Battle of City 17

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Battle of City 17
Beginning	202-
End	202-
Location
City 17
Outcome
Decisive Resistance victory City 17 destroyed Combine forces on Earth isolated Creation of the Superportal
Belligerents
Resistance
Combine
Commanders
Gordon Freeman Barney Calhoun Alyx Vance Eli Vance Isaac Kleiner Judith Mossman
Advisors Wallace Breen† Overwatch Judith Mossman
Strength
City 17 citizenry: Resistance cells Citizen militia
Sector 17 Overwatch: At least 9 APCs At least 22 Gunships At least 32 Dropships At least 28 Striders At least 14 Advisors
Casualties
At least 270-374+ killed True number likely much higher.
At least confirmed 891+ killed At least 6 APCs destroyed At least 6 Gunships destroyed At least 11 Striders destroyed At least 1 Dropship destroyed True number likely much higher.

The Battle of City 17 was a the first large-scale battle of The Uprising, fought between the Resistance and the Combine in the urban districts of City 17. The citizenry of City 17 began a massive armed revolution against the Overwatch occupation forces after the destruction of Nova Prospekt. For well over a week, the two sides engaged in fierce and protracted urban fighting, which saw much of the city destroyed, particularly the districts close to the Citadel.

The Combine hold on the city centre was finally broken after an offensive led by Barney Calhoun and Gordon Freeman, enabling a raid on the Citadel. The raid subsequently destroyed the Citadel's teleporter, overloading the reactor, causing significant damage to the superstructure and isolating all Combine forces on Earth. An unintended side-effect was the creation of an infant superportal. The instability of the reactor core prompted a mass evacuation while Combine forces laid waste to the city, as heavy fighting continued to rage in the streets.

As the final civilian evacuations departed the city, the Citadel's core collapsed, triggering a dark energy flare which destroyed the city. Following the battle, rebel forces began to gather at White Forest where they planned to capitalize on the Combine's weakness and destroy the superportal, while Combine troops were scattered across the Outlands, where they began hunting the Resistance.

Prelude

The unexpected return of Gordon Freeman to City 17 had galvanised the people to rise up and resist the Combine. Freeman's quasi-mythical status among the minds of the citizens garnered the attention of the Combine, who sought to detain or kill Freeman. An initial attempt to apprehend Freeman failed, which saw him escape to the laboratory of his friend and former Black Mesa colleague, Eli Vance. A subsequent raid on the rebel outposts failed to capture Freeman, although Eli was taken prisoner and detained in Nova Prospekt. Freeman and Eli's daughter, Alyx Vance, began a mission to infiltrate the prison and free Eli.

After escaping through Ravenholm, a series of Combine raids on rebel coastal settlements failed to neutralize Freeman. Freeman and Alyx then launched a raid on Nova Prospekt with the aid of hundreds of Antlions, who swarmed the complex after Freeman deactivated the facility's defences. Although the mission to rescue Eli was a failure, the raid resulted in the inadvertent destruction of the entire facility. News of the destruction of Nova Prospekt, a bitterly hated and feared symbol of Combine oppression, inspired the citizens of City 17 to launch an armed revolt against Combine rule.

Initial fighting

For over a week, the citizenry of City 17 took up arms and openly engaged the Sector 17 Overwatch troops occupying the city. The Overwatch had set up a heavily fortified command post near the Citadel to coordinate their forces and counter the rebels. The outer residential districts, mainly policed by Civil Protection and home to much of City 17's populace, became a battleground. Although Civil Protection were supported by a handful of Striders, as well as mine-laying Shield Scanners deployed to observe and limit the movements of the rebels, they struggled to contain the insurrection. Rebel fighters began tearing down symbols of Combine rule, such as Wallace Breen's broadcast monitors, and breaking through defensive hardpoints at key locations.

A fallen bridge in City 17, destroyed by the Uprising.

