Half-life2:Resistance

halflifeguy said:
u are a no0b
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Takes two to tango. :p

Just because you know more about this than he, doesnt make him a noob, instead try to instruct him on whats going on ;)
 
Wow, a noob joke and a mother joke. What a bonus having two of the most insulting words in posts next to each other. You sure showed each other.

Annnnyway. Great stuff, otherguy. :)
 
i just kidding about the no0b part..........
i said it cus wut he said was a little confusing
sry
lots not get mad..................the HL2 expansion pack has been announced!!!
This should be a time for rejoicing!!!!
 
fokke said:
what the...this is a very different ending..i don't really understand how you did now some things like the part at the interrogations and what G-man said, that also really happened in the game. But how you didn't know how it would end? Enlighten me...
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what? I dont exactley understand your question, are you implying that my fanfiction has ended? No it has not...I still have maybe 15 to 20 chapters to go. As for the differences between by fanfiction and the actual game story...most of this was written before hl2 was released, so it was all assumptions based on the very little information received from valve at the time. Obviously, with such little imformation, I was bound to make a few glaring and important errors with the story...so now, with those plot flaws already in place, I am writing it in a sort of different reality, seperate from the hl2 game story, but similar enough to be recognized as hl2. It follows the same plot, but the details are different...but it had to be done for the reason that I decided to start writing over a year before the release of the game.


P.S Just to let you all know, the reason my chapters have been taking 2 weeks to complete rather than the usual week are for 2 reasons: 1. The chapter lengths are on average twice as long.
2. I am writing a secret original novel
called The Game of Life.
Every other week, when I am not writing The
Resistance, I am writing this book.
 
good luck with your other book - and I will for sure read it, as I love your current story :)
 
Ok I understand now ;) I didn't saw that it was written before half life 2 came out. I thought it would be half life 2 from another perspective but things changed a bit i guess.

Apart from that, I found your story amazing, it was really well thought out. The white helms are no officers by the way, but CP's but I guess you found that out by now ;)
I liked the Ravenholm part most of all. But Gordon talked a little more than that I had hoped for :p Turns out Gordon is a wiseguy ;)

Good luck on your next book! I'm just waiting to find it in the stores. ;)
 
-Chapter 44, Innovation-

Dr. Breen grasped his hair in his fists in frustration, and clenched his jaw with all the strength he could muster. Dr. Freeman had not been captured. Oh…what hellfire, what destruction Breen wished upon his head! And to think, Freeman had not only escaped the secret facility of The Resistance unharmed, but had evaded every police unit in the city, and had escaped into the wilderness beyond the city walls! It was a disgrace, an injustice, a perverse twist of fate which left Breen fuming with frustration… if only he could just find Dr. Freeman and disintegrate him with a lightning bolt!

But, Wallace Breen knew where Gordon Freeman was going. He knew that Freeman wouldn’t be able to stand not having Eli Vance at his side. It was certain that Dr. Freeman was currently speeding along the Coast Road towards Nova Prospekt in Romania. That was why Dr. Breen had made and executed orders to send troops to intercept Freeman along the way, and to warn the guards at the prison Nova Prospekt of Dr. Freeman’s untimely arrival.

Even so, the forces of The Overwatch had proved yet again to be incompetent at catching Dr. Freeman…who was to say that they wouldn’t fail again? It made absolutely no sense to Dr. Breen. How could that simple, normal man Gordon Freeman evade the grasp of the best fighters in the world? Freeman had barely even earned the distinction of his PhD when Dr. Breen had hired him at Black Mesa. He wasn’t some highly trained assassin or some ancient provocateur…Freeman had never even handled a firearm before the Black Mesa incident! So how was it that he evaded Breen’s forces time and time again… how had he slipped through their grasp?

This deeply disturbed Dr. Breen. The forces that he was in command of, the forces of The Overwatch, were supposed to be the most highly trained military force ever to walk the planet! They had even been genetically engineered for this job! It was Breen’s responsibility to make sure that the forces of The Overwatch were doing their jobs…every day he had to assure The Overwatch that his forces were the best humanity had to offer…but now his lies were beginning to sound hollow; even to him. Consequently, when it came to failures and poor performance of the troops…he would be blamed by The Combine.

As Breen sat there at his large oak desk hunched over in frustration, the main door of his office opened, and a Combine officer entered dressed in a thick brown trench coat. It was the commander who used to be in control of City-17 before Breen had taken command. Breen merely ignored his entrance and kept his eyes on the top of his desk. He was probably only bringing more bad news anyway.

“Governor Breen?” the commander asked timidly, his voice distorted by his gasmask. Breen rolled his eyes to look up at the officer with an uncaring expression on his face. “What is it, commander? What bad news are you bringing me now?” The officer stepped forward, and with a hint of urgency in his voice replied, “Sir, one of the recon towers about twenty miles out of the city is not responding… we looked at the footage…and it looks like they’re experiencing a few difficulties with…enemy resistance, sir.” The officer said this in his usual, snakelike tone, but he was a little more urgent and high pitched here.

“Oh no, commander…certainly you couldn’t be suggesting…Dr. Freeman again could you?” The officer sighed and shook his gasmasked head. “You’d better take a look at this footage, Governor…Dr. Freeman couldn’t have done this…” The officer walked over to a panel on the wall and punched in a few buttons, and within a few seconds a flat-panel screen descended from the ceiling supported by a robotic arm. The commander pressed a few more buttons, and with an electronic beep, the screen flickered on.

Dr. Breen watched as the blurry recon footage slowly sharpened on the screen, revealing a small combine tower sitting in the middle of the hilly wilderness outside of city-17. Nothing seemed to be out of order, and Breen could see tiny images of Combine troops moving about inside the tower. He began wondering just what had happened to make the commander so excited.

Suddenly, the images of the troops inside the tower began moving more quickly in a panicked fashion, and Breen noticed several figures running away from the tower and out towards the tanks and APCs parked just outside of it. Then a black shadow suddenly fell over the tower, and like a gigantic stingray some kind of flying device descended from the sky, hovering just over the tower. Within a second, there was a flash, and an orange beam of energy flew out of this strange, alien device. Then, the screen washed out in white light. When the image finally came back, absolutely everything was destroyed. All that remained of the tower was its smoking foundation, and the tanks and APCs that were parked there were utterly destroyed.

Breen felt his heart sink as he realized what had happened. Could that flying device be what he thought it to be? Surely it couldn’t… but Breen had seen it with his own eyes! It was unmistakable… the tower had been destroyed by a Xenian space fighter! Dr. Breen’s greatest fears were confirmed when seconds later a massive force of Xenian creatures of all sizes began marching across the screen. Then, the footage suddenly cut out.

“Do you know what that was?” Breen said through clenched teeth, glaring at the commander. “Those were Xenians! I knew that this might have been a problem when Dr. Freeman destroyed the Nihilith. They’re sending an army to meet us!” There was a second of silence, and then Breen shouted, “What are you standing there for, commander? They’re attacking us! Scramble the gunships, launch missiles, and send a force out to meet them! We can’t let them reach the city!”

The commander nodded and ran out of the room as Dr. Breen again grabbed his hair in frustration and watched the tape loop again. He couldn’t believe it! How could this be? He had been assured that the Xenians on Earth had been eliminated years ago…and here they were, attacking his own city! It was preposterous… Breen then calmed himself down, and began his next emergency BreenCast. The least he could do was warn the people of the Xenian invasion…albeit in a highly propagandized form. Dr. Breen’s day was not going very well…
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The sun shone over the vertical horizon of The Citadel, reflecting off of the red-tiled tops of the Eastern European buildings and causing Ian to squint from its light. Two small black crows cawed and fought over a piece of food in the center of the cobblestone street. It was surprising how easily the crows could adapt to the world after the invasion…where as humanity was now nearly destroyed and oppressed, life was as good as ever for those flying rats, the crows.

Combine officers marched over the sidewalks in pairs, harassing citizens who lived in their own little worlds, walking quickly and alone from place to place with their arms crossed and looking at the ground only. Ian, Tonya, Avery, Nikoli and Yuri were an exception to this rule, and they calmly and confidently moved through the streets in a tightly knit group. Surprisingly, this didn’t attract the attention of the Civil Protection officers, but made them a less favorable target for their increased size. Bullies hardly ever picked on groups.

“So who here has any idea how to get to Kleiner’s lab? Avery asked the group silently, trying not to attract the attention of the scattered officers. Ian was the one to reply. “I do,” he said, looking through the rest of the group at Avery. “We’re pretty close to the main square aren’t we? We just have to make it to there and I can direct you through the right barricade to get to the sector Kleiner’s lab is in.” Avery nodded and replied, “Good Ian, I know how to get to the main square; you can direct us from there… in the meantime, why don’t we try telling more of these people about The Rebellion?”

Nikoli Streski, the blonde mechanic, looked around them at all of the Civil Protection officers, and retorted, “You’ve got to be kidding me! You’re not planning on doing any speeches out here with all of these officers around, are you?” Avery let out a small, sarcastic laugh and replied, “Not exactly… here, let’s cut into this alleyway to be less conspicuous.”

