the back of his head, splattering his brains against the wall of the garage had not AJ ducked down at the last moment in his effort to catch the falling debris from the doorknob.

AJ whirled around toward the direction of the attacker, a sniper hidden underneath the deck running along the back of the house. He fired off a burst from his rifle. Fayth dove under the deck toward the ambusher while Rhys stepped into the garage. Oscar, who had previously moved onto the deck toward the house’s back door, saw an object drop from an upper story roof onto the ground between AJ and Fayth and was barely able to call out “Grenade!” before it blew.

The blast spanked the soles of Fayth’s armored feet sticking out from underneath the deck and it blew AJ a few steps back, into the garage near Rhys. Thanks to their armor and augments, neither of them were seriously harmed. Rhys sliced through the door in the garage that led into the house (don’t people just use doorknobs anymore?) and encountered a Marine gunnery sergeant hiding in the dining room. A brief firefight ensued where Rhys was nailed in his armored codpiece, which thankfully absorbed the entire hit. Rhys was able to nail the marine with one of his hand lasers, which took a lot of the fight out of him, enough for AJ to dive in behind the kitchen island and throw out an ultimatum to get the trespassers to lay down their weapons. Fayth discovered that the ambusher under the deck was a marine, and scrambled back up to join Fillion in making entry via the sliding glass door that led from the deck to the kitchen.

Another marine was ready to join the fray coming from upstairs, and the gunny, busy trying to catch his breath, was unable to respond to AJ’s declaration. AJ leapt to engage the marine on the stairs and attempted to grapple and disarm him, but they wound up in a wrestling match over control of the marine’s rifle. When the kitchen area was fully occupied by four X-Com personnel, the gunny could see how this engagement was heading and was finally able to give an order to his men to stand down.

The trespassers were Gunnery Sergeant Rayburn, and Marines Amari, Cogburne, Johnson and Taylor. The dead man under the deck was Stinson. Rayburn apologized for the ambush, explaining that perhaps Stinson had always been a bit impulsive. A tense dialogue ensued, where it was explained by Fayth that when they had allowed the Marines to leave, they had intended for them to leave, as in to get the hell out of Elma. Rayburn told her that was what they were trying to do. They had called in a transport, and were waiting in this empty house near the wall until it was ready to land. Because it would take several hours for the craft to get here, and they didn’t want to wait out in the cold and rain if they didn’t have to.

This explanation from Rayburn didn’t completely satisfy Fayth, but his demeanor while speaking to the team was one of a man who was confused by current events, and the rationale behind the course he and his men had taken. Fayth and AJ stepped out into the garage to discuss a plan, leaving Rhys and Fillion to watch over the Marines. After a moment, Rayburn asked Rhys’ permission to call one of his men over to him, and Rhys granted it, unsure of what was to follow. Rayburn called the younger soldier—Amari’s—attention to Ranger Fillion, standing behind him at the sliding glass door. He began extolling Fillion’s apparent virtues as a soldier, and demanded Amari take a good look at the kid to get an idea of something or other that didn’t matter, since it was all a trick from Rayburn to get Amari to turn away so he could throw a rear naked choke on him. Amari flailed at the sudden and unprovoked attack, and Rayburn calmly asked Rhys to assist by grabbing Amari’s legs and levering down. In a few seconds, Amari was out.

Rayburn then produced from his kit a small plastic case with a few pre-loaded syringes in it. He again asked Rhys for permission to proceed, lest Amari wake up in a moment. “We had these to use on Major Nilssen,” he admitted, but didn’t need to explain that she had not fallen into their custody. Rhys was able to see that one of the syringes had a label on it that read “Tranq-A,” while two of them were marked as “Para-C.” Figuring that these drugs were tranquilizers or paralytics, Rhys allowed the gunny to proceed.

AJ and Fayth ducked their heads into the kitchen at the commotion and witnessed the sergeant drugging his own man. When pushed for an explanation, Rayburn told them that Amari was having doubts about being so on-board with them, and had been preparing to warn the two marines in the field calling in their transport about his capitulation to them. This revealed to the team that the Marines indeed had some kind of ability to silently communicate with one another, possibly through the neural implants that Dr. Rhys had discovered. It would also explain why none of the dead Marines had carried any kind of comms gear with them.

