Resisting Arrest
Having been reasonably satisfied with some of the advice he'd gotten from the Nexus (despite an unfortunate argument with the "girl" whose invention had put him in his current situation), Grif ran around the warehouse, collecting the three Black Ops Chick corpses and bringing them to the surface access door. Before he used them, though, he decided that even if these were men who would make an obvious trap by hiding behind crates stacked in a corridor on the other side of a thick, reinforced door, he'd give them a chance to discuss things peaceably.
He nearly switched on his radio transmitter, but changed his mind at the last moment, curious to see what would happen if he didn't make it obvious that he could do that. Instead, he jacked up the volume on his helmet's speakers so his shouting would be clearly audible. "Hey! You guys in there! I totally know you're waiting for me to go in there so you can jump me. Now we can go through this stupid song-and-dance, or you can come out and we can discuss things like civilized people. How 'bout it?"
The Marines' radio frequencies suddenly burst to life, questions going back and forth. Another, more forceful voice -- the commander, most likely -- cut across the channel, issuing the order, "Squad. Quiet down." Grif had to give them credit for apparently having gear that kept their speech from carrying outside of the radio. Otherwise, how much worse they would've given themselves away would've just been embarrassing.
So much for peaceable, Grif thought to himself. "Okay! If that's how you want to play it, I suppose I'll just have to go in there. I'll give you 'til the count of three!" He picked up one of the corpses by the neck and belt. "One! Twoooo!" As he called out, "Three!" he lobbed the corpse through the doorway.
The door slammed shut. Amplified audio pickups and enhanced hearing gave him a pretty good idea of the sounds inside. There was a click -- as of a light switch being turned off -- and then several meaty thumping noises.
The Marines' commander radioed again. "Wait. Something's not right. Turn the lights back on."
There was another click, and then a great deal of horrified shouting over the radio. Swears featured prominently and gave Grif the satisfaction of knowing that he was right to follow Ether's advice. Now, to be ready to follow up on the initial psychological damage, he picked up the other two corpses, one hand in the back of each combat harness, and held them as shields in front of him. The door opened, and Grif barreled through it.
It couldn't be said that corpses were a weapon that the UNSC trained its soldiers in using. However, when the basic goal is to just use them as shields to take hits for you, and to occasionally smack an opponent for you, it's not that difficult to learn. He eventually let them go, anyway; even with his advantages, he was fighting an 8-to-1 battle, numbers-wise, and they could always get lucky, so he couldn't afford to play with them too much. Switching instead to direct attacks, he started breaking arms, legs, and ribs, until finally all of them were on the ground, conscious but not very enthusiastic about going anywhere.
He reached down and picked up a soldier who managed to stay conscious, pulled off his face mask, and held him up with one hand by the front of his combat vest. "Hi! It's been suggested that I should ask you... With the way you had this corridor laid out, just how fucking stupid did you think I'd be, to just walk in here?"
The Marine struggled a little, but didn't have much chance of fighting Grif off at this point. Finally, he shrugged and sighed a laugh, his pain making him a little giddy. "Last chance to finally bag you, before you reached open air on the surface. We were originally told to expect someone from the science team, but then you showed up instead. What the fuck are you, anyway?"
Grif shook him, getting some satisfactory grunts of extra pain in response. "I'm asking the fucking questions, cockbite. Assuming you did 'bag' me, what were you supposed to do then?"
"What d'you think? Drag you top-side for questioning. Maybe crack open that armor of yours, try to find out what's inside. I had my way, we'd just toss you into the trash compactor and turn it on."
"Yeah, well, news flash for you and your guys: I've got advance intel on how all this bullshit's gonna go. There's a nuke coming, and I'm going to leave you all here... But I'm also going to take off your combat gear, and make sure all your arms and legs are broken, so you can't call for help or get to that health station over there. You can suck on that, counting the hours while I run around, trying to save some more worthwhile lives."
Ether, if you're monitoring this, your advice worked pretty well. Psych warfare makes the regular kind even better. Thanks.
--Grif
Grif rounded the corner of the corridor on his way out of the building. Jogging along, he heard the sound that he'd come to recognize as heralding a teleportation. Sure enough, across his HUD flashed the message: Displacement energies detected.
From his occasional conversations with the Black Mesa scientists over the computer networks, he was able to share what information he had on how teleportation works in his universe (including copies of the targeting software used in the Blood Gulch teleporter, which was much more advanced than their own) and what his armor's sensors were capable of. They, in turn, were able to share with him improved code for pinpointing and analyzing the energy signals related to teleportation -- or "displacement", as it was occasionally called in Black Mesa parlance.
Even as he spun around to check behind him, he was surprised to see that the waypoint his armor set was almost right next to him... and down. Looking at the grating along the bottom of the wall to his right, he could look into a storage closet. There was a guard standing there... and he was glowing green in a fashion that Grif found disturbingly familiar.
"Hey! Buddy!" The guard looked up at him through the grate, surprise and confusion on his face. "You okay there, man?"