With that, Avery led the group into a dark alleyway on the side of the road that was half-covered with a barbed-wire fence. Here there were dead, rotting leaves covering the ground amidst heaps of trash. From here, Avery continued his explanation. “Does anyone here have a piece of paper and a pencil?” He asked, seemingly at random. “Who’s going to have a piece of paper on them out here?” Streski asked rhetorically, looking around at all of them. Ian agreed with his assessment, he hadn’t written anything in years, and didn’t carry any kind of writing material on him.

However, Yuri piped up in his small, quiet voice and offered, “Excuse me…Mr. Avery, but I have some paper here… I use it for my…engineering musings. Please excuse my sketches on the pages…” With that, he unbuttoned one of his pockets and produced a small, brown notebook and a short pencil, which he handed to Avery. “I hope it will do…” he concluded.

Nikoli grunted, “Well, leave it to this little guy to prove me wrong…” and Avery flipped through the pages of the notebook, examining the detailed diagrams that Yuri had drawn of certain Combine technologies…which apparently from the looks of the notebook, he was fascinated with. “Ah, thank you Yuri, this notebook will do perfectly!” As he said this, Avery ripped out several pages from the back of the notebook and handed it back to Yuri, who put it back in his pocket.

“Now,” continued Avery, “we can’t convince these people through speeches out here, as Mr. Streski so helpfully pointed out, but we can convince them through writing…” Avery then wrote a few words on a piece of paper with the pencil that Yuri had provided, and then read the contents of what he had written.

“Here we are,” he announced, “Do you fear the Combine? Do you not like what they’re doing to you? You’re not alone. Come to the public execution today… be prepared and bring any weapons you can find, the Revolution begins today. Destroy this note once you’ve read it.” After Avery had read this, Ian asked skeptically, “so we’re just supposed to hand these notes to random people on the streets? Who’s to say that they won’t just report us directly to a cop? It may seem unthinkable, but there really are still supporters of The Combine out there.”

Avery considered this, and replied, “It’s just a risk that we’re going to have to take. I really doubt anyone out there would want to give up the only hope that humanity’s got. Just trust me; I think this is going to work.” Ian was uneasy about going with Avery’s plan, and he was unbelieving that they wouldn’t be turned in. It was impossible to judge the motives of some of the people out there.

In any case, though, Avery was right that they had no other choice, and they would just have to trust the honesty and soul of the citizens that they tried to convert to their cause. So, Ian aided Avery in writing more of these notes, and together, the group ripped three-inch strips of paper and wrote short messages of hope on them.

Once this had been done, the group exited the alleyway and continued along the street towards the main square. Leaves from the dying trees on the sides of the road blew in the breeze, crackling over the sidewalks ahead of them in a torrent. Ian began noticing the suspicious glances of the citizens walking by as the group exited the alleyway. Again, Ian felt uneasy about being discovered… he tightly clenched his hand in his pocket, crumpling the strips of paper which held the resistance notes on them.

Avery suggested that the group spread out, to be less conspicuous, so Ian and Tonya crossed the cobblestone street to the other side, while Nikoli, Yuri and Avery varied their speeds to spread out on the sidewalk. Now they were coming up on the first few citizens on their side of the sidewalk. This was Ian’s chance…he had to hand the notes to them quickly.

Ian walked a little bit faster, passing Tonya. He got a good look at a citizen who was coming in the opposite direction along the sidewalk. He was wearing a standard blue jumpsuit, and sported a black goatee. When Ian passed him, he got eye contact with the man, and within a split second, he shoved a piece of paper into the man’s hand, and continued along the sidewalk, his heart palpitating. Had anyone seen him transfer the note? Ian scanned the area for cops, but all seemed to be looking in the other direction.
 
Ian dared not look back at the citizen he gave the note to, and simply continued along the sidewalk in an inconspicuous manner. He hoped beyond hope that the man read the letter and then destroyed it. He tried to anticipate that his deepest fears weren’t true, and that the man wouldn’t turn them in to the cops.

Tonya, who was walking behind Ian, and got a better look at the man, caught up to Ian and said, “ Ian, he read it and then ripped it up, just like it told him to! It worked Ian!” Ian smiled. Maybe Avery was right about this after all, maybe they could get enough people informed, and maybe they could start a chain reaction.

With this renewed hope, Ian passed another citizen, a woman with her hair in a bun, and handed her a strip of paper as well. When he did this, the woman gave him a strange look, and then began to read her piece of paper as Ian continued down the sidewalk. He was two for two. Ian looked over to the other side of the street and saw that Avery, Nikoli and Yuri were all stopping people on their side of the street and handing them strips of paper, just as Ian had done. He noticed that the citizens were all reading their letters and throwing them away, exactly as the paper directed, while the cops simply stood by and didn’t notice anything!

Ian was amazed at the way things unfolded, and how Avery’s plan worked out so perfectly. He, Tonya and the others continued down this street, handing paper to citizens, who followed the directions zealously. Before they had even reached the main square, they had run out of strips of paper. However, they were confident in the amount of papers that they had delivered, and Ian trusted that the people they gave directions to would tell their closest friends what they had heard from the resistance.

Once Ian had run out of all his supply of papers, he traversed the street, and rejoined the rest of the group with Tonya. “This is incredible Avery; I think we may have converted every single one!” Ian said quietly when he was next to Avery. “Well, what did I tell you?” Avery replied, “I don’t think any of them actually needed to be converted, Ian… I think they’ve been waiting for this to happen for a long, long time…”

Ian could imagine how the citizens felt…after all; he remembered how he felt when he first heard that The Resistance was going to liberate him from slavery in The Citadel, and he could picture that they had felt the same way… it gave a level of electricity and excitement in the air for Ian. The revolution was coming soon.

After a short time, the group passed by an old shop, which appeared to sell instruments, as there was a dusty piano and several other instruments in the window. The Combine still allowed free trade…but it was meaningless to enterprise, since most profits went towards the immense Combine taxes anyway.

There was a man standing in front of the shop. Ian assumed he was the owner of the shop, based on the exchange he was having with a Combine metro cop, who was conversing with him in front of the store. “Citizen, you have disobeyed law 372-A!” The officer barked through his gasmask, threatening the storeowner with a shock stick, which he held ominously in front of the man’s face.

The storeowner tried to sidestep the officer and stuttered, “W-what have I done wrong, officer? I swear, if I did anything wrong I didn’t know it!” The officer grunted angrily, and stopped the man from sidestepping him by hitting the store owner’s side with his shock stick. The officer continued through his gas mask, “Law 372-A, your tax returns must be filed no later than the third business cycle! This is the fifth business cycle, Citizen. Compensation must be pain immediately, or Civil Protection will be forced to take action against your disruptive business!” The officer hit the man in the side again, causing him to buckle over.

“I swear, officer, I filed those tax reports, honest! Please, I’ve already paid the money, and I don’t have any more profits to pay you with; I’m flat out!” The officer grunted even more angrily, “You’ll pay us now, or you will pay us in blood!” The officer then began beating the store owner with his shock stick, and the store owner ran into the music store yelling, as the officer followed him in.

They could hear the two men fighting and objects breaking inside of the store, and the group began to become worried. “Should we go in there and help him?” Tonya asked urgently, glancing back to the store where they could still hear the struggle. Ian agreed with her, “Yeah, let’s get in there…that guy is getting pummeled!”

Avery stopped him and replied with a firm “No.” Crossing his arms, he explained, “look, I want to go in there and help that poor shop owner as much as the next guy… but you have to think here; if we go rampaging into that store and fighting officers, we’re going to get caught in minutes and we’ll be turned in. I’m sorry, but fighting now simply isn’t an option. It’ll have to wait until after the revolution begins.” Nikoli nodded and added, “He’s right, we just can’t risk it. I feel sorry for the poor guy, but there’s nothing we can do for him.” The group then fell silent.

Ian knew that what they were saying was right. There was simply nothing they could do without getting arrested… he just hoped that the man would survive, and that he would live to see The Rebellion and the subsequent revolution. In any case, the group continued on, taking Avery’s suggestion to heart, and leaving the poor defenseless man to be beaten… Some day – no, this day, that man and thousands others like him would have their justice, for this day would be the day of revolution.

That was all that kept Ian from rushing back to help the store owner; the promise that all the citizens would one day have justice… it made him feel like throwing up…leaving that scene and doing absolutely nothing…but it was what had to be done.

The resistance group continued on their trek down the winding cobblestone and concrete streets of City-17, and within a few minutes they had backtracked from the safe house back to the main square. The group now d along side one of the main thoroughfares’s into the main square, and contemplated what to do next.

Ian looked down the street towards the black, hulking figure of a Combine checkpoint into square. Combine Civil Protection officers guarded this checkpoint from the palisades on the wall, and there was a blue, shimmering, spider web like forcefeild restricting entryway into the square. Also, those flying and annoying machinations, scanners, buzzed about in the air and were taking snapshots of almost every passing citizen. Ian knew that if any of their faces were captured by a scanner, they would immediately be seen as former employees of the United Combine Munitions Factory, which was a sure sign that they were part of The Resistance.

“I don’t think we should go through this checkpoint…” Ian warned as they began to come up on the black metal wall. Avery turned towards him and asked, “Why not, Ian?” Ian looked over the ominous figure of the wall and replied, “we don’t have any way of knowing if this is a wall that’s controlled by The Resistance… I think we should at least try to find the wall which Barney Calhoun is on, so that we knock out one of our objectives by telling him about the revolution.”

