Half-Life (book) Chapter 7

… a trolley, slowly gaining speed, drove into a tunnel. The lighting inside was so far in order, and Gordon clearly saw what was waiting for him ahead. Turning several times, the trolley was in front of the concrete blocks, which laid a tunnel. However, it was not a brickwork and not bags of sand, so it was not difficult for a heavy cargo machine to shift a barrier from its path. Having drove a little forward and turning right, the trolley was in front of a closed barrier.

Stopping and jumping off the trolley, Gordon went to the guard standing next to the barrier. He looked at him and said:

-You are a scientist, yes? One of yours asked to convey that it was necessary to launch the rocket, which is located on the other end of this road. The guy was in a hurry, and only said that the military was canceled the launch, and this rocket could help cope with all this crap. I will open a barrier for you, I will stay here myself, and I advise you. I don’t know what’s inside, and I don’t want to know!

With these words, the guard lowered the lever on the wall, and the barrier rose gently, letting the trolley. Gordon quickly jumped back and pressed on the gas, and the car rushed forward, into an unknown ..

… Sheppard slowly walked along a wide corridor, which, obviously, used to serve for the passage of trucks. The corridor was branched ahead, and Adrian had to stop at the intersection and look around.

On the right was something remotely reminiscent of the “Ospris”, and he ran there. Yes, it was his helicopter. Smashed to smithereens, he piled up on a broken fence, which was previously under the current. Now Eltektro discords now and then slipped over the wreckage of the helicopter, unequivocally hinting that it is better not to touch these wreckage, otherwise you risk turning into a well -fried steak. Behind the fence there was a walkie -talkie lying on the ground, it looked quite working, and Sheppard decided to get to her. However, at first he had to cut down the current, and he decided to check the left passage for the presence of the switch.

He brought him to a small courtyard, in which several transformers were visible behind the wire fence from the wire. Sheppard went to the fence and already wanted to open the door leading inward, when suddenly a guard came out from behind the trnas-formators, almost as thick as Otis. He shouted Sheppard:

-Wait, voltage fence! I’ll turn it off now and you can enter!

He turned and was about to go to the switch located behind the transformers, when suddenly he stumbled on a bump and fell, accidentally hit his hand. The fat man was worried about convulsions, and after a few seconds everything was over and five thousand volts, launched by the fence, did their job. With a sigh, Sheppard began to look for another way.

A ventilation hole was visible next to the fence in the wall, and Sheppard decided to explore it-suddenly the exit was just behind the fence? Having broken off the grate, Adrian squeezed into a narrow hole and puts in the darkness, turning on the night vision device. Soon a buzz was heard ahead, and he crawled out right in the center of the generator. Lightning slipped through him every now and then, sometimes they beat in the walls. Trying not to get a lightning in the stomach, Sheppard made his way to the fiercely apparent ventilation hole on the other side of the generator and climbed on.

He climbed right behind the transformers, in which the steaming corpse of the fat man lay. The switch hung on the wall on the right, and Sheppard pressed him. The transformers who had previously emitted a measured rumble immediately fell silent.

Taking the “desert needle” of the guard lying next to the corpse, Sheppard opened the door in the fence and went back to the helicopter. Now it was not difficult to cross through the wreckage, and soon Sheppard was already raising a walkie -talkie from the ground. She was almost intact, except that the front panel cracked a little. Twisting the tuning handle, he suddenly heard an excited voice:

-Sir, we were locked in this fucking sector! These creatures come from all sides! We require air support! You hear, support with WHO … -in this place was heard a roar, then the cries of horror and automatic queues, then everything subsided.

Sheppard tried for several minutes to contact the walkie-talkie at least someone, but in vain, from the dynamics, only a crack of interference was heard. In the end, the corporal threw a walkie -talkie, got up and looked around. On the left, some hatches were visible, who, apparently, leading to the tunnels under the base. There was nowhere else to go, and Sheppard, pushing the heavy lid of the hatch, climbed down the old staircase, groping the railing. The descent was quite short, and after a few seconds Sheppard stood at the bottom of the well, trying to at least see something in the dim light of emergency lighting.

