//------------------------------//
// 9a - Security 
// Story: Half-Life : A World Beyond 
// by Random Gamer 
//------------------------------//

	With night just around the corner, we saw a Combine-controlled bunker on the hill. Sprinting to the nearest big rock on the beach, we caught brief sight of one soldier-mounted machine gun, ready to turn anything into coloured sand. It aimed briefly at our cover and then returned back to it's patrolling state. This wasn't the first time we saw a pulse machine gun, but it was the first time we were so close to it.

"Umm... Ideas?" asked Darek nervously, reloading his submachine gun. "One antlion is good for support, but to get past that thing? There's no way!" I took out my bugbait and looked at my colleagues, juggling it for a few seconds. Afterwards, I peeked out on the right side of our cover and much to my supprise, there was a thumper there. It was a  Combine machine that created small quakes and for whatever reason, the antions were really scared of it. To its side was a small ladder, probably used for maintenance.

"Clara, I think I've got an idea." Clara turned to me, having have used her rifle scope to inspect the nearby bunker.

"Yes?" she asked, loading a new clip into her weapon."What do you have in mind?" I had a brief look at both of them, making sure they're listening.

"I'm going to use an antlion as a bait for the soldier to gun down," I explained, still juggling the fragile, yet virtually indestructible ball of pheromones. "During that small time frame, one of us will run to that thumper over there and shut it down." Clara nodded and switched places with me, moving to the right side of rock, with me moving left. I was about to throw the bugbait, but then Darek objected again.

"Wait!" he let out. "Wouldn't it be easier to... I dunno... throw a 'nade in?" In any another other bunker-busting scenario, this would be a viable option, but now, it just simply wasn't. Barriers ruin everything.

"No," I uttered. "This bunker has a forcefield on its front that repels large objects, so unless you somehow waltzed inside it and kindly told the soldiers to shut it down before throwing a tossed one in, then no. A 'nade won't solve our problem, not this time at least." Darek went silent afterwards, leaning against the rock. With this out of the way, we were able to continue with my plan. By extension, this was also our plan, since the other two had no plans of their own to speak of.

First, I peaked out and with the help with the bugbait, provided a bait for the bunker. The antlion spawned right infront of the bunker and during that, I ran to the thumper, climbing the ladder. Just as the soldiers were finally able to take the antlion down, I pressed a small button and the structure stopped to function completely. In turn, however, it set off an alarm. Suprisingly, they immediately started shooting at the structure, fully ignoring that it was made out of solid metal and provided even better cover than the rock.

Then, out of nowhere, a pack of antlions rose up from the sand, immediately charging at the bunker. At first, the soldier manning the turret tried to maintain them, but when he killed three and six more spawned, the shooting stopped and rifles were used instead. Seeing our opputurnity, we charged alongside the antlions, as the soldiers seemed rather occupied. Just like during our bugbait training, the antlions didn't attack us.

The soldiers alone had little to no problem gunning even such quantities of the bugs, but once we got to them, they were finished. Clara used her profficiency and reflexes, managing to score a clean headshot on one of them just as we got inside. He screamed briefly, his radio reporting his death, following by his comrades calling reinforcements to Hardpoint Nomad. Clara morbidly remarked how is it possible to 'scream without a head' and then chambered in another bullet into her rifle.

With all three of them dead, Darek mounted the machine gun and waited. A few mere moments after, a dropship arrived, dropping in more soldiers to fortity the next bunker and sent some of them our way. The machine gun made quick work of them, but the main problem surfaced after a brief period of silence, like a calm before the storm. The door on the path near the bunker suddenly burst open and we could see squads of soldiers rushing to our position.

I threw the bugbait a few times on the ground and, to my suprise, the antlions managed to punch through the path's concrete floor and attacked the squads, killing each soldier in just one or two pounces. Depite this, the Combine were still swarming the place and weren't very happy that we were here. Luck was on our side, though, as they only sent cannon fodder and none of their heavier or more trained units. As we went deeper into the bunker pathways, we acted as support for charging antlions. The bugs gave them quite a pounding.

"Perhaps we should have taken a stealthier approach," murmured Darek. "I doubt there's a single of them that doesn't know we're here." Clara let out a laugh.

"We could, but we didn't," she let out. "I dunno about you, but sneaking into this place is pretty much impossible. What we're doing may be crazy, but hey, it works." I merely listened to their conversation, but didn't respond to it, mainly due to having no idea what to say. 