Avery concurred, “You’re right, Ian. But which wall is controlled by Calhoun?” Ian put his hand to his chin in thought and concluded, “I really don’t know… I can only remember that the east wall is controlled by The Resistance, and it’s not Barney’s wall. I really don’t know which wall he controls.”

It was Yuri who answered their question, “Excuse me, but I do remember where exactly Mr. Calhoun was positioned. If I recall…he was not on this wall, but on the barricade just to the east of this one…” Yuri added in his small, rodent-like manner. Nikoli slapped Yuri on the back in a friendly manner and exclaimed, “So this little pipsqueak is good for something, eh? What did I tell you?” Avery responded, “Are you sure, Yuri?” Yuri glanced over the barricade again and responded, “I’m certain…I just…remember these kinds of things…”

“Then it’s settled,” Avery continued, “we’ll travel to the barricade east of here and meet up with Barney Calhoun there. We can thank Yuri here for saving us the trouble of having to figure it out ourselves.” Yuri blushed, and adjusted his wire frame glasses. Ian thought of this strange, rodent-like man as a very strange person. But he was smart; there was no doubt about that.

So, the five of them left the area along the route which Yuri suggested. This route took them east through an alleyway, and then onto yet another main road into the square. They traveled through the dismal alleyway, and were just about to cross onto the next street when Ian began to hear a deep pounding noise. It took Ian a few seconds before he realized that the pounding noises were that of the massive footfalls of a Combine strider.

“Wait!” Ian shouted, his voice echoing through the dark brick of the alleyway. The group stopped, no doubt wondering what Ian was talking about… then suddenly, through the bright opening out to the next street, the figure of a strider, one of those forty-foot tall tripods, lumbered by, its machine-gun swinging and its three amazingly long yellow legs pounding over the ground. The machine was amazingly loud, with each joint bending with a low screeching sound reminiscent of a slowly scratching record.

“My God, it’s amazing!” Yuri remarked, looking up at the strider with eyes of astonishment and frantically sketching an outline of it on his pad. “I’ve lived in City-17 all my life, and this is only the third time I’ve ever seen a strider!” he continued, “there must be something really important going on for them to send out one at this time!” The others also stood and watched the lumbering giant lope away in amazement. Ian wanted to wait for the pounding of the strider’s feet died down to exit onto the street again...
However, as they waited for the noise to fade away, another set of pounding feet could be heard growing louder and louder, and then suddenly, a second strider appeared in their field of vision, just as loud and as tall as the last one. It too passed, and with an air of bewilderment Ian observed, “Now there’s got to be something really huge going on for them to send out striders in a convoy! I’ve never seen anything like it!”

With a sense of urgency, Avery exclaimed, “You don’t think that they found out about the safe house do you? Do you think they could be sending these to flush us out?” Ian’s heart sunk at this thought…there was no way The Resistance could hold out against striders…especially in the state that they were in. He was just about to suggest that they head back to the safe house to warn Harper and the others when he heard the large, echoing voice of Dr. Breen booming over loudspeakers stationed in the main square and around the city.

“My fellow citizens,” his charismatic voice droned, “I regret to inform you that our community is facing an emergency… The Xenian life forms, which are kept from us by the city walls, have decided to take up arms against us in an organized force. I know that I have assured you in the past that all Xenians that came to Earth during the portal storms were destroyed by our benefactors…but somehow these have slipped under our communal radar. I have no doubt in my mind that these fiends were brought on to fight against us by the infamous Dr. Gordon Freeman. Furthermore, The Overwatch has gracefully assigned a sizeable force to face these ghastly alien creatures, and they are currently preparing to meet them in battle. Fear not, my friends, for the city walls are strong and high. I assure you that no fiendish alien life form will even set foot in our beautiful city. In the meantime, I am establishing martial law to keep order in the city while we fight this battle. Keep safe, stay in your homes, and report suspicious activity to your local Civil Protection precinct. Also, I just wanted to remind you all that the public execution time is unchanged, and the rebels will be shot at 5:00 PM just as I have promised. Thank you.”

The BreenCast cut out, and the streets were left silent yet again. “Did I just miss something here, or did he say that Xenians were attacking the city?” Avery asked excitedly, turning to the rest of the group. “It’s true Avery! Oh thank God, I thought that the Xenian Resistance Army would never make it…but they stayed true to their word, and they really are coming to help us in the revolution!” Ian exclaimed, practically jumping for joy.

“What, what are you talking about kid? What ‘Xenian Resistance Army’?” Nikoli Streski asked skeptically. “Didn’t you hear?” responded Ian, “Tonya, Alyx Vance and I just recently traveled to Ravenholm and negotiated with the last remaining Xenian sect of resistance out there. They agreed to help us. I really didn’t think they would keep their word though…you never know with aliens.”

Nikoli smiled and replied, “I really didn’t know…I guess they kept it top secret… In any case, having more allies is a very good thing! We might actually win this revolution!” As he said this, Ian watched the outline of the gigantic Citadel on the horizon, and saw several small figures of Combine gunships begin to pour out of it to get to the battle front. It was an amazing sight to see, the deployment of the Combine troops…it made Ian feel that much smaller.

“But you’re forgetting something gentlemen,” Yuri chimed in, “Breen said that they were enacting martial law! How are we possibly going to start the revolution when not cops but soldiers are patrolling the streets?” He had a point; it was going to a lot harder to fight highly trained soldiers than simple police officers.

Avery added, “Don’t worry about that. I think it will actually help us… the people will feel more oppressed and will feel a need to revolt when Combine troops are breathing down their necks. I think that we can actually use the martial law to our advantage in that respect…” Everyone seemed to agree with this, and then Avery suggested, “Come on, let’s get going to meet up with Barney Calhoun and Dr. Kleiner…we don’t have any time to lose!”

So from there, the group left the alleyway cautiously, checking around for any other striders or scanners, and headed for Barney’s barricade. A kind of emotional electricity filled the air as everyone contemplated the coming of the Xenian Resistance Army and the pending revolution. Oh how lucky they were that the Xenians would show up on the day of the revolution! This day would be a day of misery for The Combine…
 
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The buggy’s open engine roared loudly like an angry beast, driving the small red vehicle over the asphalt at speed nearing ninety miles per hour. The bombed-out and alien-infested streets of the forgotten parts of the city outside of the wall zoomed past Gordon as he shifted the buggy into the highest gear.

Gordon knew that he was being pursued, and he could still hear the whining alarms on the APCs behind him. In his rear view mirror he could not catch sight of any of the Combine armored vehicles, but he knew from their sound that they were not far behind.

He had just spoken with Colonel Harper over the radio, and he told Gordon to take what he called “The old coast road” which he described in detail and directed Gordon exactly to it. Gordon was on this deserted, forgotten road now, and he was quickly speeding out of what remained of the parts of the city which were outside of the wall.

Gordon took one of the curves of the road without downshifting or breaking. The rubber wheels squealed against the pavement as he made this turn at almost one hundred miles per hour. However, he was able to control the buggy, and he continued on this curve until he was at yet another straight away. He couldn’t risk slowing down for anything, or he would be captured for sure.

He passed a sign which was written in Czech, but which helpfully had translations in several other languages printed on it which said, “Now leaving Prague.” Finally, he had made it out of City 17. But Gordon couldn’t celebrate now…he knew that he still had several hundred miles to go…hundreds of miles which would take him across half of Europe to Romania, where he would find Nova Prospekt and his old friend Eli Vance… that is, if he even made it that far.

At this point Gordon realized that he couldn’t possibly have enough gasoline to make it all the way from the Czech Republic to Romania. Where was he going to find a place to fill up his car out there in the alien-corrupted wilderness? He noticed that there was a small can of gasoline strapped onto the frame of the buggy, but even that gas probably wouldn’t sustain him. Gordon made a mental note to search for gasoline once the Combine APCs lost him.

As Gordon drove through abandoned farmlands the sounds of the sirens behind him abruptly faded away…which was odd, to say the least. After a few more minutes of driving and looking in his rear-view mirror, Gordon concluded that the APCs must have gotten distracted by something. There must be some other mission that was more important than Gordon himself to have distracted The Combine… whatever it was, Gordon was grateful to not have the APCs on his tail anymore.

He was several miles out of City 17 now, but since he was driving uphill, he could still see the enormous, shadowy figure of The Citadel looming on the horizon. He could also see black flying figures coming out of The Citadel, which he supposed to be helicopters. Luckily, they weren’t flying to intercept him, but instead flew in the opposite direction, to take care of some unseen mission over the horizon. What was it that could possibly be distracting them? Maybe they just figured that Gordon had been exiled and would die out in the alien wilderness…maybe they were laying in wait for him at some checkpoint…

Gordon tried to shake his mind off of these thoughts and tried to pay attention to the decrepit road ahead of him… he would have to worry about the potholes now and deal with the Combine troops later. There was no telling what was out there…this region was outside of the jurisdiction of The Combine, and wasn’t protected from the alien creatures which apparently infested the Earth shortly after the invasion. Gordon began to see evidence of this infestation in the fields around him… there were certain patches where wheat once grew, but which were now blackened and covered in strange Xenian vegetation which Gordon vaguely recognized from his expedition to Xen twelve years before.