Suddenly, in the depths of the tunnel, something grumbled, and a very strange creature appeared in the dull halo of green light. Three hands, one of which grew out of the chest, were directed to Sheppard, the green skin of the creature gleamed dimly. Suddenly, from the bracelets put on the clutches of the creature, green lightning burst out, which flashed past Sheppard’s head and hit the wall, leaving a black smoke spot on it.

Sheppard’s reaction was not long in coming: grabbing a trophy “needle”, he dropped the hustlers right in the chest of the creature. She, wildly scorching, fell, her legs, and soon calmed down. Having stepped over the corpse, Sheppard carefully went further ..

… the trolley rushed through the echoing dark tunnels, tinkling at the joints of the rails. Occasionally, boxes came across on the way, which a heavy car pushed from their path, like fluffs. In one place, the wires running over the road turned out to be torn, the fire piece hung right in the way of the trolley. Gordon noticed this only at the last moment and barely managed to bend down.

The station appeared ahead, and Gordon pressed the brakes, the trolley obediently slowed down. Several dogs sat at the station around the scientist’s corpse, seeing Gordon, they jumped up and stared at him in surprise. One of them, apparently, the leader of the pack, unexpectedly loudly wrapped and shook her small tremor, soon the rest began to echo it. The sound grew up, and suddenly Gordon stunned with a sonorous cotton, his head was spinning and hurt. Having shook her, he came to his senses, and just in time, the dogs were already preparing a new attack. The line from the machine to disrupted all their plans.

At the station, the road branching, the head left another tunnel, which was blocked by the fallen arrow of the crane. Gordon tried to shift her, but nothing came out, the shooting was too heavy, it could only be moved with the help of a motor. The control booth was above the station, and Gordon, climbing the arrow, asked to jump to her. In vain, he could not even grab onto the windowsill. It was necessary to look for a bypass, and Gordon decided to go straight.

After a minute of the trip, the next fork opened in front of him. This time there were no obstacles anywhere, and he decided to head right. Having pulled out the gun, he shot into the pointer, he turned from the bullet from hitting and switched the branch to the right path. Log, tapping on the crossing, turned into another tunnel. Ahead was the station, which Freeman stopped.

The corpse of a soldier was lying on Stanzi, above him, chasing pieces, a creature was leaning, spitting with acid. Gordon shot her a couple of times in the back, she roared, fell on a corpse and clogged in convulsions. A staircase went up from the station, and Gordon went there, hoping that this move would lead him directly to the crane booth. The move was blocked by boxes, and Gordon was about to break them with a crowbar, as a squeak was heard suddenly from behind the barricade, and several machine-gun lines sewed the boxes.

Gordon collapsed on the floor with lightning speed, covering his head from the wreckage, and the machine gun continued to shoot. Suddenly the shooting stopped, and Gordon heard only a quiet squeak of a universal system of guidance of a machine gun. Getting a grenade, he, trying not to make noise, crawled to the stairs leading to the station, and, throwing the grenade for the remains of the boxes, literally flew down the stairs. After a few seconds, the explosion crashed, and a piece of stem pin rolled past him, calling on the steps.

The booth was turned off by the explosion, but the crane control levers by some miracle remained untouched. Twing for one of them, he saw the arrow rose with a creak and stepped aside.

Returning to the trolley, Gordon pressed the gas, and his little train rushed off the tunnel again. The road was looped, and soon a familiar fork was again loomed ahead. Gordon passed it without reducing speed, the trolley carved a sheaf of sparks from the rail and, tearing, turned left.

Ahead at the end of the tunnel was a lift for trains, and Gordon had to lower the speed. The trolley slowly drove into the elevator site, and he, rotating clockwise, began to rise. Suddenly, Goden heard on the right:

-Here he is! Open the fire, Johns!

