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Sidelines
Month Seven by BlindAcquiescence
The building shook again, plaster and mortar falling from the ceiling like a freak snowstorm. Arne Magnusson hit the deck, and scrambled for the nearest hard surface to hide under. Civilians and soldiers alike screamed and followed his example.
Jesus, the former Black Mesa Employee thought, How the hell did it all come to this?
The sound of pounding artillery - human or theirs, he wasn't sure - echoed from the front of what used to be the local grocery store of whatever god-forsaken city they'd thought would be safe. Looking up from the green-spackled tile floor, Arne saw three humvees rocket past the front of the bombed out store, soldiers yelling at one another over radios. The armed forces were in disarray, or had been, for the last six months, since the Pentagon had been destroyed by one of the many Portal Storms that were still scouring the surface of their world.
This was all our fault! Magnusson mentally screamed at himself. We played god, and we've reaped the consequences! He couldn't hide behind government grants or administrative directives now, as aliens from the void poured into their world, seeking to take it for themselves. They had been so sure, so intent on the pursuit of their new science. Teleportation had been within their grasp; they had nearly conquered a world themselves, the borderworld known as Xen. But now they were getting a taste of their own medicine.
And it was a healthy dose indeed.
Blue plasma splashed into the street outside, and a woman next to him screamed as the bright light nearly blinded them all. Magnusson, in an uncommonly human gesture, pulled her against himself, shielding her from the same light that threatened to burn his own retinas.
Valuable retinas, indeed.
But still she kept screaming.
"Blast it, woman! Calm yourself!" He yelled as the flash diminished and the fighting returned to background noise outside.
"What are we gonna do!" A man from the back called out.
"What the hell are those things?" Someone close by asked. What a redundant question, Magnusson thought sarcastically, They're aliens from another world! The question is, what are we to do?
In the months since the beginning of the Portal Storms, humanity had been fighting an uphill battle. As governments around the world toppled and fell around the stress an unprecedented influx of refugees, civilization teetered on the brink of collapse. Only after a brief emergency session of what remained of the UN, which by then was made up of only the Security Council: Russia, France, China, the United Kingdom, and the United States, was it finally agreed that what remained of the armed forces should be marshalled inside the largest urban centres to protect what people they could muster inside. As the months dragged on, the population resigned itself to life within the crowded cities, constantly patrolled by men with machine guns. Magnusson himself, who had lived for two hellish days inside the collapsing shell of Black Mesa before accidentally teleporting his way out, would eventually make his home in Chicago, working with other physicists at the University of Chicago to find a way to stop the Portal Storms.
And that's how humanity lived. Though most might say that's how humanity survived.
But one hour ago, all that changed.
Magnusson, who was living in the Chicago Camp, was busy arguing with a self-important prick that was the head of the military's interim weapon R&D program over the practicality and feasibility of Directed Energy Weapons when they heard the rumblings in the distance. Scientists and civilians ran for cover, believing it to be another storm. The sirens, sounding hauntingly like air-raid alarms, never went off, though. In the first months right after the incident, alarms had been installed in all the major urban areas, which would detect the bursts of alpha radiation given off just prior to a storm materializing. At first Magnusson thought they might have been malfunctioning, but he soon realized that the pounding in the distance wasn't coming from any storm, but from the mouths of alien artillery canons.
The first plasma shell hit their camp near a tent full of civilians, sending bodies flying. The army swept through their camp seconds later, rounding up essential personnel as they'd termed it. Arne was thrown into a humvee along with several other scientists and sped off.
Magnusson remembered furiously screaming at the soldiers, ordering them to tell him where they were taking him. The only response he received was, "Somewhere safe, sir."
"Who the hell is attacking?" Someone next to him screamed. The soldier driving pointed out the window to their left.
"Them!" He yelled over the roar of machine gun fire. Magnusson couldn't keep his jaw from hanging open as he stared at the monstrosity lumbering down the adjacent street. The three-legged behemoth looked like a tripod from out some Wellsian War of the Worlds account. It blared a belligerent horn and a cannon that hung underneath like some Freudian phallic symbol seemed to twist space around it, concentrating matter around it into a coherent stream of blue energy, and lobbing it at a building, bringing it crashing to its foundations. The creature moved off, disinterested, as small arms fire pinged off it without any observable effect.