After about twenty minutes of driving at full speed, Gordon came to a small river, which flowed through the farmlands in a winding path. The river was actually very shallow and not wide at all… but judging by the boat docks and piers which stood dry on its sides and the extremely wide banks, Gordon guessed that the river must have at one time by mighty and deep, but it was now almost dry for some reason. Trash floated in the muddy water, and it looked to be heavily polluted by runoff from the agricultural area and the nearby City 17.

Luckily, the road he was on crossed the river over a concrete bridge, and he would easily be able to drive to the other side. But, Gordon had remembered his mental note to find gasoline, and he decided to remain on his side of the river and search one of the boathouses there for a can of gas, which he was sure he would find in such a place.

Gordon pulled the buggy off to the side of the road and shut the engine off. Then, he examined the surrounding boathouses, trying to guess which one would most likely contain the canisters of gasoline he was looking for. Gordon looked up at the nearest boat house on his left, which stood on stilts high above the ground, and which had a suspended dock which stuck high out over the water. As Gordon scanned over this dock, he received a shock which caused him to jump in alarm.

There, standing on the dock with a briefcase at his side stood the unmistakable and ghostly figure of the man in the suit who offered Dr. Freeman this “job” in the first place, watching Gordon from afar with his sunken, skeleton-like eyes. Had the man in the suit been following him this whole time? It gave Gordon a very disturbing feeling…

He jumped out of the car and yelled out to the man in the suit standing on the dock, “Hey, you! I want to talk to you? Why am I here? Who are you?” But the skeletal and repulsive man in the blue suit was oblivious, and simply turned around and began walking towards the large barnyard-style door of the boathouse.

“Hey, I’m talking to you!” Gordon shouted angrily, sprinting towards the boathouse. He wouldn’t let the man in the suit escape this time. As Gordon got to a wooden ladder which led up to the dock, the figure of the man slipped into the shadows inside the boathouse.

Freeman climbed the wooden ladder quickly, the power assist of his suit helping him climb. He dragged himself off of the ladder and onto the rough and rotting boards of the dock. The man in the suit had always followed Gordon during Black Mesa, helping him in certain areas, but at other times simply watching as Gordon was being chased by the most terrible of Xenian beasts. Always he’d be just out of reach; standing behind bullet-proof glass or sitting high on a catwalk. Gordon had tried to catch him many times in vain, but he always ended up just missing him. This time though, Gordon was sure that he had him…

He sprinted over the dock, his feet pounding on the hollow planks. In anticipation, he passed from the bright outside into the dark, damp interior of the large red boathouse. This was it, he would finally have a chance to get all of his questions answered, and he would finally know who the man in the suit really was.

But then, just as Gordon crossed into the darkness, he heard an inhuman screeching sound coming from somewhere in the boathouse, and a large blue metal oil drum flew out of the shadows towards him at amazing speed.

His adrenaline kicking in, Gordon quickly sidestepped the oil drum, but it still managed to slam into his left bicep, which was thankfully armored by his suit and was not hurt by the large flying metal object. As Gordon sidestepped, he simultaneously pulled the small silver pistol from its holster on his right calf and aimed it into the darkness of the boathouse.

Instantly his eyes adjusted to the low light, and he now saw the ghastly creature which had thrown the oil drum at him. At first it appeared to Gordon to be a normal person, wearing the drab citizen’s uniform of City-17. But, it was soon evident that this was no ordinary citizen. In the darkness, Gordon could make out the slimy pulsating yellow figure of a headcrab lodged on this seemingly human figure, and the person’s chest cavity had been shredded open to reveal an enormous and gaping inhuman mouth. It was a headcrab zombie.

Gordon had gotten a lot of experience fighting these foul undead creatures at Black Mesa, and he knew their ghastly figures well… they were some of the first and most horrifying of the Xenofauna he had encountered during the Black Mesa incident.

Gordon didn’t hesitate at the beast’s humanlike form, and he quickly pulled the trigger of his pistol while aiming at the headcrab lodged on the top of the creature, where he would be most likely to kill it. The gun jammed. Gordon pulled the trigger again and again, but got nothing but clicking noises. Acting quickly, he threw the useless weapon to the ground and pulled his last remaining option out of its pouch…his red iron crowbar.

Just as he was doing this, Gordon noticed yet another of the miserable zombie creatures in another corner of the room, lunging at him while screaming in a hideous inhuman fashion. While Gordon was distracted by this zombie, the other one picked up a table and hurled it in his general direction. Luckily, the zombie didn’t have very good aim, and the table crashed into the wooden wall behind him and fell into many pieces.

Gordon had to act. It was now or never… He lifted his crowbar over his head and rushed towards the nearest zombie yelling with an angry battle cry. The zombie swiped at him with its deformed claws but missed, and Gordon took advantage of its being off balance, and thrashed at it with all his might with his heavy metal crowbar.

However, the zombie moved out of the way, and his crowbar missed the zombie’s head and struck it in the shoulder. The hideous beast shrieked in anguish, and thrashed about with its finger-like claws. One of the claws struck Gordon’s crowbar, and before he could do anything, his only weapon was stripped from his hands by the zombie and flew across the room, out of his reach.

Now Gordon was in a precarious condition, faced with two zombies and without any weapons to his name. He frantically looked about the room for something he could use as a weapon. He had left the gravity gun and his submachine gun in the dune buggy outside, his pistol was jammed, and his crowbar was sitting on the ground guarded by the horrendous headcrab zombies.

Gordon backed away from the now bleeding zombie, and was met at his right by the other zombie, which had wandered over to the other side of the boathouse to flank him while he was attacking the other one with a crowbar.

As both zombies began frantically slashing at him with their claws, Gordon backed into the wooden wall. His hand fell upon a table behind him, and he quickly looked down to notice the luckiest object in the world for him to find. Sitting there on the bench was a silvery, sleek revolver and a case of ammo.

Gordon took this almost divine gift off of the table and loaded it with ammunition as quickly as he could by pulling out the revolving ammo case and popping six bullets into it. Then, he aimed the heavy silver revolver at the nearest zombie and fired.

This gun did not jam, and a gigantic booming report blasted from it, making Gordon nearly go deaf. His hand flew back from the recoil of the powerful handgun, and a muzzle flash lit up the darkness of the room like the sun itself. The zombie flew several feet back from the force of the bullet, and landed on the ground with a gaping hole through it.

Gordon couldn’t help but remember Clint Eastwood’s famous line, “Colt .357…the most powerful handgun in the world.” He quickly aimed at the other zombie, who was seemingly oblivious to the loss of its comrade, and still lunged at him. He fired again, and the zombie instantly fell to the ground, screeching in pain.

Dr. Gordon Freeman had been extremely lucky to just happen upon a revolver in his most dire moment of need…almost too lucky to contribute it to coincidence… Once he was sure that the zombies had died, Gordon placed his new revolver into the holster where his old pistol had been, and went over to pick up his crowbar. How had the zombies gotten there? Where had the man in the suit gone? He just seemed to have disappeared… These questions racked Gordon’s brain as he examined the boathouse around him.

A radio hummed with static in one of the corners, and a blood-stained chair sat in front of it. Near the radio was a huge blue topographical map of City-17 and its surrounding areas, which had a bright red mark on one part of it which said “Black Mesa East” in bold red letters beneath it. Gordon quickly began to understand… this place had been controlled by The Resistance. Perhaps it could have been an Underground Railroad station… in any case, the two resistance men of this outpost had been infested by headcrabs and had succumbed to them…becoming zombies.

Well, that explained the zombies, but what about the revolver? Gordon examined the table on which he had found the revolver, and above it he was surprised to find the Greek letter Lambda inscribed in a circle crudely spray-painted onto the wood siding of the boathouse. It was unmistakably the symbol for the Lambda Project, Dr. Freeman’s division at Black Mesa, and it was the symbol inscribed on the front of his HEV suit; could that revolver have been left there…for him?

Gordon shook off the superstitious question. Perhaps the man in the suit had been a hallucination…perhaps he had just imagined him standing there. The lambda was a widely used symbol for everything from the frequency of a wave, to the constant of half-life decay; to gay pride… it wasn’t necessarily left there for him…

He remembered why he was there in the first place…to find gas cans. So, Gordon looked all over the boat house, and found to his great delight that there were three full red gasoline containers on a rack on the wall. He took all three of them, and carried them with him out of the boat house.

Gordon took one last look at the dark interior of the boathouse where he had slain the two horrible zombies…he had no idea what had caused the man in the suit to disappear…but it just seemed to be another one of his usual sightings…perhaps he was impossible to really catch; perhaps he was just a figment of Gordon’s imagination…

Again he shook off the thoughts… He still had several hundred miles to go; and he couldn’t waste all of his time wondering if he was crazy or not. So, Gordon threw the three gas cans to the ground beneath the dock, and climbed the ladder down after them.

He then strapped them to the exterior of his buggy, started the engine, and continued on his trek through Europe.

Chapter 45, Beneath the Sands
 
Yeah, changing the scene in the boat when you see him to a later scene in the buggy is cool. Still enjoying this story, great stuff.
 
HL2, the resistance...so far, so good!

