If any amount of luck was on our side during that dreadful hour, it was spent on Dahlia's speed.
She registered my fretful urgency with total clarity and made profound haste for Red Bay, arriving at the east gate in less than ten minutes thanks to Dahlia's ceaseless sprint. Although all appeared tranquil, the horrid drone of distant airborne dropships forecasted that everything around us was moments away from being levelled to rubble. And from what I could sparsely gather at that moment, no one in Red Bay was aware of what was coming.
Dahlia panted as she stopped by Redgie's door, gasping with her tongue dangling out of her mouth while Shephard and I leapt off to go and pound on the door. "Redgie! Are you there? Open the door!" I shouted at the camera, pounding incessantly at the door.
Seconds later, the speaker by the door crackled to life. "Hey, hey! Knock it off! You'll pock the door," Redgie said snidely, sounding like he had just woken up from a nap.
"Redgie! It's the Combine! They're coming!" I pressed, staring into the camera pleadingly.
Redgie didn't respond for a few seconds, which felt like an eternity had gone past before he acknowledged the severity of my message. "Wait…what did you say?" he soon asked, audibly shaken.
"They've got ships, Redge!" Shephard added, scooting into the camera's view next to me. "A whole damn convoy's rolling up the road! They're gonna steamroll us if we don't get the hell out of here!"
"W-W-What?" Redgie stammered much like how Slippy would. "Oh God…O-Oh jeez… That's not good at all…"
"Let us in, Redgie! We've got to warn everyone! We need to get Sabrine!" I prompted, which only made Redgie more agitated.
"U-U-Uh, right, right! Get Sabrine! Get Sabrine…!"
Redgie's voice suddenly became fuzzier as frantic jostling sounds suddenly occurred like he had tipped his swivel chair over. Shephard and I began to realise he might have left the security room before he could remember to let us in.
"Redgie…?" I asked nervously, my ears folding with dread. Adrian didn't take too kindly to being abandoned like this.
"Hey, get back here, dumbass!" he yelled, pounding ferociously at the door. "Open the fucking door!"
"Adrian, we can take the west gate," I reminded, trying to remain calm for our collective sake. "Redgie's already on his way to warn Sabrine. He's practically saving us half the time by running out―"
My little bargaining spew was cut short when an unsettling crack coursed through the air, sounding like it originated several miles away eastward. "Shit―what was that?!" Shephard tensed, whipping his rifle out in seconds, already primed for an attack. I sensed no soldiers nearby, so I hadn't jumped to that conclusion just yet.
Before I could give some kind of reply, my attention was quickly drawn to the sky, where a faint white line could be seen rising up into the clouds behind the hills in front of us. I stared at the clouds for a moment, long enough for Shephard to notice me looking to the sky, prompting him to do the same. Seconds after, another distant crack rippled through the air, and a second white trail soared up into the same patch of clouds.
"Oh, that's not good…" Shephard muttered with harrowing contemplation.
Then, a little black dot suddenly breached through the cloud as it made its rapid descent back down to the ground, soaring straight towards our general area. An accompanying whistling sound could soon be heard, growing louder and louder with each passing second as the projectile fell with a white trail following it. It was already clear that any hopes for an evacuation were eradicated.
"INCOMING!" Shephard screamed to anyone who could hear him, jumping for cover alongside me as the black projectile crashed down just beyond the wall in a deafening explosion that quaked the earth, but no plume of fire rose from it. Dahlia whinnied in surprise at the sudden blast, rearing her forelegs in distress, but she did not leave our side.
Shephard and I were on the ground, covering our heads, but we did not lay around long. We shot to our feet in seconds. "West gate!" I ordered, saddling back up on Dahlia, who was fervently anxious to get out of here. She was patient enough to allow us to get on but hardly waited for my command (I had no right to blame her).
Dahlia took us down the entire length of the southern wall at full speed. I was trying to quell her nerves with a little telepathic persuasion, but a second explosion occurring close by broke that concentration effortlessly. "Shit!" Shephard cursed insentiently. Any effort I made to keep myself from panicking was quickly dwindling, especially now as a Klaxon siren suddenly began blaring throughout the town moments after the second shell dropped from the sky, and a dire announcement soon proceeded the siren's activation.
"Attention! Attention all denizens!" the announcer called as absolute terror bled from her voice. "We're under attack! I repeat! Under attack! This is not a drill! Gunships have been spotted advancing from the east along with several dropships! Shells have already landed within the borders! Get to defensive positions!"