It wasn't anything like they'd uncovered in the borderworld, Arne thought, these creatures seemed like biomechanical constructs, not entirely organic as the Xenians were. He watched the creature lumber off until the battered buildings obscured his view of it.
Before he could turn to ask, once again, just where the hell they were headed, one of the soldiers cried out in alarm. Arne turned just in time to see a large triped, similar in construction, but not in size, to the larger ones, run towards the side of their humvee. Magnusson brought his hands up in a defensive posture, awaiting the imminent impact. The vehicle shuddered and the other occupants screamed as they were nearly overturned by the force of the creature essentially body checking the humvee. Arne was thrown against his door, his head leaving a spider's web of cracks in the glass.
The sounds and sights of the world around him were suddenly blurred as he scrounged for a way to open the door and escape. The muffled sound of gunfire sounded more like corn popping as the beleaguered scientist pushed the door open and fell out onto the cracked and scorched pavement. He felt the vehicle next to him lunge sideways, as if the creature had taken another shot at it. Then he felt hands on him, and someone yelling at him to get on his feet. Desert camouflage filled his vision as the soldier pulled him from the fire fight.
Arne Magnusson blacked out for several minutes, finally waking up to the sound of sobbing civilians huddling together in the abandoned store.
After the last commotion, the street outside was relatively quiet. The sound of fighting echoed in the distance, but there seemed to be little danger just outside the storefront. Standing up and brushing himself off, Magnusson eyed a black soldier, TIBBLES embroidered on his cover-alls, who stood next to the open door, in one hand he clutched his 9mm service pistol, in the other he clasped his radio. Arne could make out a small, heated conversation between the soldier and his superiors.
Gingerly, Magnusson made his way forward, through the empty shelves and over fallen mortar, until he was standing near the soldier, looking out into the street.
"I've got over a dozen people in here! I need an evac!" The soldier eyed Magnusson wearily, but quickly recognized him, clicking his radio back on. "I've got a Doc Magnusson in my charge, R&D's gonna need him!" Magnusson frowned at the thought of being the only reason the military might think of coming back this way.
The radio crackled to life, the sound of mortar shells and gunfire in the background.
"That's a negative Eagle Six! We're backed in here; command is ordering us to pull out of the city centre! Hammer down, Hammer down!" The soldier's face contorted into an expression of pure anxiety and defeat.
"Bullshit, you can't leave us!" But he was cut off.
"Tango squad just reported in, they're near your position! Hook up with them and you might have a chance!" There was a large explosion on the other end of the radio. "Shi-!" And then the line went dead. The soldier looked down at his feet, sighing briefly before looking back up at Magnusson.
"We're overrun, these things came outta nowhere, doc."
"What did he mean by Hammer down?" Magnusson pressed. The soldier's placid expression morphed to a dismal frown.
"The 'Hammer down' protocol means they're going to sacrifice Chicago if it means getting rid of these things."
Arne frowned, still confused. "Sacrifice…?"
"What's left of the air force is going to bomb us back into the stone-age if we don't get out of here quick." Tibbles risked a look outside. "They said that Tango squad's around here somewhere…" But the sound of gunfire cut him off as two soldiers basically rolled out into the street, their rifles firing on full automatic. Instinctively Tibbles was on his feet, running down the street, his pistol drawn. "Down here!" He yelled over their roaring fire fight. "Take cover!" Several more soldiers burst out into the daylight from the alley, running like men possessed.
It didn't take long to find out was they were running from. One of the smaller tripods lopped after them. 5.56mm bullets pinged off of its teal skin as it pursued its prey. Tibbles stopped short and let off several shots before realizing the futility of his actions. The group of soldiers was already running for the store, the creature hot on their trail.
