Physics of the Crowbar

Lambda Siege

The road through the vehicle repair bays ended in a wall of green corrugated steel and wrecked cement, smeared with red military blood and black oil.

Radio static echoed behind him. He glanced back. Too many hiding places, too many ruined half-walls and open second stories. He needed to find a way over, under or around. And fast. The hiss of the troop projectiles and rhythm of gunfire was growing louder. The battle line was moving.

He used an alien jump pad to get half-way up a ruined building adjacent to the wall. The cement of the building next door ran up another two stories, unbroken and unbreachable, but a rooftop drain line appeared to connect. He pulled the grate and looked. Watery, unpleasant, but large enough to get through.

Rain was uncommon in the desert, but when it did come, it tended to come rapidly. Black Mesa's drains were built to channel flash flood waters away from sensitive laboratories and expensive prototypes, which meant the upper end would be nearer to those things.

Radio static.

He froze, shoulders in the pipe, heels in the scummy water.

The grate at the far end opened. He saw optics and a flash of green, and something landed in the pipe with a heavy thump.

He landed on his back in the drain water, held his breath and sank. One heartbeat, two- three- and the surface boiled orange with fire.

The pipe was scored black and hot to the touch. With luck, they'd think they'd gotten him and not check again. With luck, and a shot gun trained on the grate.

He inched along on one hand and his toes, working as silently as the suit and arsenal he carried would allow. Luck was on his side; no one checked the pipe, and he caught the soldier on the other side by surprise.

The storm drains let him into the repair division's guardhouse. He shot a soldier in the locker room and another on the stairs, and worked his way through the building to what had once been the roof.

A bullet hit him in the shoulder.

Small caliber, painful. He spun, fired, and saw the blue-grey blur of a security guard drop behind what had been the ceiling.

The man was alive. Freeman had shot over his head, by subliminal instinct or by luck, he didn't know. He didn't care. The man was shaking all over and trying to apologize. Freeman waved away his words and hauled him upright by the uniform front. He handed the man his handgun, spun him around and gave him a push.

There were doors Freeman couldn't open. Doors that would bypass the ruined sections and get him back inside the coil. Security guards operated like old-world servants, with their own locker rooms, passages, housing, parking lots and cafeterias. Another layer of paranoid social security. Their heavy steel doors were too well-built to be opened by crowbar; they were bio-locked to the security personnel assigned to each section. A hand print or retinal scan was required, as was the owner of said physical key's living heartbeat.

Doors wouldn't open for a dead man.

When the guard opened the door, Freeman wished he hadn't.

The livid red eye of an alien living tank gleamed back at him from the darkness of the parking garage.

Only one way forward. He shoved the security guard back through the door to relative safety, slammed it shut and ran.

The beast charged after him; he felt the searing heat of its flamethrower on his back, felt the vibration of its steps underfoot. He ran as he hadn't run in a long time, through darkness smelling of car oils and exhaust smoke, breathing through bruises and broken bones, his own weight a torture on his right knee.