I've only read up to chapter 17 or so, but So far, so good. I see you are multilingual, so the grammatical errors can be safely overlooked. With practice, you may be able to master the sometimes tricky bits of the language and possibly reach a wider audience than you would otherwise. That is not to imply that your native language is insufficient, in fact your use of characters and settings seem to suggest a knowledge of the czech republic and its' territories, but more than that, I liked how you took some of the things we saw in the game and ran with intepretations of what the functions of the combine structures were,and what items like the portals and gravity guns and whatnot could do aside from what we saw illustrated on our computers and consoles. Very nice worldbuilding skills too. You've really fleshed out the depth and complexity of the gameworld for us.
 
multilingual? Excuse me? I'm from Texas man :afro: Anythign that I know about the Czech Republic I get from geography class... *suddenly realizes that his grammar might be bad enough to suggest that he is not from the USA*
 
Well the way you descibed the Czech Republic I sorta guessed you were from there too ;)
 
Sorry about that, man, I wasn't wanting those comments to shed a bad light on your writing, it just occured to me that english was a second language. I guess if for no other reason, you can learn stuff in school that you can put into original literature. As far as the differences from the plotline illustrated in the game, well, don't worry about it too much. You could always say that the events after Gordon's arrival at the train station could occur in an alternate universe or something, like how different time lines or sequences of events take place if you change one little thing. They call it the butterfly effect and I'm sure if Gordon weren't busy spanking some combine ass, he'd like nothing better than to sit in some upper room with Eli and Dr. Kleiner discussing it over brandy and cigars.
 
Did anyone ever think that there was a chance that the G-Man was gay? I mean it's clear that he had some military background in the past, but whenever I see him in the game, I get the unsettling impression he's flirting with Gordon. I don't know why it seems that way but like in the first sequence of the game, he's like right up in Gordon's Face all the time and he stops in mid-sentence as if he were about to say something totally inappropriate to their working relationship and changes his mind about it. Sorry to get off-topic here, but I'm just glad we don't see much of him below the neck, I'm afraid I'd see a suspicious looking bulge in his neatly pressed slacks...no telling if it were a concealed weapon or...something else.
 
LOL...


I dont think anyone ever got that impression. The reason he stops mid-sentence, I believe, for the mystery, and suspense that his voice causes - the tone alone makes me not get that impression - but whatever :)


( I win, I got the new page :))
 
Well, that's ok. I was kinda reading into stuff. I know what the developers wanted to express in terms of creepiness and the sense of mystery, but under all that alien-ness, I think he's still very much human.
 
uhmmm.... hey, how about a compilation of all the chapters until now? I allready read 5 chapters, but i m****ING TIRED OF CTRL C CTRL V all of the MUTHER****ING time... Nothing against you, dude. This story is a BS. (for the ones that have a half-brain, it stands for Best Seller) Thanks!
 
sorry for the INCREDIBLY LONG delay guys...I feel kind of guilty, but I've been on a long band trip to padre island (one of the only half-decent subtropical islands in Texas), and I've just started writing today...sadly I don't think that I'll get it done...so the worst case scenario as that you'll get it next week... I could continue writing every day and get it done by wednesday, but its a long shot. Sorry guys. As for the mod... I really dont know where that is going. I wasn't helping the mod creator that much, and I assume that somewhere along the line he just gave up... I'll try to contact him in the future and try to re-establish the mod.
 
don't worry about it, i think we can have enough patience, so take your time for a better story :)
 
I wish people wouldnt keep bumping the thread unless new content is added :E It allways makes me excited and stop whatever i am doing :cheers:
 
Need... New... Chapter...

Cant go on, anticipation is killing me ;(
 
sorry about the extreme delays, god band and exams take up my entire life! anyway, here is the chapter, now quit yer bitchin! ;)



-Chapter 45, Beneath the Sands-

The resistance men gathered in a small huddle just outside of the Combine barricade on which Barney Calhoun was stationed. Ian gazed at the refracting, liquid-like barricade windows on the tops of the Combine wall, and watched the guards as they patrolled back and forth along the palisade.

Citizens strolled to the forcefeild which blocked entry into the main square, and scanned their identification papers across a computer screen, which allowed the forcefeild to deactivate so that they could pass through. In addition, the citizens passing through the barricade were watched by automated pictures, and perused by the annoying flying scanners which buzzed around in the sky.

Ian now knew for sure that Barney Calhoun was one of the officers stationed at this barricade, but he could never be sure which one he was… All of the officers wore identical uniforms and identical white, skull-like gas masks on their faces. They would just be forced to hope that Calhoun was not on a break and that they could just approach the barricade and he would notice them… otherwise, the risk of being noticed and identified by The Combine was extreme.

“Alright, so what’s the plan?” Avery asked the group as he observed the process going on around the Combine barricade. Ian laid out his plan, “I was thinking that we should go up one by one and hope that Barney Calhoun will spot us… there is a small chance that Calhoun won’t be on the barricade, but that’s a chance we’re going to have to take…”

The rest of the group seemed to agree with this…and Avery put forth, “Okay, so who’s going to go first?” The group members all looked at each other and none of them seemed to want to be rude enough to volunteer to go first. So, Ian simply decided that he would be the one to go first. “I’ll do it,” he volunteered … “If I’m caught, I want everyone to scatter and find another way into the main square.” Avery nodded, “We understand, Ian. Your bravery is admirable. Good luck to you… if Calhoun is really on that barricade, we’ll follow you in.”

Ian took a deep breath and once again looked at the noisy, busy barricade on which Barney Calhoun was probably stationed. The Citadel could clearly be seen in the sky behind the barricade, looming black over all… there were still scanners and gunships flying in intervals out of it to meet the new Xenian threat just outside of the city walls.

He broke away from the huddle, and strolled over the cobblestone in a cautious manner, stopping at a point a few feet away from the black, shiny metal of the Combine barricade. He lingered here for a moment, shifting his eyes onto the gasmasks of the Combine officers on top of the wall. One of them was bound to be Barney…one of them had to be him…

Suddenly, a robotic arm which supported an automated camera turned towards Ian and spotted him. Then, there was an obnoxious beeping noise from the camera, and a red light flashed in his eyes. Ian realized that the camera had just taken a still picture of his face. Had he been recognized? Was The Combine on to him?

But then, the camera simply turned away from him, and began scanning the streets again. Ian breathed a sigh of relief. He simply hoped that the picture wouldn’t be sent to The Citadel to be identified… Subsequently, after the camera had taken his picture, Ian continued towards the barricade, and stood near the blue, transparent and web-like forcefeild which blocked his path through the wall. Beyond the glowing and buzzing forcefeild, Ian could see the interior of the barricade which was made of dark metal, and its only light came from the light blue glow of the computer screens mounted on the walls.

Then, suddenly he could make out the dark figure of a Combine metro cop, who came out of the darkness of the barricade with a suddenness which made Ian nearly jump in surprise. The officer wore the usual uniform: a black flak jacket and a ghostly white gas mask, and he walked with such a stride which made him seem different from the others…he wasn’t tight and uniformly marching as the others were, but was laid back, almost lax in his stride.

The officer walked up just inches from the forcefeild in this manner. Ian got out his newly forged papers in anticipation of having to show them to the officer, but instead of demanding identification from Ian the officer typed a code into a nearby keypad and pressed a button. The forcefeild immediately flickered off with a low rumbling noise, and the officer motioned for Ian to enter. By this time Ian had come to the conclusion that this officer was different from all the others, and that he was probably none other than Barney Calhoun himself.

Ian was relieved as he entered the cool interior of the black metal barricade, and he beckoned for the others in the group to follow him in. As Ian followed the officer into the barricade, the others in his small group proceeded in a mass towards it, and entered with caution into the dark, cold interior.

Then, seeing as the others had entered, the officer pressed the button on the panel next to the forcefeild, and it instantly flickered on with an electric buzz. The officer then led the group deeper within the barricade and off to the side to a secluded and small room. Once they were all in, the metro cop closed the door with a large metallic clang.

Ian watched as the cop moved towards the center of the room. He hadn’t said anything up to this point, but Ian was sure that the officer was none other than Barney Calhoun. “Sorry that I had to be so secretive guys…I would have liked to assure you of my identity, but The Combine is a little edgy right now…” The officer croaked through his gas mask. While saying the last word, he unlatched the back of his mask, and within seconds had lifted it away from his face.

It was indeed Barney Calhoun, his smooth and rounded face illuminated now by the blue light emanating from the nearby computer screens, and his black hair frazzled by being in the helmet of the Combine officer’s uniform. “Boy am I glad to see you guys!” Calhoun exclaimed, smiling.

“Barney, thank God it’s you!” Tonya said, coming up and hugging him. “I heard about the sting that The Combine did on Black Mesa east…I thought for sure all of you guys were dead! Dr. Kleiner and I were just about ready to split and head for City-16 instead… How many survived?”

It was Avery who responded in a grave manner, “Only forty-five sir, including Gordon Freeman and Alyx Vance. Right now Gordon is on his way to Nova Prospekt in order to rescue Dr. Eli Vance, and Alyx is doing the same thing, only she is taking a train.”

Barney sighed and shook his head, “Yeah, I heard about Eli getting captured…but Gordon and Alyx are both going to go rescue him? That’s suicide! The things I’ve heard about Nova Prospekt are terrible… I sure hope Gordon makes it in one piece and kicks the Combine’s ass!” Ian chuckled slightly at Barney’s enthusiasm. On the outside, Calhoun appeared to be nothing more than a jovial fun-loving guy, but Ian knew that on the inside Barney was a serious and devotional man.