The automatic lines sprinkled onto the trolley and on the year, who was twisted behind the dashboard, trying not to fall under the fire of the soldier. The elevator soon stopped at the beginning of another road, and Gordon pressed that there was an accelerator forces. The trolley rushed from a place in the quarry and rushed along the tunnel, rummaging at the joints of the rails.

Through the rails a small bridge of the boards was laid, on which stood a soldier with a machine gun at the ready. Looking into the darkness, he shouted to his colleagues standing at the station:

And then it was https://slotsshine.uk/ swept away with the bridge with a furiously rushing trolley. The soldiers already wanted to open fire on it, when suddenly something growled behind them, and one of them was struck by green lightning. The rest immediately turned around and opened a fluid fire. Ahead of the tunnel was blocked by a barrier, and Gordon, stopping the trolley, jumped out at the station and hid behind an easel machine gun, trying not to catch up with the soldiers. Thus, in the meantime, they coped with the creatures and turned to the trolley, looking at her with bewilderment. And Gordon, meanwhile, removed heavy collars from the fuse. Finally, the weapon was ready for shooting, and Gordon quickly brought a machine gun to the soldier and pressed the descent. The rumbling echo rolled throughout the tunnel, and the soldiers, stitched by each with several bullets of the fifty -caliber, were lying on the floor, bleeding.

The corridor from the station led from the station, from which shots and screams came. Gordon decided to go there and scout the situation, and at the same time look for cartridges that he managed to find, already ended. Having walked up the stairs and wrapping him around the corner, he saw that there was a fierce battle of creatures with soldiers ahead. None of the parties could prevail, and bullets with zippers flew back and forth, ricocher from the walls of a narrow corridor.

Gordon aimed right into the center of the fight and shot from the undergent. The fragmentation grenade pulled right among the fighters, pleasing abundantly pouring them with fragments.

Having collected cartridges and grenades from the killed, Gordon was about to run back, when he suddenly noticed that the same road, along which he had to go below, under the bridge, passes. On the walls, overlapping the tunnel, there were four trap mines. Gordon threw a grenade there and rushed back. A few seconds later several explosions were heard.

Gordon jumped into the trolley, and she rushed forward. Having scattered a small blockage of stones in the place where there were mines, the trolley turned left and was at the beginning of a long tunnel. Suddenly something flashed in the depths, and an anti-tank rocket hit the wall in front. Freeman instinctively bent down, and then the second rocket rushed right above his head. The shooting stopped, apparently the soldiers reloaded the installation. The trolley quickly drove a tunnel, and Gordon saw a missile installation standing in the corner, in which the soldier was busy, trying to push the rocket to the guide.

Finally, he succeeded, and he turned the installation towards a rapidly retiring trolley, caught it in the sight and pressed it on the descent.

Installed hastily, the rocket was not properly checked, but in vain. Electric liring of the engine did not work, instead, the discharge fell directly on the system of detonation of the warhead. The fragments of the installation and bloody scraps crossed the entire tunnel.

And the trolley with Gordon on board, meanwhile, raced forward. Another barrier loomed in front, and Gordon slowed down the trolley. A lever saw a lever next to the barrier, and he only wanted to approach him, when suddenly a line of large -caliber machine guns crashed from behind, which fell into the wall next to the lever.

Gordon briskly jumped back to cover the wall. I had to do something with these machine guns. Gently looking out, he saw that the machine gunner was protected by a wall of sandbags, from the niche in which only paired trunks stuck out. There was no roof on the bunker, and Gordon threw a grenade there. The machine gunner tried to get out of the shelter, but did not have time, the grenade exploded, the ridicule of it with fragments.

But Gordon, opening the barrier, continued his travel. Soon, another elevator stared ahead, but, having arrived closer, Gordon saw that he was broken-soldiers, and the platform was piled below in the form of stone fragments. There was an auxiliary staircase on the left, and Gordon climbed upward.