The announcement had just cut off by the time we arrived at the mouth of the west gate, which by some miracle was open. Knowing that Dahlia was not safe here, Shephard and I both hopped off of her once we made it. Being someone who had prior experience with horses, Shephard too shared my desire to keep her far out of harm's way.
"Go on, girl! Go! Back to your herd! We'll be fine!" I patted her shoulder urgently. With a bit of reluctance, Dahlia whickered loudly before she took off down the trail towards the hills to the west. Counting on her to escape without hindrance, Shephard and I ran through the gate with his rifle abreast and my staff unclipped and fully deployed.
The dirt road ran through a relatively long stretch of open grassy land, almost two hundred metres in length, with a few old dilapidated lorries and cars rusting off to either side. We nearly ran as fast as Dahlia could as we tried to reach the plaza on the other end, already seeing columns of grey smoke rising from the east gate and over to the northern strip off of the marina. We were able to see the harrowing shapes of two dropships flying above the pass just over by the east gate, each holding a troop carrier in its suckers, declaring its presence by the deafening drone of its engines.
"Oh my God…" Shephard gawked in horror at the sight of the Combine finally discovering our safe haven with the full intention of wiping it from the face of the earth.
"Don't despair!" I pleaded, not exactly having a plan of my own at the moment on how to overcome this. "We'll repel them! We must hold out against them for as long as―!"
Neither of us could hear or notice the sight of a third 'shell' falling right in front of our path amongst all the chaos unfurling ahead until it smashed into the utility shed to the left of us, knocking us right off our feet from the sheer force of the blast. We tumbled some feet before coming to a stop, and when we looked up, we could see a large, familiar-looking black metal pod unveiling itself as the dust settled, hissing with heat as it distorted the air around it.
By the time I realised what this thing was, its three aft fins sprouted outward with a loud metallic unlatching, revealing an opening, and a few headcrabs quickly began leaping out from inside now that they had found freedom. "Head humpers!" Shephard cursed upon sight of them, jumping to his feet and opening fire without hesitation.
While those cranial parasites required our immediate attention, I could not look away from the tactical monsoon that was now sweeping over the town. My jaw hung agape in terror as a gunship soared past the troop of dropships and immediately began to open fire on the southern end of Main Street, pelting the area with a barrage of devastating pulse fire. I had not encountered a gunship since escaping the outland depot with Aaron, and to see one attacking my Earthly home was almost too much to bear.
The giant synthetic monstrosity roared with a garbled metallic howl as it soared right over us on a path to make a hard turn over the bay, giving us a relentless blast of its rotary tail's downdraft as the grass fanned around us. "That just ain't right-looking, man…!" Shephard yelled in a nudging panic, completely bewildered by the unsettling nature of that beastly piece of alien military hardware.
I reclaimed my senses quickly and got back up to my feet. "Keep moving!" I hollered, trying to keep my friend focused as hard as I was trying to keep myself focused. Shephard ran alongside me as we sprinted down the stretch towards the town, with our primary destination being the Municipal Edifice, which thankfully was not far. We were able to see the dropships peering over the hills, flying more slowly than their trigger-happy escort, but otherwise drove me and Shephard to run faster. Now that Red Bay had become a full-on warzone, being out in the open became more dangerous by the second.
We were more than halfway to the edifice, now veering off the trail towards the communes along the water (passing by ours along the way). The gunship was already coming back around for another barrage along the heart of the town when a couple of rockets suddenly went off from one of the buildings near the marina, speeding straight for the gunship and all successfully impacting in a blazing bright flash of fire, making the gunship roar in apparent pain and anger. The rocket sentries had already assembled and displayed a great show.
"Oh, hell yeah!" Shephard cheered with a shake of his fist as the spectacle unfurled, momentarily finding a nugget of joy amongst the terror of the invasion. I couldn't help but grin with hope myself, but that was quickly diminished when one of the three dropships sighted over the hill was now barrelling down toward our position while the other two landed elsewhere by the plaza.
"Take cover!" I cried, diving behind the cover of a neighbouring building as the troop carrier's pulse cannon spotted us and fired on sight. A low base siren began emitting from the dropship as the carrier latched and flipped open and a squad of nine soldiers began jumping out behind the lead of a white cycloptic elite soldier. With its single red eye blazing intensely, it began administering orders to its subordinates to sweep the area and exterminate all hostile malignants, and I knew―having already been spotted―that I and Shephard were the first they would eliminate.
