"It's no New Little Odessa," chuffed "Colonel" Odessa, looking around at the half-destroyed building and windmill, their connecting power cables swaying in the ocean breeze.
Annette cocked her head at him. "You're right. This place might be better."
Odessa's graying moustache bristled at this, but he did not rise to the bait. He just adjusted his beanie and gave her a heavy look. Honestly, the fact that this coward can use the Gift is just … it raises questions. But it was a matter of genetics, she supposed. Well, genetics and certain conditions, according to the Elders. They had not yet deigned to inform her what those conditions were.
The strip of road they stood on had lain dormant for quite some time, at least according to their recruits from the freshly converted Lighthouse Point.
"Used to be we would wave folks in through there," Laszlo had told them at the foot of the lighthouse. "Then the Combine set up all over the highway and we lost the bridge … no point leaving folks out there, all exposed. We just locked it up and hoped for the best." He had wrinkled his nose then, before looking a bit proud of himself. "Surprised that windmill is still giving any juice. I made that, you know."
"Finest mind of his generation," another chap had said, clapping Laszlo on the shoulder. Annette had shrugged. I'm sure I've met finer.
Nevertheless, the welcome they had received from Lighthouse Point had been reassuring. Efforts to reach out to Black Mesa East and White Forest had been firmly rebuffed. Here, out in the coastal boonies, Resistance people were not so choosy about their allies. Well … except for the vortigaunts.
Thinking that made Annette feel sad, all of a sudden. Like she had forgotten something important, something she should have kept close to her heart. But it was like a shadow passing over the sun in high winds – a moment's dimming before the brilliance returned all the stronger. Her mind rippled with power – more than Odessa, easily. It was partly why the man no longer rebuked her smart-aleck remarks … and it was certainly why he no longer gave her orders.
Both of them had won the lottery, so to speak. But Annette had hit the jackpot. And everyone knew it. And together … we will bring the Combine to their knees.
The distant cry of an engine briefly overtook the roar of the ocean. ADVENT VTOLs. Just as the Combine presumably looked to contest the heavens, so too did the Elders begin strengthening their grip on the ground. This blot of coastline, so long left to the Combine's tender mercies and the slow decay of time, would soon be the site of mankind's rebirth. The VTOL thundered overhead, a crate of cargo clinging to its underside, tucked neatly by magnets. Nary a dropship in sight.
Odessa sucked on his cheek. "Well, it has its own power supply, I suppose." He did not sound enthusiastic. "And there's more room for building here than at Lighthouse Point, Shore Point, or NLO."
"It's still a little close to Nova Prospekt," replied Annette. Nova Prospekt. The Combine's lights might have gone out all over the wasteland and coast, but Nova Prospekt remained a bastion of might and misery. The dropships and trains still ran there, heavily escorted, and when she reached out there, it was as if the place was reaching back, a gnarled claw crawling with infested intentions. She was always the first to withdraw. There's something wrong there.
"Nova Prospekt will fall in time," said Odessa. "The Elders will it. It is only a matter of sorting out the vortigaunt camp beforehand … figuring out some way to manage these wretched antlions."
Annette had an idea on that. But she did not feel like sharing it with Odessa.
"Think you can manage here on your own for a bit?" asked Annette. This was hardly a question a subordinate would ask, and both knew it. Odessa gritted his teeth momentarily, but Annette could almost believe the subsequent smile.
"I would be happy to run things here," said Odessa, still smiling.
"Good. I'm going to take Chum and go see the Elder at the checkpoint."
"Have fun." Odessa turned away, waved over one of the other mutons, who carried a crate in each burly arm. "Get a LZ here and a checkpoint at the tunnel! This is the last stop before Lighthouse Point and it needs to be damn well secure!"
Chum stood in his ruby red armor, looking out over the ocean. He did not hear Annette stroll up behind him initially but inclined his helmeted head once she stood at his side. Of all the mutons Annette had met, Chum remained the most agreeable and willing to learn, hence why he was her chum. The name also felt right, for such a hulking form. Simple and direct, mashing the lips together. Chum.
