Borealis

"Destroy that ship! Whatever it takes!"

- Eli Vance

The Borealis is an Aperture Science shipping vessel introduced in Half-Life 2: Episode Two. The ship disappeared, along with part of the drydock upon which it was stationed, under mysterious circumstances. It became a legend amongst the scientific community; it was assumed, given Aperture's infamously blasé attitude towards safety and accepted scientific principles, that the Borealis contained an immensely powerful and dangerous secret.

Episode Two


Many years after the Combine invasion of Earth, Judith Mossman, a Resistance operative, found the Borealis in an Arctic location. She was attacked by Combine forces soon after, and was only able to send an incomplete transmission of her discovery to the White Forest Resistance base. This was intercepted by the Combine, and in turn stolen back by Gordon Freeman and Alyx Vance from the Citadel Core during their flight from City 17.

Mossman was cunning enough to encrypt images of the Borealis itself within her message. Once Eli Vance and Isaac Kleiner had decoded these and realized the full significance of the transmission, a rift opened between the two Resistance leaders. Kleiner believed the technology the Borealis contained could be used by the Resistance against the Combine; Vance, haunted by memories of the Black Mesa Incident, believed that the Borealis had to be destroyed at all costs.

It is not known whether the Combine know of the Borealis, and consequently if they themselves have some interest in the ship's contents. Given the attack upon Mossman's forces, the interception of her message and the fate of Eli Vance, it seems very likely.

Episode Three
The Borealis is expected to appear in Half-Life 2: Episode Three. The first revealed concept art reveals a ship, which on it reads "B-EALIS", where the O and R are covered by Combine technology, stuck in ice, and Advisors floating through the canyon, hinting (not very subtly) that the Combine will have already discovered the ship when Gordon gets to it.

Behind the scenes

 * The Borealis was originally to appear in Half-Life 2, between two other cut chapters, the Air Exchange and Kraken Base.


 * It appears to be based on one of the United States Coast Guard research icebreakers, the USCGC Polar Sea, the USCGC Polar Star (both sister ships) or the USCGC Healy (which is bigger and more recent than the former).


 * Several images can be found in the Episode Two texture files, in the folders "effects" and "Props". It is unknown if they are to be considered as Easter Eggs or as a real part of Mossman's message, as hidden files or files simply not revealed in-game.
 * One of this images shows two of the unknown scientists of Kleiner's Black Mesa main team photography, a bearded man and the only woman, posing in front of the Borealis. This could emphasize the rivalry between Aperture Science and Black Mesa, since these two scientists might be connected to both companies.

Trivia
The Borealis' teleportation shares many similarities to the urban legend of the Philadelphia Experiment in which the U.S.S. Eldridge was rumored to have been rendered invisible by experimental technology, and in some versions of the story the ship had accidentally teleported from its dry dock to a U.S. naval base over 200 miles away. And in the most radical versions of the story, the ship achieved accidental time travel.

List of appearances

 * Half-Life 2: Raising the Bar
 * Half-Life 2: Episode Two