Eventually, we reached the prison itself via the the tunnels connected to the bunker's pathways. The antlions were very helpful to us, but soon after, we ran into even bigger problems. The moment we opened the doors to the courtyards of the prison itself, we saw at least four towers, each equipped with a blinding blue spotlight and a squad of soldiers guarding it. All in all, our infiltration just got a lot more complicated. As Gunships arrived, all three of us got a very risky idea.

"Guys, if those are still the old models who have the belly lasers, we may be able to trick them," let out Darek. "What do you think about that?" Me and Clara thought for a while if the plan was good, but ultimately, we came to a sound solution.

"Yes, I think they are," responded Clara. "We can trick them into using their targettting systems to destroy the towers. If we're lucky, they'll crash into Novum Prospectum's main building and open up a way inside." I nodded in agreedment with the plan and reloaded my assault rifle, which I had looted from a Combine soldier. We waited for the Gunship to turn and then sprinted out to one of the towers, literally running for our very lives and putting faith in quite possibly the silliest plan we ever came up with.

As silly as it was, it worked. The Gunship targeted us with its laser when we were right underneath it, yet missed, hitting the tower instead. Then, as planned, the tower collapsed right into the main building of the prison, causing the soldiers to stop shooting and just stare at us with disbelief and awe. However, as we started climbing, they snapped out of it and the shooting resumed.

Clara, being the most acrobatic member of the team, helped us reach the room atop the tower in just a matter of seconds. Instead of continuing however, she just leaned to the side of the room for cover, examining a wound and pressing it to stop the bleeding.

"See that hole the tower made when it fell?" she let out, trying as best as she could to ignore the pain. "It's the most exposed thing in there, with no cover whatsoever. I would jump around there swiftly and at least give you some covering fire, but I'm out of options here." Derek and I patched the wound up with a hefty bandage. It wasn't the whole proper treatment, but since we were short on time, it had to do.

"Better?" I asked her and helped her stand up.

"Yeah, for now," she responded. "Thanks..." 

"Don't worry," I assured her. "We'll find some medical supplies and get you back to speed." Darek checked his backpack only to find it full of flies and empty. He was more than sure he took the right backpack, but then again, the rebels don't really have a variety of them and so, he assumed they were swapped. He probably made someone really, really lucky.

"Guys, I think we need ammo and stuff as well," Darek informed them. "Not to mention food. I'm so goddamn hungry." We had a puzzled look at him as we meant medical supplies and ammo, not food. As a matter of fact, food was the last thing we needed to worry about. After waiting a few brief moments after our chat, the shooting stopped, followed by reloading. Seizing the oppurturnity, we climbed to the top of the tower and into the prison.

As we climbed inside, confusion hit all three of us.  Much to our bad luck, the interior was just a repeated pattern of prison blocks and stairs, with no rooms for supplies. The Combine inside were so numerous, Darek joked that they were 'breeding just around the corner'. Despite our dwindling ammunition and Clara's dwindling health, we reached a security checkpoint of sorts, stocked with ammo, rifles and most importantly, medical supplies.

Being the tech geek of the group, Darek fiddled around with the computers looking for anything that resembled a map or access codes to other sides of the prison. In the meantime, I patched up Clara with the medical supplies we found. Soon after, a file was uncovered that most certainly played in our cards.

"Guys? There's an outbreak of antlions in the prison. Levels 10 to 7 are just reinforced with more soldiers, but lower ones have forcefields and turrets. I won't even dare to say what's beyond that," let out Darek. "I'm so gonna regret we didn't take the stealthy way." I approached Darek and gave him one of the rifles, which looked unlike any we've ever seen before.

"Well, neither turrets or forcefields are gonna stop us, that's for damn sure," I said, smiling. "We're made it this far already. Trixie and her 'friend' are counting on us to clear the way out for them. The Combine like quitters and I sure as hell won't give that to them!" Darek was reassured this was not a suicide mission but still had the uncanny feeling that something bad would happen. 

Suddenly, for no explainable reason, all doors except the ones to the security checkpoint closed. With a sigh, we walked out of the checkpoint and started looking for another way around. It would have been a relatively peaceful search amidst corpses of Combine and antlions, but the sounds of many, many footsteps proved us wrong. Instinctively, we just reloaded all of their weapons and waited for the force to arrive, each of us hiding in a different ambush spot around the tenth level of the prison. With the arrival of the night, we all had to rely on light, but so did the Combine.

And so, to even the odds, Darek turned the lights off. As the soldier's eyes glowed in the darness, it wasn't all that hard to aim for the head...