As he approaches Station 7 Gordon can see the G-Man standing in the middle of it before walking off, but is nowhere to be seen once Gordon enters the barn himself. This station turns out to be a goner like Station 6 before it, its occupants likewise having been zombified.
Further along his journey a canal lock shuts in front of Gordon, and he has to make his way to the control room to open it back up. It's at this point the Hunter Chopper shows up once again to harass him, but he forces it to fly away with an emplacement gun in the control room. The chopper returns not long after though, and continues to chase him until he manages to hide from it in a drainage ditch. Gordon then comes across another Resistance camp, where he gets briefed on where Black Mesa East is and a Vortigaunt gets his airboat fitted with a pulse cannon that he's told can level the playing field against the forces pursuing him.
And level the playing field it does. With the big gun now attached to his vehicle, Gordon makes short work of the Civil Protection units waiting right outside the camp, and scares the Hunter Chopper into bugging off.
Several squads of CPs and rocket-shooting APCs later, Gordon is locked into one final confrontation with the now-repaired Hunter Chopper right outside Black Mesa East. Following a harrowing boss battle with copious amounts of pulse gunfire and bombs, Gordon is ultimately able to shoot the chopper down. With that out of the way, it's smooth sailing the rest of the way to Eli's lab.
This chapter contains examples of:
- Battle Against the Sunset: Gordon Freeman's final showdown with the APC chopper that has been tormenting him for much of the chapter in the final map, occurring in a partially depleted reservoir at Golden Hour.
- Cool Boat: An airboat that can run on land, that later gets fitted with a cannon that was ripped off an attack helicopter. The Mudskipper is specifically equipped with it to take down the one(s) that caused such grief during the earlier parts of the chapter. As the Railroad Rebel says, "I like to bring a little irony to a firefight." If you don't monkey with it, the recharge and firing periods are the same as the hunter chopper, but you do a lot more damage to things with it than is done to you, just as with the AR2 in the above listing.
- Creator Cameo: The chant of the singing Vortigaunt hidden at the end of the chapter is done by none other than Gabe Newell during his "Tuvan throat singing phase."
- Cutting the Knot: A gate blocks your path so you're supposed to exit your boat and go through a building full of Metrocops to reach an explosive barrel and shoot it, so a hanging pile of metal beams will swing and break the gate. Or you could just use your pistol to shoot the barrel from really far away and skip the building entirely. The only reason to get out is to get some grenades.
- Hoist by Their Own Petard: The Hunter Chopper is ultimately brought down by the same gun that's mounted on it. Lampshaded by the rebel that offers to put the gun on Gordon's boat, who relishes the idea of "bringing irony to a firefight".
- Lord British Postulate: The Hunter Chopper is meant to be a Advancing Boss of Doom, as you're not meant to destroy it until your airboat gets fitted with a cannon powerful enough to damage it. It can be damaged by the rocket launcher, but you don't get that until later, and the chopper has so much HP (5,600) that even if you give yourself the rocket launcher via cheats it would take an extremely long time to bring it down that way, but ultimately it's still possible.
- Meta Guy: The All-Knowing Vortigaunt
. When Gordon interacts with him, he makes various cryptic statements about the Black Mesa Incident, the Xen, the G-Man, the Nihilanth and its death, and Gordon's deep connection to the Vortigaunts, among other topics. - Recurring Boss: The Hunter Chopper ends up stalking Gordon for nearly two-thirds of his airboat journey.
