registry: brush him
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- #1
INTRODUCTION
"Ready to hammer in three..."
The Charger's baton pressed firmly against the breaker where the tram would get moving, the train, jury rigged by the Grunt behind him would soon start, and would soon carry them deeper into their perogative, into their goal.
"...two..."
The Grunt released the control box, and gave a thumbs up to his compatriots. The Ordinal, eyes locked briefly on the soldier, barely optimized in comparison, turned to the armored Charger, waiting patiently. He braced for movement.
"One."
And with a shock, both literal and metaphorical, the tram was off.
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Four transhuman soldiers rode a tram into the depths of the ruined, nuked Black Mesa Research Facility - what remained of it, at least. They had serial numbers, but those were far too long to say conveniently - so they were referred to on an individual squad basis. Tags given to them by rank.
Echo One was a small GRUNT dressed in white hazmat gear, the underbasis of the armor worn by most soldiers. It was like his skin, his flesh - beneath it was just a thin layer of artificial fabric that loosely detailed his dermis.
Wallhammer was a great CHARGER, covered in so much armor as to make him a bulwark of kevlar. Embedded within his wrist was technology salvaged from reports of technology from Aperture Science - a hard light generator that served as a shield.
The Ordinal was a CAPTAIN, equipped with a radio setup locked within a backpack.
The Antibody Protection Force, a sturdy SUPPRESSOR with a pulse machine gun, elite infantry specializing in suppression and conquest.
They had a mission, each of them, as a squad. Enter the ruins of Black Mesa, what was left, what wasn't blown into atomic ash. In the office of the (presumably) late Dr. Rosenburg, they'd find a log that detailed some lesser known secrets of Xen transportation - Isle Coordinates.
Of course, none of this mattered to them - they had been given orders, and they would obey them.
The tram finally stopped when the Charger flicked off the stun baton, and violently kicked the door open, letting the squad out onto a walkway. The Ordinal stepped out first, pointing ahead. "Place breaches," he commanded, his eyes fixed on the gate which barred them from the innards of the facility.
"Copy!" The clearly interpretable voice of the Echo One could be heard as the white-suited soldier stepped to the gate, reaching into a satchel for a charge which he began planting against the vulnerable gate. There was a stomping, ferocious, as the APF soon stepped up, calling out "Adding additional hammer," and setting his minigun over his shoulder so as to assist the grunt in placing the breaches.
Not that they were his, of course- these, the Ordinal had commanded him to hold onto when they were scavenged from a derelict chest many sectors before. Echo One helped him set them. Then, together, they stepped back.
"Three, two, one, PRY."
With a click of a button and in a flicker of a second, the breaches locked within the gates pried through the mechanism, and severed the bindings keeping it shut. A shock was sent to a derelict computer in an adjacent room, soon opening it up, revealing its contents to the world. Or, rather, to the four transhumans. But that was enough.
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The squad stepped through the derelict halls of the abandoned, half-blasted-to-smithereens facility, where the metal walks were naught but an echo of the lab's former glory. The all had lights - Echo One's light was cleverly pinned to his pulse submachine gun, Wallhammer had it pinned to his breast, the Ordinal held it in his hand, and the APF hadn't even needed one - night vision within his helmet provided him all of the light he needed.
"Viscon clear. Wallhammer, scout. Echo One, intercept."
"Intercepting."
"Attaching interception."
Both soldiers treaded onward, Echo One close behind, watching his back. They turned a corner, and went down a long corridor, with several pipes and vents in the walls. Echo One observed them. With what little emotional capacity remained in his heart, he felt admiration - such a brilliant architecture! Whoever built this place must've been a genius. Or a 10-103m, he thought with a slight chuckle.
"What?"
"Just thinking about how crazy the designer of this place must've been."
"Clear dissonance, reset focus."
He'd roll his eyes if he could, but nevertheless replied "Affirmative." Straightening his gaze, he found himself focusing once again on the matter at hand.
As they walked for a few more minutes, scouting the area, they came upon another corridor - but this one had populace. In this hall, lodged in the corners, reaching out from the vents, corpses with headcrabs dormantly laid atop them, wrapped in scientist outfits, probably sterile, probably dead. Echo One felt a slight shiver as he observed the bodies. What a barbaric sight.
