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The Siege of London
London Was A Bastion.
London Was A Bastion.
Imagine, if you will, the most heavily fortified city you could muster in the limited space of your mind. Imagine walls that reach the heavens, crack through them, and tickle the soles of God’s feet. Imagine manned towers so well-armed that, through sheer small-arms fire, could melt down an M1 Abrams tank into slag, and render the occupants liquid slurry to ooze into the dirt. Imagine the miles of buildings torn down, and replaced with rows upon rows of headcrab canister launchers, enough to make Ravenholm seem like a mere carpet bomb to the biological nuclear payload we hold in our arsenal, eternally on standby. Imagine the men and women who devoted themselves to the ideals of the Combine, fully and wholly, willing to give their lives for it, and the lives of anyone else. Imagine London.
Now, imagine it falling in less than two days.
For 5 years, we’d been at this war. We’d only officially deemed it a war after the City 17 Citadel had fallen, but every Civil Protection officer, every Transhuman Soldier, and every member of Parliament knew that what was happening was more than some mere petty insurrection. Rebels were part of life, and always had been, for 15-odd years. Then, abruptly, they became organized. They stopped becoming rabble. They started becoming an army. We’d recognized individual rebel cells, spotted iconography, started learning patterns and distinct, tell-tale signs. Then, they all vanished. Replaced only with a Union Jack.
I’d take weird and esoteric vortigaunt-cults over nationalists, any day.
On the night of the siege, I was awoken to screaming from the Ordinals. Orders from the radios, belting out demands. I’d never heard the soldiers so chaotic. Like they were panicking. I suited up, best as I could, and moved to where I was ordered to stand guard. The Eastern wall of London, this giant of a thing that encircled the entire city, and rendered it a fortress to those that seek to assail it. By fuck, did they seek to assail us. I looked over, and saw division after division of regimented, disciplined men and women standing outside, in the wasteland. I saw trucks and buggies and ramshackle tanks, evenly distributed amongst the hordes of soldiers before us. I saw the tattered remnants of our own armor, painted in the semblance of blue, and red. I saw each squad accompanied by a vortigaunt clad in tailored robes, hoods over their heads. Strangest of all, I saw a figure amidst the army, wearing what looked like the armor a medieval knight would have. I assumed he must have stolen it from a museum for use as makeshift armor. It was only when he was handed a fucking longsword by a particularly well-armoured rebel that I realized that, no, he was the army’s resident nutcase. There’s always one.
I saw the soldiers standing beside me, silent amidst the rain, and cracks of thunder. In stark contrast, I could hear the panting from the CPs nearby, the fear palpable in their vocoded, distorted breath. I could see the Commander, not too far away, watching from the safety of a tower. I could hear chatter on the nearby radios. Then, there was that god-awful groaning. The headcrab canisters opened, and with a screech of hellfire and propellant, they were launched into the sky. I don’t know how many were fired, but I could smell the smoke through my mask by the time it had finished. The sky was alight. Then, just as quickly, it became pitch black in the heavens once more. I couldn’t help but squint in confusion, or perhaps concern as I saw the response from the rebels. They didn’t panic, or scramble for cover, or raise their guns to the skies. No, they counted. Silently, I watched their mouths move in perfect sync, counting one, two, three, four…
The canisters hit the ground. I counted less than a second before the barrel of a gun buried itself inside the ejection chamber of each one, and rattled sickening gunfire inside it. Hundreds, maybe thousands of headcrabs were rendered extinct with clinical precision, before even a single one had escaped their canister. The radio beside me burst with yelling that not even the clasped hand of the Ordinal could silence. The soldiers were scared. The CPs, fucking hell, they were scared. We were too caught up in the shock of what had happened to notice the congregation of vortigaunts prepare their magic, and obliterate the Commander’s tower in a single, surgical strike. The radio became useless from then on. It functioned. No one planned on using it from then on, though.
The rebels pushed forward, as beams of green, otherworldly energy bombarded the walls, cracking the infrastructure enough to let their battering-ram jeeps smash through it, and into the city. I’d only half gotten down the wall before bullets began to rip past me. I’d have probably died if a soldier didn’t take one to the head, fall forward, and end up pushing me down the steps. I was down an arm after landing on my collarbone, but I was up a life compared to all the poor bastards now lying in a messy heap on each step, or bundled over the railing. I got up, realized my arm was broken, and screamed, a little. It hurt, to be truthful. I began to run, because there was no way in hell I was going to fight an army of rebels with no Commander, and every Ordinal and Soldier getting picked off like tics on a cat’s fur by the swarm of men coming in through the hole in the wall. I think the only CPs that got hit were accidents, or rebels defending themselves from particularly fanatic units.
I couldn’t believe half the shit I saw whilst I fled. Any time a rebel got hit with a stray bullet, the vortigaunts surrounded him like piranhas to a greased-up foot in the water. Within seconds, that rebel was back to fighting condition, with even the bullet hole in their coat gone. The Knight-looking bastard, he pushed forward to the very front, picking fights with whatever Combine wanted to step up to him. Like fuck that was a good idea. Three CPs cleaved in half, a Soldier bisected, and the last thing I saw before I managed to round the corner was him impaling an Elite after cracking the ocular of his helmet with his fist. I knew rebels had a steady supply of drugs, but I didn’t expect them to dose their own men with the supply. No chance was I sticking around to see the results of this. I moved through the barracks, ducking under gunfire and avoiding the shrapnel of concrete sent flying out from the blasts of vort-beams. God, my ribs were in fucking pieces by the time I got close to the door that let me out the back of the barracks. I’d thought, if I could get out here, I could escape. Get away from the frontline, and push back to some kind of hardpoint, surely.
My hopes were dashed when the door swung open, and a fanatic rebel leveled a shotgun at me. I'm Grateful for kevlar armor. Less grateful for the ribs I’d lost after my back crashed into the ground. I withdrew my pistol as the bastard chambered his next shot, and I fired. Fuck me, my aim was absymal, but I had the excuse of a bleeding heart. I hit him in the thigh, I think. He dropped regardless, and yelled out in pain. I tried to fire again, but my finger wouldn’t move. I tried, and tried, but the fucker was locked. Maybe I was going into shock. Maybe I was losing too much blood. I heard a yell to my right. With a quick glance, I saw through the broken rubble of the wall, out to the courtyards of London. The Knight moved to stand atop a vehicle. He rose the dismembered head of the Commander high above himself, as the soldiers around him cheered in merry satisfaction, and continued their slaughter, unabated.
I heard a shotgun rack.
I turned my h
"With London in our grasp, the Combine are shattered. They will flee. They will form their last strongholds, and we will break them just as we have broken their Capital."
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