All attempts to teach him French had been met with frustration and failure. English so far had been a bit more successful, but she really wished she knew German. She suspected he would like that one.
Not that speech was entirely necessary. She could read his mind without either of them uttering a sound.
"You like the ocean?" asked Annette. Mentally, of course. Human speech was still indecipherable to him without some manner of psionic or technical assistance.
Chum nodded, one of the few human mannerisms he had learned.
"Reminder of home," he thought. Well, that was Annette's interpretation. The closer translation would be, "the big saltwaters much like home sulfur lakes," but Annette liked her translation better. "Different smell. Miss the sulfur." He huffed, and his breathing apparatus sent out a small deluge of gas. "But still nice here. Best place the Elders have taken us."
"Even with the Combine?" asked Annette, half-jokingly.
"Good fight," replied Chum, but tentatively. Annette sensed a but, but none was forthcoming. So she supplied it.
"But…?"
"Not fighting them. Fighting proxies." And Annette could not help but pause at that.
"The synths not enough?"
Chum grunted. "All slaves. ADVENT fight for Elders with full hearts and eager arms. Combine are … empty. We wrestle with the musculature. Where is the brain?"
Annette knew only a muton elite such as himself would be capable of such a thought. The average muton was a lug, little more than musculature himself, eager to rip and tear into the enemy. But Chum saw beyond that. How many Combine soldiers had they killed? Many. A great many. But all of them, to a man, had once been human. And God knows what the synths once looked like … the gunships had flippers for God's sake… and Dr. Breen sure as hell was not the brain. Just the voice.
"We're going to see the Elder," said Annette, trying to sound cheerful, even as a strange sense of cold and dread made her shiver. "Coming with?"
"I am sworn," replied Chum, hoisting his heavy plasma rifle over his shoulder. "Lead on!"
The two trudged down the worn concrete of the road, which now wound around the cliffside. Cracks stretched and twisted everywhere through the highway, weeds poking through everywhere she could see. It was only a matter of time before Highway 17 would collapse entirely and fall away into the ocean. Within her lifetime if she lived that long. She watched her step carefully, her combat boots thudding into the road quite solidly. Any noise that might have made was utterly dwarfed by the booming footsteps of her companion, however.
The checkpoint stood out from the rest of the blasted highway. For one, the Combine tower's blue metal distinguished itself rather jarringly from the peeling plaster of the building adjacent to it and the general dusty grays of the road. It was also the only building in sight that had been built in the last two decades.
The two sides of the checkpoint jutted from the earth like the shoulders of some massive blue beast. The left side held the tower, its canvas top still flapping in the ocean breeze. An ADVENT soldier, one of NLO's people, stood there, a plasma lance held in his arms. He waved at Annette and pointed to the cliffside. Floating over the ocean, three rollermines rotating about him, the Elder waited.
Annette and Chum stopped at the cliff's edge and kneeled. The Elder remained motionless, yet the rollermines continued to circle him, continually popping out their electric prongs and squealing before returning to their dormant state, and then repeating the process. Their programming apparently did not quite comprehend what was going on.
"An ingenious design. A rare Harvester machine with no trace of organic matter." The rollermines continued to chirp and shiver with electricity. "I sense only one major flaw."
Annette was about to ask, but the Elder acted before she could open her mouth. The first rollermine flew from the Elder with great force, falling almost out of sight into the horizon. The barely visible machine plummeted into the water with a great splash, then a momentary pause. A few seconds later, a small plume of water erupted from the ocean surface with a muffled boom.
"Deployed at the oceanside, yet vulnerable to water." The Elder sounded disappointed. The second rollermine was similarly ejected at great speeds, hurtling out of sight and to its doom. The final rollermine hung in place, still futilely trying to zap its target. "These devices will not stop us. They cannot even slow us."