He got out in front of a small cabin, from which he led a wide light tunnel. Fresh air was felt, and Gordon realized that the exit to the surface was close.

The small corridor in the tunnel wall brought it directly to the surface, to the road interchange connecting rocket mines with warehouses. Night has already come, the weak light of the lanterns lit the road. On the contrary, there was a passing to the flight control center, and Gordon ran there.

Through the staircase leading to the entrance, pulling several laser rays pulled. Gordon looked around and swallowed when he saw six plate checkers attached to the wall, 10 kilograms each each. It would be enough to blow up the entire Tsup and at least damage the rocket in the mine. Carefully stepping over the lasers, he quietly opened the door and drove inside.

There was a conversation around the corner:

-Listen, Ben, how does this Freeman look something?

-And hell knows … like young.

-That’s for sure, the old man in a robe could not lay so many of ours … damn it, I will catch this asshole-whim in place! How many guys were killed because of him!

“Well, try it if you can!"Thought Freeman and, jumping out from around the corner, dumped both. The passage was open, and Gordon ran there.

He got into a huge room forced by computers. A hologram of the globe with the satellites designated on it was circled in the niche. There was no one to follow this splendor, there was no one, the corpses of scientists were lying on the floor in the puddles of the blood. There was a small TV with a video recorder on the table next to the door, a cassette lay next. Taking it, Gordon read the inscription on the label: “Expedition ksen. Chronicle 22.03.98-13.09.2000 ". Intrigued, Gordon inserted the cassette into the tape recorder and began to look ..

… a man in the same suit as him stood against the backdrop of some strange plant. At first, Gordon thought it was something experimental, but then I realized that the place where this guy is not the earth. And in the meantime, he spoke:

-So, we flew. This place, we called it Ken-it is in the Antares system, for many hundreds of light years from the ground. We begin the study of the planet and the implementation of our mission. End of communication.

The next entry was made a week after the first. There was the same green creature on the screen that attacked him throughout the complex. Now it sniffed the camera peacefully, looking in surprise with its huge eye. A voice behind the scenes said:

-Today we have met local residents. The same creature was found in 1955, it seems that they are the main inhabitants of this planet. Caution, Jok, don’t touch him. It can be contagious.

The next entry was made in two months. A man who looked terribly tired in a suit said:

-We have just completed the study of the DNA of local residents. Amazing! It is radically different from our three chain, and not a single identical component! Apparently, this explains the fact that these creatures have the main number “three”-hand, three legs, and so on. We continue. DNA samples were sent to Earth.

The next entry was made in two hours. A thin man in military uniform was visible on the screen, in the uniform of the colonel. He leaned toward the microphone and spoke, looking around every minute:

-Colonel Barnes, Alfa-Tang-three-nine, I call the X-Rasa laboratories. I managed to get DNA of strangers. They will be transported to you in 10 hours.

The next piece of BL is recorded a few days later. An excited young man in a white robe and thick glasses, stammering, muttered:

-Dr. Jenkins calls the base, reception! We have an emergency here, reception! One of the guys was attacked by a local animal that looked like a crab. Something strange happens to him, reception!

In the next record, the same doctor continued:

-Base, reception! This is an epidemic, you hear an epidemic! Three members of the expedition are already infected, they … they … they … no more people, you hear? Urgent evacuation is required! -Suddenly, the zombie attacked the doctor from behind, and the transmission stopped, apparently, the creature broke the camera.

The next record was four people in protective suits with machine guns. They stood in the middle of a defeated laboratory, one of them, looking at the camera, said:

-Everything is destroyed here. There are no more earthly life forms on this planet. We were ordered to continue the study of DNA in order to use them for military purposes. Please send a group of scientists.