“Even though we’ve only got forty-five guys, we’re still planning on starting the Revolution, Barney. We’ve already begun planning for it. Harper has gathered us all at the safe house and we’ve been laying out exactly what we’re going to do. Right now our task is to inform as many people as we can about the Revolution…We’re going to hit them tonight Barney, and we’re going to hit them hard!” Ian explained, detailing the current situation.

“That’s great Ian! It’s going to be tough hurting The Combine with so few people, but I just know that we’ll be able to stir things up a bit. I really think you should tell Dr. Kleiner about this…right now he’s running around like an idiot gathering up his things. I swear, I thought he was going to have a heart attack when he heard about the sting…” Avery cut in, “That’s what we’re just about to do, Mr. Calhoun. We just wanted to make sure that you were doing alright, and that you knew about our plans for The Revolution. Just stop by Dr. Kleiner’s lab later today before 5:00 PM and we’ll brief you on the details.”

Barney nodded, “Ah, I see. And who are you? Sorry, but I’ve never seen you before…” Avery replied, “My name is Bart Avery, I worked in the United Combine Munitions Factory and have been a member of the Resistance for some time. These others here are Nikoli Streski and Yuri Steinberg. Both are in the same situation as me, and we all just wanted to help out the Resistance in any way possible, Mr. Calhoun.” Barney shook the man’s hand and replied, “It’s great to meet another dedicated Resistance man, Mr. Avery. I’ll look forward to working with you.”

Calhoun continued, “Did you all hear that Xenian forces are coming to help us out? I knew that they were coming…but not so soon…not so fast… It’s going to get very hairy over the next few days… I heard that the Xenian force coming towards us is enormous; I really think that they’ll be breaking through right away…and when they do, this place is going to be hell. Trust me guys, once those walls are down every Xenian creature out there is going to be coming in here…and Xenians ain’t cute and cuddly, believe me…”

Certainly, they had heard the propaganda of Dr. Breen as he downplayed the Xenian invasion. Ian replied, “Yeah, we heard about that, I was the translator when we were working that little invasion out, after all. I hadn’t really thought about the non-sentient Xenian creatures coming into the city, but frankly I think they’re going to be the least of our worries when the Revolution starts. It’ll be worth it to have them on our side when the time comes.”

Nikoli cut in, “Yeah, but what if they turn on us? We don’t have any guarantee that they’ll keep their word. The Xenians crushed earth during the invasion, after all. I don’t think we stand much of a chance if they decide to be turncoats.” Avery replied, “Look, we’ll work out the politics later, but for now we need the Xenians on our side to win.”

Ian remembered the lines of Xenian troops in Ravenholm. There had to have been thousands of them, row after row in that dark mine… it gave him chills to think that they might simply crush The Combine and make the humans their slaves. If that were to happen, then the Revolution would have no gain at all, they’d just be moving from one master to the next.

Just then, the radio inside the gas mask that Calhoun was holding hissed on, and an electronically distorted voice came through speakers embedded in the white rubber of the mask. “Mr. Calhoun!” A voice yelled in exasperation over the radio, “Civil Protection is stopping by our barricade for a surprise inspection! We need to get all resistance paraphernalia out of here and put on a good face for the inspectors quick!”

Upon hearing this, Barney drew a sharp breath and instantly put his gas mask back on. “Are you serious, a surprise inspection?” He asked in alarm, his voice now distorted by the gas mask. Ian couldn’t hear what the man over the radio said in reply, but he was able to hear what Calhoun proposed next. “Alright, sorry guys… those dang cops just decided to do an inspection, I’m going to have to ask you to leave. Just get to Kleiner as fast as you can, and remember, my barricade is always open to you guys. The other barricades are also controlled by The Resistance entirely, so you won’t have to worry about those. Good luck with The Revolution, I’ll stop by Kleiner’s after this stupid inspection is over with and we’ll talk about specific plans… Here’s to the end of The Combine!”

Calhoun raised his gloved fist in anticipated triumph, and quickly moved out the room and up a metal stairway to the top of the barricade to meet the surprise inspectors. Ian certainly didn’t expect for their meeting with Calhoun to be cut so short by random surprise inspections, but I was understandable that right after the start of a Xenian invasion, that The Combine would be a little nervous about their security. He only hoped that Calhoun and the others on the barricade wouldn’t be found out as insurgents by the inspectors…they depended highly on the barricades to be taken by the Resistance at the start of The Revolution, or else they would be doomed.
 
“You heard the man,” exclaimed Nikoli Streski, “let’s get out of here before the inspectors show up!” He immediately began to rush out of the room in something that resembled general panic, and went out into the hall and turned towards the back exit of the barricade. The others merely shrugged and were forced to follow Nikoli as he quickly exited the hall towards a transparent forcefeild which allowed the user to pass through from the inside of the barricade but not the outside.

Ian was the first after Nikoli to come to the blue-green, spider web-like forcefeild which glowed in its transparent beauty in the doorframe of the exit to the outside. He watched as Nikoli exited the barricade hurriedly, passing through the forcefeild with no trouble at all. Still, Ian was apprehensive about passing through the strange, glowing transparent wall.

He placed his hand forward and pressed the tips of his fingers into the forcefeild. There was a slight tingling sensation, and he could hear the forcefeild buzzing as its particles collided with his fingertips. Ian moved forwards and half-fell through the forcefeild. The tingling sensation emanated throughout his entire body, but it only lasted a moment, and within seconds he was outside of the barricade, totally unharmed and standing on the cobblestone of the main square.

Seeing as he was alright, Ian backed away so that the others could pass through. He moved onto the nearby sidewalk, and squinted up at the top of the barricade, where he could see Barney Calhoun in full uniform conversing with some very menacing-looking combine officers in trench coats. Again he prayed that the inspectors would not discover the dark secret of the barricade.

Once the other resistance members had made their way through the forcefeild, and were standing around Ian, they concluded to leave the area as quickly as possible so as to not seem too suspicious to the Combine inspectors. So, the five of them left the area along the sidewalks and began to traverse the main square.

While they were doing this, Ian noticed the United Combine Munitions Factory. This building, which used to house the headquarters of The Resistance, was now surrounded by orange police force fields, and there were cops swarming around the area. Ian could make out a massive, blackened hole in the street next to the factory where The Combine had blown through and entered the Black Mesa East on rappel lines. Also, he noticed that The Combine were building a wooden platform, perhaps one story up, where they had a machine gun mounted.

“Is that where they’ll execute the captured Resistance people?” Tonya asked, pointing out the large wooden platform. Ian nodded and replied, “Yeah, I think when they do the public execution today, they’ll have the Resistance men stand on that platform, and they will mow them down with that machine gun up there. But it’s up to us that they’ll never be able to do that.”

Ian suddenly began having feelings that the start of The Revolution would not be very easy at all. The square was a huge area, and there were cops everywhere. He would have to do incredibly well with his sniping in order to be effective enough to hit all the right targets. Besides, that machine gun was beginning to look very menacing.

The group continued past the United Combine Munitions Factory, and made their way across the square and towards Kleiner’s lab, which was admittedly several blocks away, avoiding Combine officers and scanners alike. Ian began to notice that several of the officers were being replaced by what he assumed to be soldiers, who wore heavier flak jackets, had black gas masks, and sported some very deadly-looking pulse rifles. Also, air traffic of Combine gunships and attack helicopters was much higher than usual; Ian attributed all of this to the new Xenian invasion.

If only the Xenian Resistance Army had waited a few more hours…the Combine wouldn’t have been as prepared, and The Resistance would have a much easier time at starting The Revolution. Now, instead of fighting off cops, they would be forced to deal with highly-trained Combine soldiers. But Ian supposed that it didn’t really matter, since The Combine would likely send in troops not long after the start of The Revolution, especially since The Citadel was their center in means of military production.

After about twenty minutes of traversing the streets of City-17, the five rebels came to the run down warehouse that Dr. Kleiner’s secret lab was housed in. It was virtually the last outpost of The Resistance, and even it was run down and small. Ian was happy to see that the Combine police force had left Dr. Kleiner’s lab. The pursuit that he, Tonya and Gordon had participated in had seemed to work, and The Combine had left Kleiner’s lab.

The rebels left the tree-lined and abandoned streets around Kleiner’s lab, and went into an alleyway on the side of the building. From there, they were able to move around to the back of the building to Kleiner’s back entrance, which lied among the monolithic power generators which supplied his teleporter machine. Ian opened the door, and he and the others entered the lab to discuss the final plans for the Revolution which was to save all of humanity.

___________________________________________________________________________________________

Freeman shifted gears on his buggy yet again as he began to ascend a steep hill, his engine roaring on a newly full tank of gasoline. By now he had been driving for hours, and the terrain was growing more and more barren the farther he got from the city. Most of the buildings in this area had been bombed or burned by Combine soldiers during the invasion as they herded all of humanity in the surrounding countryside towards City-17.

The terrain soon gave way to jagged cliffs and hills, which Gordon was almost certain had not been a part of the European landscape before the invasion. He knew that The Combine was supposedly planning some sort of Terraforming project…could this have been the result of such a project?