One soldier slipped on a scattering of debris. The man face-planted in the pavement, while one of his comrades stopped to pick him up. The creature, moving so much like an animal Magnusson hastened to call it a hunter of sorts, slapped the would-be rescuer away as easily as if he were a rag-doll. The man went flying through a window. He didn't get back up.
Magnusson watched in morbid curiosity as the hunter bent down and turned the wounded soldier over, like a butcher inspecting meat. The man cried out for help, but after the last display of bravery, his comrades were content to make for the relative safety of the store. Twin scythes slowly protruded from underneath the creature's "head", and were quickly plunged into the man's chest. The man cried out, but his mouth quickly filled with his own blood, welling up from his punctured lungs, and he finally passed on.
The creature tapped him with a large foot and, finding that he no longer moved, turned his attention on the rest of his fleeing prey. The soldiers finally reached the store and turned to take defensive positions. Tibbles pushed Magnusson aside, yelling at him to find cover. The men began firing, though their weapons, as before, had little effect. Magnusson saw it steady itself, its "face" contorting into something that might have resembled a snarl. A high-pitched whine sounded, and suddenly the air was filled with tiny blue flechettes, speeding towards the soldiers as fast as their machine guns had been spitting.
One man caught several in the chest. He stumbled backwards, coughing up blood. Two of his fellow soldiers bent down to pick him up, intent on bringing him inside while the rest covered them.
"Jesus!" Tibbles cried. "What's next?" His voice was filled with despair. Famous last words, Magnusson pondered, as the blue flechettes, the ends of which were tipped with a blue pouch, began to glow bright and resonate. Suddenly they burst, the blue viscous fluid splattering against the two men. Screams filled the store as the soldiers cradled their faces, which burned. Arne cowered behind a table as the men cried out for help, the acid-like substance eating away at their skin.
Arne was on the verge of tears as the group of people around him fell into total panic. They crawled over one another to reach the back of the store, which had been boarded off to prevent an attack. Everyone was screaming, and Arne couldn't tune it out. He was used to being in control, being the man in charge, but who was going to take charge of this rabble of people acting like little more than animals?
"Get down." Those simple words filled Magnusson with dread and elation at the same time. He looked up to see the figure of another soldier, his face obscured by a protective gas mask. Only his eyes, confident and assured, were visible through the green-tinted lenses. Magnusson hadn't seen this man with the group of soldiers before, and he wondered where this figure had come from.
The soldier held his M4A1 steady, his hands fingering the attached M203 grenade launcher.
"Everybody get down!" His muffled cry once more sounded through the mask. That's when Magnusson recognized that confidence.
The name seeped its way into his mind.
Corporal Shephard.
That soldier, the one who had rescued him from those creatures in the Hydro-Fauna labs back at Black Mesa. That soldier who, despite orders, had chosen to instead help him survive rather than kill him. The young soldier had in his possession the prototype Displacer, a portable teleportation device that could, with varying degrees of accuracy, slingshot an individual around the borderworld without all the equipment used by the Lambda Complex. Magnusson, in a misguided attempt to help them both escape, accidentally sent himself through the void.
Magnusson remembered sitting alone in the desert, his white clean-room suit stained with alien blood and the red dust of the New Mexican desert, wondering if Shephard had made it out alive.
Now, looking up at the towering figure next to him, Magnusson knew this wasn't Shephard, but he knew this man had the same will, the same drive, to protect those around him. Arne saw him train the business end of his rifle on the hunter, as it charged the storefront. Tibbles turned, looking as perplexed as Magnusson had at the sight of such a confident figure, as those around him fell back on their baser instinct of survival. Magnusson saw Tibbles open his mouth to speak before the soldier in the mask cut him off.
"Semper Fi, asshole," he muttered, and his finger pulled the trigger on his grenade launcher. The ordinance made a muffled thwump as it exited the barrel. Magnusson ducked, but in his mind's eye he could see the shell hit the ground in front of the hunter. He felt the vibrations, and saw more of the mortar fall as the explosion rocked the store. A queer cry rang out, and Magnusson felt another, shorter vibration, as he assumed the creature finally fell to the ground.