"I... I don't know. I was... I'm... Huh?"
"Rrrright. I'll be right down. Sit tight." Grif called up his map, which allowed him to quickly navigate the turns necessary to get to the closet's door. It was closed and locked, but apparently, this close to the surface, they just started using regular wooden doors, so it wasn't hard for him to rip it off of its hinges.
Infinite harmonic reflux in progress. Grif wasn't sure just what that meant, but it didn't sound terribly good. In the meantime, the few moments' pause had apparently given the guard a chance to recover his wits. His eyes became more lucid as he looked up at the orange-armored man entering the room.
"Wow. They weren't kidding when they said you were a big guy."
"Yeah, yeah. Look, you know what's going on with your green glow there?"
"Not really. Dr. Rosenberg said something involving 'resonance' and 'displacement,' but..." The guard slumped a bit, looking like he might fall over.
Displacement event imminent.
Acting against his instinct about contact with that glow, Grif reached out and put a hand on the guard's shoulder to steady him. The green displacement energy seemed at first to spread out to encompass both of them. Instead, Grif's shields absorbed and shed the energy, drawing all of it in. After a few seconds of yellow and green light at war with one another, both faded out, and Grif heard the warning tone that presaged the shield's recharge cycle.
"Whoa. How'd you do that, man?"
"I... didn't, really. I dunno, man, I may be from the future, but I'm not a scientist. I'll just chalk it up to freaky different-universes shit and count our blessings, 'cause you didn't seem to be doing too well." As the charging cycle completed, the HUD's message -- Displacement energies detected. -- faded from view.
"Yeah. Whoo." The guard took a deep breath, finally getting the strength to fully stand on his own again. "Man. Of course, I'd just been fighting to get to a teleporter, and there was an explosion... I got bounced from where I was supposed to go, to somewhere in that... Xen place, and now here. Couldn't really get my bearings, but I think I'm okay now. You're that guy, Grif, right? I heard you were looking for me. I'm Barney Calhoun."
"Oh, hey, no shit? Awesome!" Sure enough, the tag on the guard's uniform did have the name Calhoun on it... underneath the armor vest, which definitely looked like it'd seen better days, as did the man wearing it. "Okay, we gotta finish getting to Lambda Complex, but first, I think that explosion you mentioned took more out of you than you realize. C'mon. The nearest first aid station's not that far back, and I just happen to know where you can get one of those combat vests that the Marine assholes are using. I'll explain everything else as we go."
Gordon, Alyx:
Found Calhoun. According to him, Dr. Rosenberg had him set up some gizmo in Xen that'd let them bounce teleporter signals off it from one point on Earth to another. Folks in Lambda Complex seem to think they can use it with targeting code I brought from home. We'll see once we get there.
--Grif
He nearly switched on his radio transmitter, but changed his mind at the last moment, curious to see what would happen if he didn't make it obvious that he could do that. Instead, he jacked up the volume on his helmet's speakers so his shouting would be clearly audible. "Hey! You guys in there! I totally know you're waiting for me to go in there so you can jump me. Now we can go through this stupid song-and-dance, or you can come out and we can discuss things like civilized people. How 'bout it?"
The Marines' radio frequencies suddenly burst to life, questions going back and forth. Another, more forceful voice -- the commander, most likely -- cut across the channel, issuing the order, "Squad. Quiet down." Grif had to give them credit for apparently having gear that kept their speech from carrying outside of the radio. Otherwise, how much worse they would've given themselves away would've just been embarrassing.
So much for peaceable, Grif thought to himself. "Okay! If that's how you want to play it, I suppose I'll just have to go in there. I'll give you 'til the count of three!" He picked up one of the corpses by the neck and belt. "One! Twoooo!" As he called out, "Three!" he lobbed the corpse through the doorway.
The door slammed shut. Amplified audio pickups and enhanced hearing gave him a pretty good idea of the sounds inside. There was a click -- as of a light switch being turned off -- and then several meaty thumping noises.
The Marines' commander radioed again. "Wait. Something's not right. Turn the lights back on."
There was another click, and then a great deal of horrified shouting over the radio. Swears featured prominently and gave Grif the satisfaction of knowing that he was right to follow Ether's advice. Now, to be ready to follow up on the initial psychological damage, he picked up the other two corpses, one hand in the back of each combat harness, and held them as shields in front of him. The door opened, and Grif barreled through it.
It couldn't be said that corpses were a weapon that the UNSC trained its soldiers in using. However, when the basic goal is to just use them as shields to take hits for you, and to occasionally smack an opponent for you, it's not that difficult to learn. He eventually let them go, anyway; even with his advantages, he was fighting an 8-to-1 battle, numbers-wise, and they could always get lucky, so he couldn't afford to play with them too much. Switching instead to direct attacks, he started breaking arms, legs, and ribs, until finally all of them were on the ground, conscious but not very enthusiastic about going anywhere.