Grass in the region was long and drab, and most of the plant life appeared dead and leafless. There were also sparse regions of strange Xenian plant life and also small, frog-like Xenian animals which Gordon knew from his experience at Black Mesa to be Chum Toads. Gordon had not expected alien life to have spread this fast and this far within so little time…but as he thought of it, it seemed to be no surprise. The Combine must have transported these creatures in their lightning-quick invasion, and the creatures, having no natural predators, would have quickly overcome Earth life beyond the walls of the Combine Protection Cities.

Harper had told him over the radio just recently that The Resistance had gotten word that a massive Xenian Resistance Army was marching towards City-17, and that The Combine was coming out to meet them in the field. That explained all of the choppers and the APCs getting distracted…

Gordon had never been too keen on the Xenians…especially the deadly, sentient ones. After all, he had been forced to watch as they utterly massacred the humans at Black Mesa while he was fighting for his life to get out of the facility… he had the right to be a little prejudiced towards those…beasts.

Still, he agreed that it was of utmost importance that The Resistance had the powerful Xenians as their allies in the fight against their alien opressors.

His vehicle came to the top of the hill, and with a sudden jerk of instinct, he slammed on the breaks. The car skidded wildly, and came to a stop dangerously close to a cliff. It had happened so suddenly…the road had merely ended, and now Gordon was looking off of a cliff onto what appeared to be a massive stretch of desert.

But that was odd…a desert in the middle of Europe? He looked to the right and left and saw no place where the road would have continued…it simply ended at this cliff. He then looked out upon the barren, flat landscape ahead of him, and saw that it was not a desert, but a dry lake bed. He could see that the road picked up again on the other side of the lake.

He decided that he would contact Col. Harper and ask for specific directions. There was just something about this lake that instilled fear into his soul…its dryness, its quietness…he didn’t know. Freeman picked up his radio transceiver and turned it on.

“Harper, this is Dr. Freeman, do you read?” He offered into the radio, holding the black receiver up to his face. After a few seconds, the static-filled voice of Colonel Harper came onto the radio and exclaimed, “Dr. Freeman? Where are you? Do you need our assistance?”

Gordon pressed the talk button and replied, “Yeah, I was following your directions and the road just kind of…uh…stopped.” He waited for a reply, and heard as Harper was shuffling around on the other end looking at maps. “Uh, yeah, Dr. Freeman,” he replied, “Judging on the signal from your suit and the maps it looks like you’ve come to the shores of a small lake. I thought for sure you’d be smart enough just to take the road around it and continue on the other side…”

Freeman cut him off, “The road does not continue around the lake, there are just cliff faces to either side of me, and there’s really no lake here, it’s just a dry bed.” He heard as Harper sighed in disbelief into the radio, “Cliffs? There aren’t any cliffs in that region…and I really doubt that the lake could have just dried up out of nowhere…I mean, where would all the water have gone? That lake’s too big to dry up!”

Gordon looked out over the barren lake and responded, “I don’t know, but all that’s here is a dry lake bed surrounded by barren cliffs. I’m going to take that and assume that the lake has dried up. So do you suggest that I try to cross it? I can see the road on the other side…” He could hear as Harper sighed in frustration again and continued, “Alright Gordon, I don’t see anything wrong with that…but just be careful…its Antlion breeding season, and they like sandy areas.”

Gordon nodded and replied, “I understand. I’ll contact you when I get to the other side; over and out.” He turned off the radio and placed the receiver back on its base, silencing Harper’s voice. He would have to make his way over the sandy lake bed without roads, but he was confident that his vehicle could make it; it was a dune buggy, after all…

He shifted the vehicle into reverse, and he drove it to a place off the side of the road which sloped down into the bed of the lake. Then, he put the car back into gear and rolled it down the slope and onto a large rock just inside the boundary of the lake.

When he had rolled onto this rock, he looked out onto the barren landscape of the dry lake, and wondered just how such a large body of water could have been dried out in such a short period of time. Did The Combine really have this much power over the environment? What purpose did they have for doing something as trivial as drying up a lake and putting cliffs in a previously tame landscape?

Gordon decided that these questions were far too pointless to ask…after all, The Combine was comprised of aliens; there was no telling what their strange motives might be. Perhaps it was only a side effect of the invasion, and the stresses that mass teleportation placed on the planet. Whatever it was, it had turned this once cool and calming lake into a wasteland.

As the buggy idled on the rock, Gordon noticed the figures of two men, seated on a rock not far from him on the bed of the lake. One man appeared to be wounded, and his blood was spattered across the grey rock as the other man cradled him and attempted to administer first aid to his wounds.

Gordon’s first instinct was to get out and help the man, so he instantly turned off the engine of his car and stepped out of it. Walking to the edge of the rock, he called out to the two men, “Are you alright? Is there anything I can do to help you?”

As he said this, Gordon began to step forward, and nearly placed his foot on the sand just ahead of the flat rock that his buggy was parked on when the man who was not wounded screamed, “Don’t step on the sand!” Dumbfounded at the man’s sudden outburst, Dr. Freeman withdrew his foot and stood on the rock, looking puzzled.
 
Nearly crying, the man on the rock exclaimed, “The Antlions…they’re out there! If you step on the sand they’ll hear you! Hey have tunnels running all around under the ground here…they can sense anything! That’s what happened to Boris here…he was my friend…but the Antlions…he just was on the sand for a second…my God they shredded him!” The wounded man groaned as the other one tried to tend to his wounds.

So Harper was right…there was no telling just how massive and intricate the Antlion tunnels were in this region. And if the man was right, any single mistake could end in tragedy. How was freeman supposed to get the buggy over the sands if he was getting chased by Antlions?

He called out to the others, “Hey, maybe I could get you into my vehicle and I can drive you somewhere to get medical attention! That one who’s wounded…he doesn’t look so good…” Just as Gordon said this, the still-conscious man turned to face Ian, and in the processes, accidentally caused the body of the other man to roll off of the rock. He hit the sand with a hard thud, knocking up a cloud of dust into the air.

Before anyone realized what was happening, a deep resonant rumbling sound began to reverberate from all sides, growing louder and louder in a frightening crescendo. “Oh no, God no…” the man exclaimed, looking out over the rock towards his fallen comrade.

A fraction of a second later, a huge explosion of sand and dust flew into the air around the rock, and Gordon only had enough time to make out the sharp exoskeletons and the beating wings of the hideous Antlions as they leaped out of the sand towards the rock that the man was lying on.

Gordon heard a blood-curdling scream, and after a second, he could see nothing more but the blood-stained rock, and ten or fifteen yellowish, disgusting, insect-like Antlions, cleaning the blood off of their mandibles…

Freeman had no time to think, and he merely began backing away, and then ran towards his buggy as fast as he could. Picking up his movements, the Antlions shrieked, and flew into the air, preparing to pounce on Gordon as he sprinted towards his vehicle.

Luckily, Freeman made it to the buggy just before the Antlions reached him, and he took the revolver provided by the man in the suit off of its resting place on red leather seat of the buggy, and he turned it skyward towards the closest Antlion, which had it’s wing covering’s extended, and was buzzing towards him at amazing speeds.

He fired, sending a huge reverberating blast towards the Antlion. He blew one of its wings off, and in a crumpled, slimy mess, the creature spiraled towards the ground. After he had done this, Freeman only had seconds to react to three other pouncing Antlions, all of which he downed with accuracy as they buzzed through the air.

The others however, had gotten smart and were flanking him on both sides over the ground. Rather than waste vital ammunition, Freeman decided to get in his buggy and attempt an escape over the dry lake bed. He didn’t have time to seek out another route around the lake, and he would have to risk a chase over the sands. However, he was confident that he could outrun these insects.

Freeman started the buggy as the Antlions charged towards him in frenzy. Just as he started the engine, an Antlion leaped towards him through the air, screeching. Freeman placed his gloved hand onto the back end of the gauss cannon mounted on the front right side of his buggy and pulled the trigger of the weapon. He had no time to charge it up, so he merely tapped the trigger. However, this was still enough force to send a blinding yellow beam towards the flying Antlion, and it promptly exploded in a shower of sparks and slime.

Freeman revved the engine, and the buggy’s tires screeched as he peeled off of the rock and kicked dust up as he sped out onto the dry lake bed, the remaining Antlions in hot pursuit. On the other hand, his vehicle’s disturbing of the sand caused reverberations throughout the lake, and Freeman could hear and see as several Antlions leaped out of the sand around his vehicle. He pulled hard on the steering wheel, avoiding the insects as they burst out of the ground in clouds of dust and sand.

As he tried to dodge the pillars of sand, one of the creatures burst forth just ahead of his buggy, and he felt a gigantic thud as his vehicle slammed into the Antlion, and slime spattered on his face as it was thrown over the top of the vehicle and landed behind him.

Freeman was utterly surprised at the sheer speed of the creatures as they sped along right next to him in his quick-moving vehicle. He blasted one that was getting dangerously close to his front bumper with the gauss cannon, and kicked his buggy into high gear, causing dust to fly all around him. All the while, he kept his eyes on the goal…He had to get to the other side of the lake before the creatures utterly destroyed him.