However, closer to the city centre nearer the Citadel, the Combine had at their disposal well-equipped and well-supplied battalions of Overwatch Soldiers, reinforced by Synth ground and air support, and the rebels were unable to penetrate deeper into the city. The result was a military stalemate - the Combine could not dislodge the entrenched rebels from their positions in the residential districts, and the rebels could not break through the Combine's defensive lines to reach the inner city. Combat soon became building to building, room by room, and casualties mounted on both sides.

In an attempt to mitigate this attrition warfare and turn the tide, the Combine bombarded fortified rebel strongholds with headcrab canisters, resulting in outbreaks of the parasites throughout the city, killing scores of rebels and razing entire apartment blocks. This strategy backfired on the Combine, as Combine soldiers themselves fell prey to the parasites, and forced them to engage mutated humans as well as rebel fighters. Heavy artillery units, such as Striders, tore entire blocks apart to neutralize rebel troops. The ruined buildings became perfect cover for Combine snipers; some lone snipers pinned down whole squads, stalling the advance closer to the Citadel until they could be flushed out.

Combine forces meanwhile utilized energy barriers, barricades, and mobile walls to isolate rebel forces and slow their progress. In an effort to break the deadlock, Barney Calhoun began amassing fighters from all over the city to staging area, with the goal of launching an offensive against the Citadel.

The turning of the tide

A group of rebels pull down a Breencast monitor.

With the absence of Freeman and Alyx, many in the Resistance, including Isaac Kleiner and Calhoun, had assumed that they had been killed in the explosion that destroyed Nova Prospekt. In truth, the damage to the Combine translocation device resulted in a relativistic delay; whilst Freeman and Alyx experienced only mere moments, outside the teleport sequence over a week had passed.

Following their return, Freeman rallied the rebels and began pushing deeper into the city. With the unexpected return of their hero, the rebels, with renewed fighting spirit, found success in breaching the Combine's defenses in the residential areas. Gordon and Alyx eventually reunited, and the pair led an effort to disable a series of generators powering fortified gates in order to loosen the Combine's grip on the districts closer to the Citadel. While these efforts were successful, Combine troops managed to capture Alyx Vance.

A strider patrols the Overwatch Nexus

Proceeding deeper into the city and smashing through the Combine lines, Freeman linked up with Calhoun, and together launched an assault on the Combine's field headquarters, the Overwatch Nexus, bolstered by a squad of rebels. Heavy pulse artillery emplaced upon the roof had so far decimated any rebels daring to attack, so Freeman's small fireteam resolved to disable it. Slipping through the outer courtyard and infiltrating the building, they freed captured rebel fighters and disabled the generators powering the artillery, allowing reinforcements to pour into the central city districts. The Overwatch Nexus then fell to the Resistance in a major blow to the Combine.

Determined to re-acquire their lost command post, Overwatch forces launched a ferocious counter-offensive, heavily reinforced with gunships and Striders. Despite suffering heavy losses, the counter-offensive was repulsed with near-total casualties, severely disrupting the Combine's defensive advantage against the rebels. The path to the Citadel was now open.

Raid on the Citadel

With Overwatch forces struggling to contain rebel fighters, who were now closing in on the Citadel, the Combine relinquished defensive efforts to large reserves of gunships and Striders. These heavy units inflicted grievous losses on the rebels, and caused extensive infrastructural damage, reducing the streets to rubble. In turn, this provided excellent cover for rebel rocketeers to destroy the synths. Large groups of rebels were soon at the base of the Citadel, where they attempted to take the high ground in order to push back the Striders and set up a staging area to breach the Citadel walls.

"This close to the Citadel, they've turned the streets over to Striders."

While the fighting raged on throughout the city, Freeman, having smashed through the last bastion of Overwatch defenses, infiltrated the Citadel. Despite wreaking havoc on the Combine forces within, Freeman ultimately allowed himself to be captured, and was taken directly to Wallace Breen's office, where he also held Eli and Alyx Vance. Breen hoped to use the captured Resistance leaders as leverage over the Combine to strike more favorable terms with them to his own personal benefit. When Eli refused to order the rebels to stand down, Breen threatened to send them to the Combine Overworld, and allow Judith Mossman to continue Eli's work on local translocation technology. Objecting to this arrangement, Mossman freed the prisoners.