The final rollermine flew from the Elder with the force of a cannonball. Only then did the Elder turn to face them, still floating serenely about fifty feet above the waves. Behind him, the final rollermine burst in a shower of ocean spray.
"You have words."
"Nova Prospekt," said Annette, pointing back the way she came, to the north. "Massive troop production facility. Plenty of citizens imprisoned … it's the most valuable target to us that isn't a Citadel."
"We are aware of its value." The Elder turned his back to her, facing back out to the ocean once more. "In time, it will fall. For now, we build. Build, and turn our attention to the more pressing threat."
"The gun," grunted Chum.
"The gun," agreed the Elder. "The Harvesters wish to contest the orbit."
Took them long enough. Annette followed the Elder's gaze out to the ocean. It might have been her imagination, but looking out to the sea, far off into the mist and curvature of the horizon … did something flicker? A shadow passed over her brain, made her twitch. When she looked up, the Elder faced her again, regarding her quietly.
"The gun," said Annette, not eager to acknowledge that anything had happened, staring down the Elder. "They've already proven they can't defend their cities properly. It would be a wonderful thing to liberate some people from City 17, right under Dr. Breen's nose." She smiled. "And I had an idea regarding that, one that could help us take Nova Prospekt as well."
"The New One is valued not only for her mental might, but her creativity and wit as well." Annette was no stranger to overblown compliments from a variety of desperate men, but it sounded different coming from her liberator. Her heart could not help but sing a little. Her smile grew wider. "Your words. Share them."
"Antlions nest all up and down the coast, thousands of them. They are all over the country, the planet. The Citadels have to pound the earth constantly to keep them from the cities."
"The earth heaves and itches with their presence," muttered Chum. Annette could privately not agree more.
"Chryssalids can breed rapidly, given an appropriate host," began Annette. "Humans – not an option unless they are Civil Protection."
"Not enough meat left in their soldiers," said Chum, nodding stiffly. "Seen it. Too much wire."
"Zombies don't work either – meat's all rotten. Headcrabs and barnacles – obviously too small." Annette paused. "But antlions…"
"Four legs," pondered the Elder. "Size enough to birth a youngling. Quite alive. Numerous."
"Chryssalids also aquatic," murmured Chum, prompting Annette to start. "Can send them up and down the coast, easily. Leeches won't bite through their armor." Merde … I did not know that. Diggers and swimmers both? Part of her began to regret making the situation.
"Habitats have been lost to the chryssalids before, when they are left unchecked." The Elder paused, thinking. "The New One will monitor and manage their broods. They will comprise the first line of our assault on the gun, and on Nova Prospekt."
"But let's not replace one ecological catastrophe with another!" said Annette. "I won't let them breed out of control. I will … set a quota. I will rid the coast of antlions without infesting it with something worse."
"The New One is wise to note the danger of the chryssalid." The Elder turned once more out to the sea. Again, Annette's eyes watered. Are there … heat waves distorting the air? She felt she was missing something, somehow.
And there was one other thing…
"What about the vortigaunts?" The question had to be asked. It was one thing to appropriate their bodies and power when they were uncooperative in the face of obvious liberation, but the camp … they had done nothing to oppose them, and too many human lives were owed to their mastery of antlion husbandry.
For a long moment, the Elder did not respond.
"They are determined to resist. They poison the minds of your Lambda Resistance against us."
"They are our friends," said Annette, brow furrowed, taking a halting step towards the lip of the cliff's edge. "They will come around, if we can give them cause to. They helped us for so many years against the Combine-"
"Their alternative was extinction. And still they hid so much from you."
"Perhaps – they did not know?" Something panged and jerked inside Annette's chest, a caged creature certainly stirred to life by necessity. "We had no hint of our own species' potential – how could they have known better?"
"They knew." The words fell like rollermines, and somehow Annette recognized them as the truth. "Fear bound them, and you. Much progress could have been made, had they unshackled themselves from tradition, fear, and jealousy. They are a failed species, while yours still holds promise. Hope."
