Doom: Sons of Perdition
General Stone sighed in resignation. He had not wanted to give in to the bizarre ransom offered by Union Aerospace Corporation Director Lance Sparks. However, based on the camera and audio feeds he was receiving from soldiers assigned to his first battalion, the price in blood to retake the colonization on Mars by force would be too high. The shrieks of hundreds of dying soldiers blended with gunfire, explosions, and otherworldly battle cries to make the control room itself seem like it was being consumed in the fires of Hell. Stone folded his arms sullenly, he didn't bother turning around, he knew that his various operators and officers seated at terminals behind him would be staring at him longingly for orders to shut off the feed, to end the sounds of madness encircling them. But Stone didn't feel like catering to anyone else's emotional desires. There was no relief from this kind of thing. He had sent 500 marines to their deaths, their screams of horror only echoed the ones in his own heart.
In Stone's mind, that knowledge alone eclipsed the terrible confirmation of the supernatural foes his troops faced inside the Mars Colony. While few knew the truth behind the UAC's legendary collapse in 2145, Stone was among the privileged. He'd read all the files, seen all the reports. But the truth was kept from the public. The cover up stories themselves were wildly inconsistent, everything from terrorist bombings of the base to the accidental triggering of an underground fault had been attributed to the catastrophe. But none of that could explain the complete lack of survivors, save for the one marine who was extracted from the wreckage.
But the public had lost interest in the nature of the tragedy, the fact was that globally 70 trillion dollars had been invested in UAC research. The economic consequences of the collapse had been more frightening to some then any sort of disaster that could account for the loss of that much human life. Society was crippled so profoundly by the greatest economic crisis in the history of mankind that governments were forced to pool together enormous bailouts to revive the UAC, and against their better judgments, allow it to draw up plans to re-colonize Mars only 20 years after the forces of Hell had torn it asunder.
When construction started in 2172, excitement over the project was palpable in nearly every city on Earth. This time the base wouldn't merely be a haven for the UAC's scientific research. It would also serve as a countermeasure against overpopulation, the ultimate plan to resettle millions of civilians in a sustainable Martian society. The Americans, British, and Russian governments set up a democratic governing body to pass laws over the colony and police the UAC. The Space Marines were no longer merely guns for hire, but were now contracted as the primary military force on Mars, though in what would prove to be a massive folly they kept the bulk of their assets in a space station four days away from the red planet. In 2225 the colony was officially opened, with 40,000 settlers arriving to start new lives within the new governmental system. But it had only taken five years for the plan to go awry. UAC Director Lance Sparks had methodically usurped power and cut off both the Space Marines and nearly all communication to Earth as he had launched a carefully planned fear campaign against the new government and eventually gained unchecked power over the colony. Plans to shuttle in more settlers were indefinitely delayed, and the new Martian colonization project quickly turned into a disaster.
General Stone was one of only a handful of people who realized that Sparks' ambitions were likely far more dangerous than mere conquest. As the Marines prepared to assault the colony as a last contingency to restore order, the nagging fear that Sparks had somehow become involved with the long abandoned research of the late Malcolm Betruger became prevalent. This was supported by Sparks' strange offer for peace and now confirmed by the sights and sounds coming from the wired battalion who faced indescribable horrors within the Martian settlement. It was nothing short of a massacre, even with a well planned assault which was supposed to insert the five companies, only a fraction of Stone's available force, to do little more than set up surveillance and establish a small, hidden presence within the massive compound. Within an hour the entire battalion was ambushed, and they never stood a chance against the dominant supernatural warriors inhabiting the colony. The fact became obvious that, as the battalion had traversed a mere 0.1% of the massive Martian installation, even if Stone had sent in all 20,000 men for the attack, the results wouldn't have been any different. The fight would have lasted longer, perhaps, but no volume of marines could ultimately repel the onslaught his men faced.
Stone looked down to see a blinking red light signaling an incoming call to his personal communication device. Finally, to the visible relief of everyone present, General Stone signaled for the audio and visual feed to be cut off. He sat down in his command chair and put on a headset.
"General Stone speaking," he spoke quietly, not wanting the conversation to be overheard by his subordinates.
"My offer still stands," Lance Sparks' hissy voice resounded with a stinging triumph, "as long as he's still alive, I will gladly make the exchange."
"And all 40,000 residents will be safely handed over?" Stone couldn't believe he was seriously considering the offer.
"I have 27,859 to be exact," Sparks responded.
"We had more than that. I know that 40,000 made the trip five years ago, and with the birth rate…"
"Please understand, General, survival rates have been less than ideal amidst all the confusion we've endured here," Sparks spoke with a methodical, diabolical calmness that asserted a sort of dominance that made Stone cringe.
"Alright, fine!" Stone conceded indignantly, "we exchange him for 27,859 civilians. Then we hear nothing else from you. You don't contact us. You perform your sick experiments with no consequences to life on Earth, correct?"
"You have my word," the UAC Director assured him. Not that that meant much, but the leverage seemed to favor Director Sparks, and though odd, the exchange would be more than fair if it went smoothly.
"Fine, we make the exchange," Stone said coldly, "how do you suggest we proceed?"
Corporal Eli Blackfield was well known for his ominous nature. Though the slim, 25 year old marine wasn't rude or outspoken, in between his neatly combed hair and short, black stubble were dark eyes that darted around cynically, silently penetrating any object that caught their gaze. Within the enormous frigate known as the Cronos iii, which was something between a military vessel and a behemoth mass transport, the marines were restless, anxiously waiting for a long overdue status report of their 500 dispatched comrades.