Elated, Magnusson raised his head over his cover, finding a thick fog of dust obscuring most of the outside. Tibbles and two other soldiers poked their heads up, and silently signalled to each other that the threat had been eliminated. Magnusson turned to thank their saviour when he heard the other men shouting at each other, the sound of giant footsteps and another belligerent horn trumpeting filling the air. Before Magnusson could react, he saw the air outside distort, and a bright blue beam struck the building. The ceiling, which had so long hung low and threatening to collapse, gave way, and the people inside, despite the masked man's best efforts, were covered in an avalanche of debris.
Magnusson coughed, long and hard. His lungs burned, and his head felt several sizes too small. Opening his eyes, he saw a blighted sky; covered in gray clouds, green lightning jumping back and forth.
"They said he's the one who fought them, all the way back to their world," a voice came from somewhere off in the distance.
"I heard he took on aliens, the military…everything. A freaking four-eyed nerd turned Rambo, sounds like a movie," another voice responded, a tinge of doubt lingering in his voice. His companion must have registered it.
"Just ask them! The what-ever-they're-called…"
"Vortigaunts," his friend corrected him. Magnusson rubbed his head, feeling dried blood flake off, and tried to push himself up.
"Vortigaunts, yeah. They said he's the one who freed them! They were slaves, under mind control or somethin'…whoa, looks like he finally came to." Magnusson felt an intense sense of vertigo as he tried to stand. Arms immediately helped to steady him, setting him down on a chair.
"You okay, buddy?" A young man, no more than twenty, his face pock-marked with scratches and other minor wounds, grinned broadly. "We weren't sure if you were gonna wake up from that one."
Arne, still too disoriented to speak, simply nodded feebly. How had he survived the building's collapse?
The young man looked at him nervously. "You okay?"
Coughing slightly, Arne waved a dismissive hand. "I…I'm fine. Just need to get my bearings…" Looking around, he found himself in the centre of a small camp which had been set up in a battered parking lot next to a bombed out department store. Off in the distance he could see the ruins of Chicago…
And a giant, angry red eye of a portal staring down at its centre. Magnusson gasped, his companion looking off in the same direction.
"It's been like that for the last two or three hours," the man said. "We haven't heard any more fighting; we saw the last of the military get the hell outta dodge about an hour ago."
How could an extra-dimensional portal possibly sustain itself without blasting the area with a shower of alpha radiation, killing anything unlucky enough to be organic?
The man next to him quickly became disinterested and moved off to continue his conversation. "Just go ask one of the Vortigaunts, they're sayin' Freeman'll be back, and it's all gonna be over."
"Yeah, yeah." His friend laughed him off. "Sure, now come on, help me move these supplies…" The two men walked off, leaving Arne Magnusson staring intently up at that glowing red eye.
"You once resided in Black Mesa, did you not?" That queer, liquid voice, characteristic of humanity's newfound alien allies, came from behind him. Magnusson turned to face the Vortigaunt. The slumping figure gestured to a flask of water, which Magnusson sucked down with ardour. Pouring what little was left on his face, wiping dried blood and debris away, the alien looked on intently. In the seven months since their freedom from the mind shackles of their leader, the Nihilanth, the aliens, with their communal hive-mind, had developed a large, albeit slightly archaic, English repertoire.
"Why… yes, I was indeed once in the employ of that confounded installation," he muttered angrily, still staring at the portal hanging over the battered cityscape.
"We remember the Magnusson, a man of great renown within his field of expertise… Our own kind has worked for centuries to uncover the secrets that our ever expanding universe hides within its folds."
Arne looked back and he began to feel a kinship with the alien. A race of scientists, seekers of knowledge, a people he could relate to.
"What is your name?" Magnusson asked meekly.
The Vortigaunt lowered its head. "This one has yet to choose a human name for itself, as our true names are neither relevant nor possible for humanity to… vocalize."
Magnusson looked at the slightly pathetic creature, its back bent in a perpetual look of subservience. It reminded him of Uriah Heep, the humble antagonist from Charles Dickens novel David Copperfield, though he kept the observation to himself.