"They are our friends," mumbled Annette, even as that caged emotion began to wither and die. "Sparky…"
"You are so much more than Sparky, or any of them." The Elder sounded sad. "Oh, child. Your loyalty is commendable." The Elder turned and lowered himself, bringing himself to eye level with Annette.
"I don't want to hurt them," said Annette, unable to make eye contact with the Elder's mask, but still making herself quite audible. "It wouldn't be right. What did you do to Sparky?"
"Sparky lives. He is in a place where he can do no harm, and no harm can come to him." The words sounded strange, laced with some kind of double meaning. Annette looked up to the mask but could perceive nothing, just the smooth flowing white lines adorning where the Elder's face would be. "Your vortigaunt friends reject our alliance and martial forces against us. What would you have the Ethereal Ones do?"
"They are no threat compared to the Combine," began Annette, but Chum stirred at this.
"More power than you think," he grunted. "Psionic network. Like ours."
"The Vortessence, I know," replied Annette, waving it off, "but we use it mostly for communication-"
"And not merely with each other," said the Elder. Annette frowned. She had not heard that tone of voice from any of the Elders before. A tendril of intent reached out again and burrowed in place. Something secret steers us…
"Enough," said the Elder and Annette snapped out of it. "The New One need not fight these wielders of Vortessence herself, but we will resist their subversive efforts where necessary. The vortigaunt camp lies between us and Nova Prospekt, and we would see it dealt with." The Elder paused. "If the New One can find a means of doing so before the assault begins, most excellent. If not, it will be razed. Those who do not submit to the will of the Ethereal Ones and their goal of liberating this planet will be taken captive or slain. Is this fair?"
"I'll … come up with something." I have to save them. It felt owed, somehow. The power she wielded, that flowed through her, she might not have owed any of it to the vortigaunts … but the fact she still breathed, that she had lived long enough to become what she was, she could trace all of that to their efforts. The Resistance lived, she lived, free humans still lived because of them. There would be little left for the Elders to liberate without their alliance.
"You will remain at her side," said the Elder, extending a long arm and fingers to Chum, who grunted and hefted his heavy plasma gun.
"Then the City 17 assault…?"
"Colonel Odessa will lead the ground assault," said the Elder, prompting Annette to gape. "He has volunteered himself. The New One will supply him with as many chryssalids as possible as we approach the Citadel from the lower entrances."
"You're attacking from the ground?" asked Annette.
"From the ground and the air. The gun will be destroyed, and the Citadel…" The Elder paused. "It would be ambitious to think we can end the war. But the effort will be made. A battleship will be dispatched. The Harvesters are adapting slowly. This may be our best opportunity to push them hard before they summon reinforcements."
We can't let that happen. Annette still didn't know if the Elders fully understood just what the Combine could do if they decided their standing forces weren't enough … but so much she previously thought impossible had been contradicted. Strange heat waves rippled in the distance. An eldritch wind began to howl.
"Go, child," said the Elder, rising again, floating out to the ocean and away from them, his four arms framed against the setting sun. "The chryssalids are inbound as we speak. Breed an army worthy of breaching City 17."
Annette stood there, shivering. From behind her, back at Lighthouse Point, a chittering scream rose from deep within her. She would be bringing a ravenous hunger to bear on the coast. For a good cause, though. Certainly. It wasn't like chryssalids were any harder to control than antlions, and they didn't even need bugbait for that.
Chum grunted and gestured back where they came. VTOLs inbound.
"Time to spend a day at the beach," said Annette, trying to smile. She brushed some of the hair from her eyes before frowning. A single strand of hair clung to her index finger. Stark white. The second that week.
It was probably nothing.
Forgive me for the delay; since the New Year started I have been responsible for staffing vaccination clinics in my county. I still procrastinated like a mother on this; sorry about that.
Next chapter is Gordon Freeman. I make no promises on when it will come out, but I am slowly mastering my schedule. Thanks.