He reached down and picked up a soldier who managed to stay conscious, pulled off his face mask, and held him up with one hand by the front of his combat vest. "Hi! It's been suggested that I should ask you... With the way you had this corridor laid out, just how fucking stupid did you think I'd be, to just walk in here?"
The Marine struggled a little, but didn't have much chance of fighting Grif off at this point. Finally, he shrugged and sighed a laugh, his pain making him a little giddy. "Last chance to finally bag you, before you reached open air on the surface. We were originally told to expect someone from the science team, but then you showed up instead. What the fuck are you, anyway?"
Grif shook him, getting some satisfactory grunts of extra pain in response. "I'm asking the fucking questions, cockbite. Assuming you did 'bag' me, what were you supposed to do then?"
"What d'you think? Drag you top-side for questioning. Maybe crack open that armor of yours, try to find out what's inside. I had my way, we'd just toss you into the trash compactor and turn it on."
"Yeah, well, news flash for you and your guys: I've got advance intel on how all this bullshit's gonna go. There's a nuke coming, and I'm going to leave you all here... But I'm also going to take off your combat gear, and make sure all your arms and legs are broken, so you can't call for help or get to that health station over there. You can suck on that, counting the hours while I run around, trying to save some more worthwhile lives."
Ether, if you're monitoring this, your advice worked pretty well. Psych warfare makes the regular kind even better. Thanks.
--Grif
Grif rounded the corner of the corridor on his way out of the building. Jogging along, he heard the sound that he'd come to recognize as heralding a teleportation. Sure enough, across his HUD flashed the message: Displacement energies detected.
From his occasional conversations with the Black Mesa scientists over the computer networks, he was able to share what information he had on how teleportation works in his universe (including copies of the targeting software used in the Blood Gulch teleporter, which was much more advanced than their own) and what his armor's sensors were capable of. They, in turn, were able to share with him improved code for pinpointing and analyzing the energy signals related to teleportation -- or "displacement", as it was occasionally called in Black Mesa parlance.
Even as he spun around to check behind him, he was surprised to see that the waypoint his armor set was almost right next to him... and down. Looking at the grating along the bottom of the wall to his right, he could look into a storage closet. There was a guard standing there... and he was glowing green in a fashion that Grif found disturbingly familiar.
"Hey! Buddy!" The guard looked up at him through the grate, surprise and confusion on his face. "You okay there, man?"
"I... I don't know. I was... I'm... Huh?"
"Rrrright. I'll be right down. Sit tight." Grif called up his map, which allowed him to quickly navigate the turns necessary to get to the closet's door. It was closed and locked, but apparently, this close to the surface, they just started using regular wooden doors, so it wasn't hard for him to rip it off of its hinges.
Infinite harmonic reflux in progress. Grif wasn't sure just what that meant, but it didn't sound terribly good. In the meantime, the few moments' pause had apparently given the guard a chance to recover his wits. His eyes became more lucid as he looked up at the orange-armored man entering the room.
"Wow. They weren't kidding when they said you were a big guy."
"Yeah, yeah. Look, you know what's going on with your green glow there?"
"Not really. Dr. Rosenberg said something involving 'resonance' and 'displacement,' but..." The guard slumped a bit, looking like he might fall over.
Displacement event imminent.
Acting against his instinct about contact with that glow, Grif reached out and put a hand on the guard's shoulder to steady him. The green displacement energy seemed at first to spread out to encompass both of them. Instead, Grif's shields absorbed and shed the energy, drawing all of it in. After a few seconds of yellow and green light at war with one another, both faded out, and Grif heard the warning tone that presaged the shield's recharge cycle.
"Whoa. How'd you do that, man?"
"I... didn't, really. I dunno, man, I may be from the future, but I'm not a scientist. I'll just chalk it up to freaky different-universes shit and count our blessings, 'cause you didn't seem to be doing too well." As the charging cycle completed, the HUD's message -- Displacement energies detected. -- faded from view.
"Yeah. Whoo." The guard took a deep breath, finally getting the strength to fully stand on his own again. "Man. Of course, I'd just been fighting to get to a teleporter, and there was an explosion... I got bounced from where I was supposed to go, to somewhere in that... Xen place, and now here. Couldn't really get my bearings, but I think I'm okay now. You're that guy, Grif, right? I heard you were looking for me. I'm Barney Calhoun."
"Oh, hey, no shit? Awesome!" Sure enough, the tag on the guard's uniform did have the name Calhoun on it... underneath the armor vest, which definitely looked like it'd seen better days, as did the man wearing it. "Okay, we gotta finish getting to Lambda Complex, but first, I think that explosion you mentioned took more out of you than you realize. C'mon. The nearest first aid station's not that far back, and I just happen to know where you can get one of those combat vests that the Marine assholes are using. I'll explain everything else as we go."
Gordon, Alyx:
Found Calhoun. According to him, Dr. Rosenberg had him set up some gizmo in Xen that'd let them bounce teleporter signals off it from one point on Earth to another. Folks in Lambda Complex seem to think they can use it with targeting code I brought from home. We'll see once we get there.
--Grif