The next piece of video fillet was the last, it was dated September 10. The young scientist in the HEV-coaching stood next to two green creatures and, smiling, said:

-We were able to make contact with local residents. They are very friendly, do not make any attempts to eat us. DNA study is completed, samples were sent to Earth … Yes, major? What’s happened?

The person who spoke in the previous record went to the scientist and spoke through his teeth:

-Jones, your work is to study these fucking DNA, and not to the local fauna. It seems that your report is still underway?

-Major, these creatures are not Fauna, this is a reasonable life, and ..

-Yes, I don’t care, if they are at least by the presidents Washington and the linkoal! Go and work!

Having snorted evil, Jones disappeared, and the major went to the creatures and, leaning towards them, said:

-Well, boobs, you will not be soon, but?..

… Kalhun rode down on a creaking elevator, pondering Rosenberg’s words. So that they are still not alone in the universe? But why then the government did not report their discovery? Torn apart by questions, Kalhun did not notice how the elevator stopped, bringing it to the lower levels.

He went right in the middle of the long corridor, on the left there was a door that seemed to be closed tightly, and on the right, one lift. Barney went to him.

Suddenly from behind the buried door was heard:

-Jock, moved his ass! We need to get there as quickly as possible!

-Yes, sir. I’m already cutting. -With these words, the door crawled out of the door, knocking out of the metal, the blue light of the autogen. Kalhun sat down behind the boxes, preparing to reflect the blow.

Soon the engineer finished his work, and silence reigned. She was a short-lived door, the door flew out with a roar under the blows of two soldier’s shoes, and the air broke several warning lines. Kalhun leaned out of his shelter and opened fire on the soldiers. The sergeant fell the first, clamping the wound in his chest. The second, having received two bullets in the stomach, writhed on the floor, and the engineer, bending and holding the walls, ran into the depths, causing reinforcements. Barney aimed and released several bullets into a gas cylinder that hung on the engineer on his back.

The flash of the explosion lit up the old corridor. The rotten beams could not stand it, and the ceiling collapsed right at the entire platoon of the soldier, hurrying to the aid of comrades. The passage was destroyed, and Barney had no choice but to use a rotten lift.

He lifted it to the upper level of the warehouse. There was a lattice door on the left, and Kalhun went to her, but froze halfway, shocked by what he saw. The guard and the scientist tried to push the battery for the teleporter into the charger, when suddenly from the darkness to them, putting the claws, zombies came out. The guard grabbed a gun, but it was a late zombie with all his might hit him in his face with claws, he fell, spraying blood. The scientist screamed wildly and ran to the door. Seeing Kalhun, he shouted:

-Help me, please!

He shot at the zombie a couple of times, but the creature already grabbed the scientist and tore his head with one blow. Then, noticing Kalhun, she tried to break the door. After several attempts, she managed to break the dilapidated lock, and the creature opened the door, falling out right in front of Kalhun. And then I received several bullets from him.

Running to the battery, Barney hardly moved it into the charger, connected the wire and pressed the charging button. The box where the battery was inserted was closed, and the device was blurred with bulbs. Soon the battery rolled back, the charging indicator showed 100%. Having dragged her into a cargo elevator and watching her to leave without interference, Kalhun ran back to the elevator ..

… Freeman stopped the cassette shocked by what he saw. So, all these rumors about the crystal, about the alien found in the truth ship? And if they are peaceful, why should the government hide them? And what is raca-round?

Dumbfounded, he went to the control panel. The screens showed the presence of fuel and electricity in the rocket, everything was normal. “To take a chance or not?" -thought Freeman. -“What if this is not a companion, but hot thermonuclear greetings to distant China?"

After thinking more, he still decided. “I still have nothing to lose, so why not?"He said to himself and, holding his breath, pressed the launch button.

The shafts of the mine were slowly opened, and a growing rumble was heard. Smoke came from the mine, and suddenly, blinding it with the light of flame, a rocket broke out. Failing the starting table, she flew to heaven, leaving behind her a smoky trace ..