"Confirm sterilization."
"Uh, copy, yeah. I'll do it. I'll do that. That's a thing I'm gonna do. You don't have to stop me."
"Did not plan to."
"Yeah, that's a good thing, because I most definitely wanted to do this," Echo One continued as he knelt down, gun trained on the corpse he was examining. He reached into his satchel for an energy cell, loading it up into the SMG.
But whilst he readied the weapon, he was wrenched to his senses by an abysmal moan, coming from directly in front of him. The zombie suddenly lurched up, darting up and into Echo One's lap. There was screaming, at first from Echo One, then mockingly from the necrotic. It crawled on top of him, its open chest gnashing tooth-like rib stumps, and as he found himself unable to shoot the thing safely, he started yelling out. "Immediate containment, Echo One, immediate necrotic containment, GAH GHh HELP!"
Wallhammer's shotgun came over his shoulder, and he reached around his waist for his baton. Shotgun serves risk of Echo One injury. Flicking it on, he spoke, his vocode deep ad garbled.
"Ready to hammer."
With that, he charged forth, grunting as he raised the powered stun baton over his head, and then brought it down hard against the scalp of the necrotic, paralyzing it, stunning it. He then kicked it off of Echo One, and the latter, shortly after, stood up, SMG in hand. He lit the zombie up, blasting the virome off of its head and killing it in seconds.
"Ughhh... virome necrotic amputated."
"Incoming," The Charger pointed out more emerging necrotics as they crawled from the walls, screaming filling the air as they wrought themselves from the depths of the facility. The commotion had stirred them from their sleep, and Wallhammer counted seven of them, protruding from the walls. He grunted, glancing at the Echo One to his right.
"Amputate."
The blast of a pulse shotgun echoed hundreds of feet around the facility, surely alerting the Ordinal and APF that trailed distantly behind. And one necrotic collapsed to the ground, the headcrab atop its head, blasted to smithereens. The pulse SMG, what was left of the cell within, expended itself on two approaching necrotics, and shortly after, the Echo One stepped back.
The hard light shield algorithm locked in Wallhammer's wrist was released and the remaining four zombies found themselves throwing onto it, shoving themselves against it. "Wall up. Hammer now."
"Copy that, sending spikes!" Once Echo One had a cell loaded into his SMG, he expended them, at last, on the small swarm barreling onto Wallhammer's glowing shield. They screamed in agony, somewhat unnerving Wallhammer and greatly unsettling Echo One, but that didn't stop him from achieving his goals.
"Dropping shield. Blackout, retain viscon," Wallhammer called out. Echo One shielded his eyes as the barrier went down, and a blast of light stunned and confused the approaching, injured necrotics. The Grunt uncovered his eyes and stepped forward. His backhand ready, he shoved into one of the zombies with his arm, and then jerked upward, ripping the headcrab from its host and collapsing it, cruelly ending its life.
There was a sound - more steps, and a familiar voice, calling out. "Clear for suppression!" commanded the Ordinal. Echo One was the first to realize his presence, Wallhammer the second - and mutually, they agreed to step out of the way. And then, there was nothing between the Necrotics, and the Antibody Protection Force.
The pulse minigun had a flaw. This flaw caused it to create a very audible sound as it revved up, moments before it began firing. In this time, a quick or clever adversary could easily evade, protecting themselves from its volley of pulse rounds.
The three wounded, but surviving necrotics were not quick, and they were not clever. And so by the time the gun started firing, they hadn't even made a foot. Two of them were blown to pieces immediately, the APF's gun making messes of them. But the last one was torn off rather late, for the headcrab soon leapt off.
It crawled, perhaps terrified, towards supposed freedom between the Ordinal and the APF. But the hard boot of the commanding officer soon corrected the parasite's magical thoughts of freedom - never again would it think magically, for its brain would be smashed by the officer's boot.
"Necrotics terminated?" inquired the Ordinal.
"Affirmative, cleanout successful," answered Wallhammer.
"Move in?" questioned Echo One.
"Copy."
And so the squad's steps once more echoed, eight feet marching in unison to the beat of their duties. Though the necrotics failed to stop the tyrant soldiers from obtaining the data pod, it remained to be questioned what could,
Deep In The Hall of the Mesa King.
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