I was particularly fired up at this point, so I leapt out from our cover and retaliated with a flurry of icy streams that I unleashed with the end of my staff, flash-freezing the ground they invaded as ice consumed their boots, locking them into place. This seemed to disorient their coordination as they struggled to get out, broadcasting distress cues through their coms, but I wasn't going to let them finish them.
I charged with a vicious shriek at these invaders, deploying my staff's hidden blade with a distinct lack of hesitation this time. The elite soldier was the first; I jumped up and impaled it straight through its red optic before taking out a few more soldiers behind it in an identical fashion. Being that the dropship was still on the ground, the carrier's mounted pulse cannon quickly locked onto me and began firing after I managed to deploy a shield around myself.
The pulse fire was relentless and strained my concentration, but Shephard came to my rescue by blowing it out with some precise shots with his rifle, damaging its barrel badly enough to render it useless. The dropship itself appeared to register what was happening around it and abruptly took off into the air before the carrier's door could close back up. While Shephard was busy picking off the remaining disarmed soldiers I froze in place for him, I briefly watched the gunship retreat back to the east with great haste. I sometimes wonder if these synthetic monsters were ever completely removed from their former animalistic faculties.
"Okay, that always gets the heart pumping," Shephard finalised restlessly as he registered the defecting dropship. "Come on! It's just around the corner!" he called to me with a frantic wave of his arm. I collapsed my shield and rejoined him quickly, and our dash for the old harbour master's building resumed.
We were now within the populated areas, and people were running back and forth around us with equal parts fear and determination, brandishing firearms that everyone kept in their rooms. Gunfire had now begun blaring all across Red Bay, indicating that the other gunship seen flying in had now dispatched their units and could now be seen flying over the hills to the east again. There were automatic turret defences around the perimeters of the town, which were no doubt active and already repelling the Combine the best they could, but I feared they would not last forever.
There was too much happening for me to properly get a feeling for everyone in Red Bay; my attention was primarily trained on the gunship still flying around the bay while the people with rocket launchers fired at it some more, but the gunship managed to shoot them down with only a few rounds from its cannon. I could then see it, with a terrifying speed, rush straight at the rocketeer's posts on top of those buildings like it were also a missile, obliterating their posts effortlessly with heavier pulse fire, engulfing the roofs with clouds of dust and fire as it sped right over them. I feared nobody up there survived, but there was no time at all to fixate on that, such is the unfortunate mindset when you find yourself in during the frenzied heat of war.
The gunship was currently our primary concern on the battlefield, so Shephard and I were forced to seek cover somewhere before it would eventually spot us, and we had fortunately made it to the edifice before it could. I barged through the door first and rushed inside. "Sabrine! Where―?!"
My desperate cry for her location was cut off suddenly when I spotted Doctor Mofuni sitting by the meeting coffee table, pouring himself a shot from the doomsday bottle of hard liquor, using it precisely for the occasion it was meant for. He was unfittingly calm as well, contently sloshing his poured shot around and taking notice of me and Shephard as we stared at him completely bemused. "Ah, hello children!" he waved happily. "Nice day to die, ain't it?"
"The fuck are you doing?!" Shephard yelled in frustration.
"Having a drink, of course?" Mofuni frowned indignantly. "I'd rather meet the end with my dignity while having a nice―"
"Everyone down!" I hollered, rushing straight at Mofuni before pushing him onto the ground, knocking the glass out of his hand before the windows around us shattered from oncoming pulse fire, making me cover Mofuni as tiny shards of glass sprinkled down on us. I had detected soldiers advancing on this area and were currently being counteracted by a collecting group of rebels outside, but a few were ordered to maintain their perimeter sweep and spotted us in the building. Their coordinating distorted chatter could be heard amongst the conflict, and above all else, the automated voice of the Combine Overwatch began blaring proclamations outside.
"ALL AUTONOMOUS INDIVIDUALS. YOU ARE CHARGED WITH ANTI-CIVIL ACTIVITY AND COERCION. CAPITAL FUMIGATION AUTHORISED. GROUND UNITS, MAINTAIN PERIMITER SWEEP. EXECUTE MALIGNANT RELINQUISH PROCEDURE AND REPORT. STERILISE. CAUTERISE. RECYCLE."
"D'oh…never thought I'd have to hear that monotone moll again…" Doctor Mofuni groaned impatiently on the floor, far more annoyed than he was petrified. I sensed a deliberation in his demeanour. Part of it was due to cognitive disconnection, but most I felt was him trying his hardest to keep his cool before death would take him. Somehow, by some miracle, I would stave that from happening the best I could.