Just then, one of the Antlions finally caught up with him, and leaped onto the driver-side railing of the buggy, scraping at the bars and shrieking as it snapped his mandibles at him. Freeman reacted quickly, and made a sudden jerk of the steering wheel to the right, causing the Antlion to tear away from the buggy under sudden g-forces. He looked back as the creature fell into the dust cloud behind him among the other fifty or so Antlions which were all in hot pursuit of his all terrain vehicle.

This was going to be a long shot, he realized. How could there possibly be this many Antlions living underneath the sands of this forgotten lake? Any wrong move he made, any turn of the wheel or slip of the foot, could end in a crash. In any case, he would be forced to fight all of these creatures on foot, something he wasn’t very sure that he could accomplish.

Antlions were now coming in from all sides, and Freeman could see them in the distance, flying out of their holes and filling the air to attack him, the invader. It was a fantastic sight to see, like a swarm of termites in mating season, only these bugs were each as large as a Great Dane, and had teeth sharp enough to chew through a man. He noticed that off in the distance he could see an enormous earthen structure that could only be described as a gigantic termite mound from which several Antlions were now buzzing out… he must have made a very bad turn to be this close to their nest…maybe it wasn’t such a good idea to try and cross the dry lakebed.

Then, oh, but then…out there on the horizon…. could that be what he thought it was? Freeman squinted over the barren, sandy terrain to see what was unmistakably a sign of civilization on the dry lake: two thirty-foot high towers made of black metal and glowing with blue light. Okay, so they weren’t exactly the statue of liberty, and Freeman couldn’t make out what they did, but he concluded that he would at least drive towards them to see if he could gain any assistance from whoever put them there.

As his speeding vehicle drew nearer and nearer to the structures, he began to see more and more that whoever put them there could not have possibly been human. Their architecture, and the technology used to construct them could be none other than the grim, black construction of The Combine, with blue accented lights and strange alien symbols adorning their black metal hulls. Still, Freeman drove towards them with intensity, exploding a few more Antlions with his rail gun. There was just something about those towers that signified safety…something about them that made him want to get there.

As he drew nearer to the towers, the Antlions around him became less and less dense for a reason which Gordon could not discern. Also a strange, low thumping sound began to reverberate throughout his field of hearing, drowning out even the roaring of his engine. As he came closer to the towers, the thumping grew louder and louder, until the very frame of his buggy began to shake violently.

Now, the amount of Antlions fell by extremes, and there were perhaps only a dozen left in pursuit. Could it be the towers scaring off these creatures? Whatever it was, Freeman was grateful that so many of the Antlions had left him, and he drew even nearer to the towers.

Finally, he had reached his destination, and the thumping was so loud and intense that Gordon could think of nothing else but its incessant pounding. He noticed that it was indeed being caused by one of the towers, which had what looked to be a huge, pile driver-like hammer that pounded against the ground on a track every second or so, kicking up dust and sand and cracking the very earth that it was stationed on.

Most importantly, Gordon noticed that the Antlions around him had all dropped off and fallen away, frightened by the pounding of the Combine device. Seeing as he was now in a sudden sanctuary caused by this thumper device, Freeman turned off the buggy, and parked next to it. He then got out of the car, and looked out across the lake bed.

He could see with great amusement that the dozen or so Antlions that had been following him were now spread out in a circular perimeter equidistant from the tower he was standing near. The creatures would start to charge him when the thumper lulled, and when it pounded into the ground, they would back up in a surprised and comical fashion, and then the cycle would start over again. However, the comedy was soon over as Gordon realized that he was now in a tiny sanctuary surrounded on all sides by bloodthirsty Antlions.

He had to think of something quick. It was at this time that he realized the obvious… the Antlions would be easy targets as they sat there…it would be like shooting fish in a barrel! So, freeman took his submachine gun out of the buggy, and took careful aim at one of the nearer Antlions and fired.

His quick burst of bullets struck the creature, and it crumpled onto the ground with a crunch as the others stupidly continued their strange “thumper dance.” Gordon quickly downed two others before he heard a sound which he had learned to dread…

“Shots fired, shots fired, we have an insurgent near Thumper 2!” A gas-mask distorted voice yelled over the thumping. Adrenaline shot through Freeman’s veins as he turned about, looking for the voice. There, near a wooden shed close by the other thumper, perhaps twenty feet away, stood the dark figure of a Combine soldier in a black gas mask, carrying a submachine gun identical to the one that Gordon himself sported.

Freeman didn’t think, he merely reacted as he lifted the submachine gun to his face and fired at the Combine soldier as his enemy simultaneously sighted his weapon. As Freeman fired his first round of shots, he ducked behind the Combine thumper, and pressed his back against its hard metal as the volley of fire from the Combine troop pinged off of it.

“He’s taking cover, flank him, flank him,” the tactical chatter of the Combine troops droned. Freeman could not allow them to flank him, so he turned out from the Thumper and began peppering volleys at the three troops, who were running around either side of the other thumper, attempting to flank him. The highly trained troops immediately reacted to this and split up, taking cover behind the other thumper and a nearby rock.

Gordon took cover behind the thumper again. He needed an advantage…something to put him on top. Just then, he heard another command, “flush him out!” one of the officers screamed. Then, just as Freeman had expected, he heard a slight beeping noise as a red glowing grenade landed in the sand right next to him.

In the six seconds that were allotted, freeman did not try to run away, as the troops had expected, but instead he tossed the grenade back towards the other thumper. Seeing as their weapon was backfiring on them, the Combine troops rushed back towards the wooden shed, and the grenade exploded in the air just next to the thumper, sending shrapnel flying everywhere and causing a pop and a large cloud of smoke.

Then, an unexpected but very lucky event happened as the grenade destroyed a part of the thumper’s hammer, making it worthless and causing it to wind down and stop completely. Freeman didn’t understand the full implication of this until the Antlions surrounding the area suddenly began to rush towards the other thumper, where the Combine troops were now held up inside the wooden shed.

The Combine soldiers noticed this sudden onrush of creatures too, and began to fire wildly out of the windows of the shed at the quickly swarming Antlions… Freeman could hear their screams as the creatures forced themselves through the windows and doors and flooded the building.

Gordon decided to use this opportune moment of distraction to escape both The Combine and the Antlions while they had their short-lived battle, so Freeman ran to his buggy, sat down, started the engine, and roared away from the thumpers over the sands once more…
__________________________________________________________________________________________
 
This land was so strange to them…the Xenian Resistance Army. This planet…there was just something so bizarre about the way it was constructed that it almost made Controller Nine nauseous. This planet was far different from Xen, where everything could be easily divided into particular land masses floating in the zero gravity of space, and where every creature was large enough to be distinguishable.

But here, this place was all as one…all the land was fused together and it stretched out as far as the eye could see…it was like a sea of earth on which billions of organisms called “grass” grew…something that was unheard of on the broken world of Xen. The gravity here was strong…five times that of what Controller Nine was used to, and he was forced to use all of his mind force to stay floating above the ground.

The troops of the XRA, the mighty army of the last surviving Xenians, marched beneath him in a mass of flesh and carapace, the chosen armor of the mighty army. Still yet above him screamed the space fighters, which were shaped like manta rays, and cruised smoothly on anti-gravity drives…

This army was raised to fight an enemy which had once been their greatest protector, in an alliance with a species that had destroyed their home planet. It seemed quite ironic to Controller Nine as he floated above the forces with sheer mind power. However, The One Free Man had destroyed the Nihilith in battle, and the ancient texts insisted that they follow Freeman as their new master. If for nothing else, they would fight for the Free Man, even if he wasn’t a Xenian.

He stared out over the hilly terrain with his three compound eyes…he could see the wall of the city from here, black and looming like an ominous warning of the great battle that was to come. He sensed in his psyche that The Combine knew of the Xenian’s arrival, and that they were preparing for battle. It was of no consequence then, that he could see their flying contraptions coming to meet them as black specs in the sky…

Controller Nine was not worried however, for their force was large and overwhelming. A good Xenian warrior could destroy any Combine troop in any battle, and if not for that skill, their overwhelming numbers would crush The Combine with time.

Their plan was simple; they would attack the Combine forces head on, roll through them, and then destroy the outer wall of the city with the Gargantuans… then with air support they would decimate the city, humans and Combine alike. At least, that was what Controller Nine planned to do once they had overwhelmed The Combine. He never liked humans anyway…

Just then, he began to hear popping noises from the massive black tower on the horizon which The Combine called “The Citadel,” and he saw slight flashes in the distance. Next, a trail of smoke flew through the sky towards them, making a deafening sound. Controller Nine instantly recognized the trail of smoke as a missile, and followed it with his mind as it streaked towards the ground.

Suddenly, without warning, the missile exploded in mid air, causing a cloud of smoke to erupt over them at a distance of two hundred feet. Next, Controller Nine watched in fear as no less than ten thousand smaller trails of smoke spawned from the explosion of the original one, and a rain of fire came down over the entire XRA force.

Flames engulfed Controller Nine as one of the tiny explosives struck him. He only had enough time to see the ground flying up towards him as the other explosives randomly struck the ground around the XRA forces…

The war had begun.

-Chapter 46, The Final Preparations-

I know, I know, this chapter has been short. I was quite dissapointed in it for three weeks of onagain offagain work. But have no fear, because the next chapters are REALLY going to be picking up.
 
great job :)

I liked how Gordon used the combine to his own advantage, even by accident.
 
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