With the transport inbound, the team felt it would be a shame to allow bunker Juliet to continue to have such a handy resource, both the craft itself and the personnel aboard it. They hatched a plan to attempt to capture it. While hashing out the details, Fayth got a call from the Ops center that the east gate had sighted red smoke outside the walls. According to Rayburn, this was the field team’s signal for the incoming transport to mark the LZ. Understanding that smoke grenades only last for about 90 seconds, Fayth knew the inbound craft had to be close. They took the magazines and grenades from Rayburn and his men, allowing them to keep their weapons to be more effective in their ruse, and lit out for the wall.

By the time they arrived, the X-Com craft had already landed. It looked similar to the Red Menace gunship, but with a larger fuselage and more powerful repulsor engines. It was also unarmed, built for speed and cargo capacity, with a bit of stealth profile thrown into the mix. Rayburn informed them that the craft would have a pilot and co-pilot, and at a minimum, four Marines as on-board security. He also revealed the craft was a bit of a “hangar queen,” and often required extra maintenance and upkeep, so it was likely that the crew might be seeing to that while the thing was landed, and he was not wrong. One individual in a flight suit was performing checks on the craft. As he moved around, he walked with a pronounced limp that was significant only to Fayth.

Rayburn and his marines scaled the wall and approached the craft. His job was to see if he could get the security team to stand down and see reason, and side with the forces from November. These marines, however, fresh from Juliet and therefore more inured from having their zeal swayed, were buying none of what Rayburn was selling. They drew down on the approaching traitors, but before they could cut them down, AJ split the air with a precision shot that tore the rifle out of the hands of the marine aiming at Rayburn. His men who had called in the craft were not thrilled about anyone threatening to shoot their Gunny, so they started tossing mags to the others, and the fight was on!

First order of business, though, was to disable the transport. AJ used his cybernetic eye to dial in on a weak spot, and poured a long burst into the nose of the transport, just below the windscreen, hoping to take out its controls. Sparks flew, and the repulsors sputtered while the pilot attempted to scramble back inside to avoid the gunfire breaking out all around him. The two groups of marines continued their engagement, and Rhys leapt from the wall and sprinted out to join them. By the time he got close enough to actually hit one of them with the concussive beam from his cybernetic hand, it was the final blow that tipped the odds in their favor. With the opposing force now outnumbered and outgunned, they surrendered.

The enemy personnel were taken into custody, and Fayth called her construction drones and Slick out to see if they could begin moving the damaged craft back to the bunker. Chief Cristelli was updated, and the team returned to base, mission complete.

The next day, after the morning briefing, Carville pulled Fayth, AJ and Rhys aside to share with them an interesting report from the scouts: They had discovered what appeared to be a small group of four deceased Pershings within the walls. This was actually the third such finding in the last month, but the previous ones had been chalked up to helpful locals taking out the trash, so not much mind was given to those discoveries. This, however, seemed to establish a certain pattern of behavior, and now, the scouts had discovered something else: evidence left behind led them to an honest-to-God sniper nest, where they had found a single spent .300 Winchester Magnum rifle cartridge. He asked if the team cared to investigate further, but Fayth demurred, delegating the task, thinking that there was little else for them to find, and no idea what they would be able to act on if they did. Those Pershings were already dead, after all.

A short while later, Fayth received a call on her doodad—her name for the alien comm she wore on her wrist—and when she opened the line, she was greeted with a message on repeat, a heavily-synthed electronic voice morphing computerized noises into an approximation of human speech. She recognized it as the way that Flash can “speak” with great effort and some preparation. The message was simple and urgent: “Trouble at school!” Since there was only one school any of the drones might be at, the message was clear. She called upon Douglas to send out a scout drone to see what was going on while she assembled a strike team.

After a moment, Douglas called Fayth’s attention to the holo-globe in the ops center, where he threw up the feed from his drone. Flash was engaged in a running gun battle with two pickup trucks slowly cruising down the Monte-Elma road to the west, which was odd enough by itself. The drones can only run about 25 miles an hour; the trucks could easily get away if the drivers wanted to. This looked like more of a stalling action to keep Flash from pursuing something else. Also, while armed with twin plasma rifles, Flash looked reluctant to open fire on the trucks themselves. The team piled into vehicles and closed in on the action.

By the time they arrived, the trucks had pulled off down a side-road and eventually ditched their vehicles to engage in a last stand of sorts with the pursuing drone, who had neutralized them. They found Flash frantically pacing back and forth between the Pershings, and a van that had also been ditched nearby, uncertain of what he should do now. When Fayth arrived to calm him down, Flash frantically began signing to her, but she couldn’t understand him, so she had Douglas bring his own drone down to see what Flash was signing and relay that to Carville in the ops center. Carville reported that the Pershings had taken a hostage, and it was none other than Trevor Kamastafall!