"Just stay down for me, all right? I'll deal with them," I told him gently in his ear, encouraging him to maintain his savant-like state of peace.
"Yeah. Just gimme the bottle, okay?" he requested, pointing up at the coffee table where the bottle still stood unharmed. I did as he asked before crawling towards Shephard, who was already firing back at the Combine through the now-shattered windows.
I jumped into the action while he was reloading a magazine from the giant pack he was still wearing prior. I unleashed a barrage of fire projectiles from my staff through the windows, setting the ground before the soldiers ablaze, along with a good few of them to boot as well. The fires seemed to disorient them long enough for the rebels in the neighbouring office buildings to begin shooting down at them from the windows. Despite the momentary lapse in combat, our stress was not mitigated.
"We're not going to win at this rate," Shephard declared with educated authority. "They've got whales in the sky turning us to peppered steak and I know they haven't sent the worst of it."
"What do you suggest we do?" I asked, struggling to scrounge up a solution myself amid all the chaos outside.
"They've obliterated our AAs; without that our asses our cooked for sure," he said, taking a few shots at a couple of soldiers who managed to wander out from the flames, killing them with precision. "We gotta get creative."
His words ignited a spark of inspiration in my mind, and I already knew what I needed to do. It had not occurred to me having been preoccupied with the worsening state of the invasion, but there was only one way in which I knew we could counteract the Combine. There really was no other way.
"The Cloud Runner!" I proclaimed, looking off in the direction of her warehouse. "I have to get her flying again!"
"What? How?" Shephard gasped. "Is it even ready for that yet?!"
"I have to try!" I retorted passionately. "There's no other way we can stand a chance! I need―"
Cutting me off suddenly was an explosive crash that occurred on the other side of the building. The sound of Combine chatter in that direction indicated a breach that went undetected by me. I simply could not be as efficient as I needed to be with so many factors stressing my concentration to the max.
Shephard and I shot to attention and braced ourselves as a squad of soldiers were now barrelling down the short narrow hallway that bent around to the back entrance―the glows of their blue optics shining brighter on the walls the closer they got. The lead soldier jumped around the corner into view and immediately began to fire, forcing me and Shephard leap for cover being in their direct line of sight.
I huddled over Mofuni and deployed a shield to protect him while he was trying to pour himself another shot on the floor. The soldiers' boots pounded the floor loudly as they stormed into the room to flush us out. Shephard fired upon them behind the counters near the window, making a few soldiers hone in on him while a few more fired on me and Mofuni. Their shots did not penetrate my shield, but it wouldn't be long before they would amp up attacks.
Before I could begin taking drastic countermeasures as I waited for an opening, bright flashes started going off down the hall, catching the immediate attention of the soldiers as flying bits of shrapnel flew across the room, pocking the soldiers' masks and making a couple stumble backwards. Violent and incessant bangs of gunfire grew louder as the interloper screamed like a maniac, revealing to be Sabrine wielding an automatic shotgun, rendering the soldiers blindsided, and more importantly, dead.
The sight was so incredible I gawked in amazement for a moment after her rescuing rampage had concluded with Sabrine blowing the mutilated head off of the last soldier in the room, huffing with fury and shaking tremendously as her gun's barrel smoked with cindery grey vapours. I collapsed my shield and just looked at her in astonishment. Even Shephard was widely impressed.
"Ah, Mrs Grace! There you are!" Doctor Mofuni called, sitting up on his knees with the dark bottle in hand. "Guess what time it is? It's the bottle's big day!"
"Fuck the bottle!" Sabrine chided with ravenous determination, gritting her teeth with equal fury. "I'm not laying down for these sons a bitches! We'll bite 'em back or die trying!"
"Oh. Well, more for me then," Mofuni shrugged compliantly, taking a greedy swig directly from the bottle itself.
"I have a plan, Sabrine," I proclaimed, marching up to her. "The Cloud Runner's going to fly today, and there's not a moment to waste."
Sabrine's angry face faded quickly after hearing my plan. "Wha…?" she blinked with concern. "Honey, I don't know if it's ready yet. I―"
"It'll have to be ready enough!" I prompted, turning to Adrian. "Help them here, Corporal. I need to put an end to this!"
Without another word or objection, I leapt through a shattered window and took off to reach my Arwing housed on the adjacent end of the seawall.
"Stay smart, Pop-Tart!" Shephard called to me from inside as I ran to join the fighting in the streets.