Breen fled to the Citadel's teleporter, hoping to reach the Overworld, where he would bargain for reinforcements to help quash the rebellion. Freeman overloaded the teleporter's reactor, causing it to explode. While Freeman was initially extracted, Vortigaunts interfered, burying Freeman and Alyx in the rubble at the base of the Citadel.

Final hours

Alyx Vance surveys the devastated City 17.

The ramifications of the teleporter's destruction were immense: it sheared off the top of the Citadel, causing massive structural damage, and overloaded the building's power grid, triggering an irreversible meltdown of the reactor core. The overload disabled the Combine's global Citadel network, precariously isolating all Combine forces garrisoned on Earth. An unintended side-effect was the deactivation of City 17's network of forcefields and thumpers, allowing the Xenian wildlife that inhabited the surrounding countryside to infest the city. Troops on both sides soon found themselves caught in a multi-pronged crossfire as alien wildlife tore through the city. The destruction of the teleporter had one other major consequence: a spacetime anomaly at the top of the Citadel, indicating the birth of an infant superportal.

The Resistance had been able to usurp control over the Combine's broadcast system; formerly used to disseminate Combine propaganda, it was now used to coordinate rebel efforts. Rebel fighters also restored power to a freight station as well as various other commuter transport systems, permitting the evacuation of rebels and citizens from the city. The protracted and ferocious combat took its toll on the morale of rebel fighters, with some feeling that the totalitarian, though nevertheless comparatively safe, rule of the Combine was preferable to the heavy fighting they had experienced, and began to express dissatisfaction with some rebel leaders, such as Isaac Kleiner. They came to characterize Black Mesa's reckless pursuit of scientific advancement as the true cause of their plight.

Freeman and Alyx voluntarily infiltrated the damaged Citadel to affect a temporary stabilization of the core, buying more time for evacuations. There, they discovered the Combine were planning on using what power remained in the core to send a transmission through the superportal, requesting reinforcements to crush the revolution. However, the mere act of transmitting the message would collapse the core, causing a dark energy flare.

With the reactor steadily collapsing, both sides executed a mutual evacuation from the city. Having already lost control of the situation, the Combine withdrew a significant portion of its remaining forces from the city, leaving behind numerous scattered and often unsupported regiments of troops to delay the rebels as long as possible. Striders in particular razed entire districts to the ground, destroying vast swathes of the city. These forces could not contain the rebels, however, as they evacuated as many refugees as they could before withdrawing on the restored train network.

As the final trains departed, the Combine sent the transmission packet, collapsing the Citadel's core. The core exploded in a dark energy flare, utterly destroying what remained of the city and most of the surrounding area, finally ending the battle.

Aftermath

The superportal looms over City 17's destroyed remains.

The heavy fighting marked the first time the Combine had suffered a major defeat during their totalitarian occupation of Earth, and a turning point in The Uprising. The base of operations for the Combine on Earth had been destroyed, with heavy casualties on both sides in troops and materiel. In particular, the Combine garrison on Earth were now isolated units, and with their Citadel network disabled across the planet, the opportunity was afforded for humanity to begin a global revolution against the fragmented Combine.

While rebel forces and refugees made for the heavily-defended stronghold of White Forest, The Combine were scattered across the Outlands, exposing them to defeat in detail, and leading to isolated fighting with rebel garrisons in these regions. The nucleus of their leadership, the Shu'ulathoi, who had escaped the doomed Citadel in escape pods, had crashed across the countryside, often without nearby support, thereby exposing them to groups of Vortigaunts, who dedicated themselves to hunting and killing them.

However, the Combine remained a major threat and began to plot a restore its power, with its garrison having one final strategic option available, using the matured superportal to bring reinforcements through and re-establish their dominion over Earth. This compelled the rebel garrison at White Forest to concoct a plan using the Xenium Resonator to seal the superportal and isolate themselves from the Combine Overworld for good, leading to a fierce, but ultimate unsuccessful attack on the rebel base.