Grinning, Magnusson stood up and held his hand out. "Well, Friend, what would you say about the current state of things?" The alien stared at his hand, and Magnusson wagered that the creature had yet to experience that simple human introduction before. Tentatively, the alien grasped his hand clumsily in his own talon, leaving Arne to do the shaking. "That portal…"
"Is the gateway through which it will arrive." The Vortigaunt finished for him.
"What will arrive?"
The alien stared up at the massive portal, and Magnusson could see its outline reflected in the Vortigaunt's own large red eye. The image was unnerving.
It responded in its own language. "Shu'ulathoi…but we have no word for it in your vernacular. Only that it will spell misery of untold degrees for your peoples…"
"So, I see you're up," a voice came from behind the Vortigaunt. Magnusson found the soldier called Tibbles hobbling up to them with an improvised crutch, his leg wrapped in a blood soaked bandage. Tibbles grinned at him, and patted Magnusson on the shoulder. "The Vort's said you'd make it, but you looked pretty gone, man."
"What… what happened?" Magnusson said, momentarily forgetting his Vortigaunt ally's mysterious utterances.
Tibbles shrugged his shoulders. "The Vort's were able to mass together and take down that… that thing. Dragged whoever was even half-alive out of the rubble, and brought 'em back here."
"And what of Hammer down…" Arne began.
Tibbles bit his lip. "I don't know man. On one hand, I'm glad it didn't happen, on the other, it makes me wonder what happened to our air support…"
Magnusson turned back to the city. "It's so quiet…"
Tibbles nodded nervously, the Vortigaunt merely shifted his weight from one strangely padded foot to the other.
"What happened to that soldier…back at the store…"
Tibbles lifted his shoulders in an expression of bewilderment. "He wasn't part of my platoon, and Tango Company hadn't seen him before."
"He said something…" Arne searched his memory for a moment. "Semper Fi." Tibbles nodded.
"He was a Marine, alright."
"Like the ones at Black Mesa?"
Tibbles looked at him nervously, he instantly knew what Magnusson was talking about. The Silencings. "Can't say for sure. After the Portal storms started up a good portion of them just disappeared. I heard a group of rogue Force Recon soldiers are holed up somewhere in Central America."
"You mean they've left us to… to this?" Arne cried angrily, pointing at the ruined landscape around them. The silencings were one thing, but abandoning humanity in its single most important hour of need was inconceivable.
"Hey doc, I'm not the guy you should be…"
"Look!" The Vortigaunt cried. The two humans looked back towards Chicago and saw the air directly below the large portal shimmer green, just the way it did before the violent storms that terrorized their planet's landscape had done.
The ground shook violently; Tibbles leaned against Magnusson for support. There was a bright flash, like that of a nuclear detonation, and Magnusson momentarily feared being blinded. But slowly the light faded, and Magnusson blinked, struggling to see what had happened.
Before his vision truly returned, he heard their alien companion whisper, "This is how it has begun, across a thousand scattered worlds… always the same."
It was too big to believe, its size boggled the mind. The blue obelisk dominated the skyline, rising high above what was left of the city, reaching into the gray clouds above like some new-age tower of Babel. Magnusson sucked in a chilling breath, and he could hear Tibbles utter several curses next to him.
But it was the Vortigaunt, in his queer, liquid tongue, which narrated the scene.
"It will be this way in every settlement across this planet. They will come, they will conquer, and they will control."
Magnusson turned to it, the crease in his brow betraying his age. "But confound it, Uriah!" He heard himself use the antiquated name. "Who are they?"
Again the Vortigaunt muttered a name in its alien tongue. "The Universal Union."
(A/N: The meeting with Shephard Magnusson is talking about was in my fic 'The Black Mesa Incident'. I wrote Magnusson as the scientist Shephard frees from the underwater tank in 'Crush Depth' (just without the retinal scanner blowing up his face, obviously). My personal thanks to BlindAcquiescence for writing it!
Anyway, read and review, people!)