The benefit of traveling in a ship as spacious as the Cronos iii was that there was never really a sense of containment, the accommodations were very similar to being stationed at a fully equipped military base. Corporal Blackfield sat in one of the ships many recreation rooms, a solitary observer of his fellow marines as they played pool, table tennis, cards, and many other activities available to them while they waited. The competition within the room seemed more intense than usual, which Eli attributed to the heightened sense of apprehension over the crisis whose nature was largely unknown, at least to the common soldiers. Rarely did the troops feel so intentionally kept in the dark about an operation, and the fact that there was still no information on the first battalion only added to their restlessness.
For his part, Eli felt relatively calm. He wasn't easily shaken by fear of unknown dangers, or anything for that matter. He had a natural distrust for authority, but preferred to accept it as a part of life rather than challenge it in some blind and foolish attempt to establish a better system. Still, he didn't want to be anyone's fool, but being that death didn't seem all that scary, the ambiguous situation regarding the assault on Mars caused him nothing more than minor annoyance.
Presently Blackfield heard a chirping sound coming from his belt. His personal communicator. Space Marines, like uncultured sea pirates, were notorious for their lack of military discipline off of the battlefield. In combat, they generally performed their duties professionally and without complaint, but keeping them organized and alert could be a major headache. The only "rule" during their downtime was the requirement to keep their personal communicators within arms reach at all times. These devices couldn't be used like cell phones for private conversation, they were exclusively reserved for officers to issue orders or soldiers to report emergencies.
Corporal Blackfield stepped out of the room into a vacant hallway and turned his receiver on.
"Blackfield here."
"Eli? It's Tsu," Sergeant Tsu was one of Blackfield's closest friends in the Marine Corps, "I need you to grab your equipment and report to shuttle bay B-14 ASAP. We're going in."
"What about the first battalion?" Blackfield asked, "have we heard anything?"
"Command says the operation is going according to plan," responded Tsu, "first battalion's doing their job, now we have to do ours."
"Then why the hell haven't we heard anything?" Blackfield wasn't convinced, "Stone knows these guys don't like to be left waiting. When's he planning on giving an official update?"
"I'm only relaying what I've been told, Eli," Tsu answered, "if they say the operation is going according to plan, then it's going according to plan. If they give me an objective, I don't ask why or consider moral consequences."
Moral consequences? How the hell did that come up? An uneasy feeling crept over Corporal Blackfield for the first time. General Stone not wanting to disclose the mission status was slightly unusual, but not bothersome, but when one of his best friends starts making cryptic and unusual statements, then something is definitely amiss.
"Can you at least tell me who we're fighting," Blackfield pressed on.
"Sparks has organized a large civilian militia, apparently," Tsu told him, "the guy's got to be a charismatic genius though to convince so many people to trust the UAC over the Space Marines or the Martian government, which as far as I can tell no longer exists. But cutting down some hastily trained civilian militants shouldn't prove too problematic. Remember Eli, hangar B-14, ASAP." And with that Tsu disconnected.
Blackfield muttered under his breath and hastened toward his quarters to get his equipment.
Hangar B-14 housed hundreds of small, short range shuttles used for troop deployment. Unlike most of the other types of aircraft stored on board the Cronos iii, B-14's shuttles carried no exterior weaponry and had a personnel limit of 12 men per shuttle. Blackfield couldn't remember the actual name of the shuttles, but they had been nicknamed "bargain buggies" by the Space Marines because their lack of any desirable specialization caused many to conclude they were only in production because they were cheap to manufacture.
As Blackfield walked through the hangar he couldn't shake the feeling that something was wrong. While there was plenty of bustle around him as shuttles were being prepped and crews assembled, there was something intangible about it that made it all seem artificial. Like it was a drill or something. The Corporal found Sergeant Tsu waiting for him near the far end of the concrete runway. Ten other marines were already assembled behind him, some of which he recognized but was not acquainted with.
"Well, well, Eli," Tsu was horrible at trying to sound strict or authoritative, "you're the last one here, you know what that means. You get to take point during the operation."
"What can I say?" Blackfield shrugged, "my cabin's a long way from the nearest rec room."
"Alright people," Tsu raised his voice to address the crew, "the Martian complex we're assaulting is huge, makes the Cronos look like a peanut. This place was designed to accommodate millions of settlers, but only 40,000 plus are on site. That means the majority of the complex is going to be a ghost town. We should be able to mop up the enemy like a turd smeared on a kitchen floor once we find them, but since we have no clue where they are Command is sending us out in small groups to recon the area and find enemy positions. We're being assigned to a presumably deserted apartment area on the eastern side of the complex. Our mission is to search for enemy positions, we are not to engage unless it is absolutely necessary. Any questions?"
The collective blankness on the faces of the soldiers surrounding Tsu gave him the answer. "Okay, everybody board."
"A turd smeared on a kitchen floor?" Blackfield whispered to his friend as they boarded, "you need to hire a speech writer to help with your briefings, man, that's pathetic."
Corporal Blackfield chuckled and slapped Tsu on the shoulder. The reaction on his friend's generally good humored face was troubling, however. Tsu didn't respond verbally, and was clearly holding something in. It appeared as if he was simultaneously suppressing a smirk and fighting back tears. Blackfield wanted to confront him about it, but he was so baffled that appropriate words never found his lips, and he ended up shuffling by and taking his seat in silence.
The fifteen minute trip in the shuttle was awkward. Blackfield normally was amused by awkwardness, he enjoyed listening to marines who felt the necessity to break awkward silence with silly pleasantries or stupid observations. But this was different. The Corporal looked over at his friend, who had sat at the opposite corner of the cramped shuttle, and saw a look of sheer dejection, his eyes empty as if his thoughts had receded too far back into his skull to be palpable. Considering most soldiers, even seasoned ones, showed at least slight signs of anticipation and adrenaline right before combat, Tsu's lost, somber look was quite spooky. The other soldiers were fidgeting with their weapons, checking their ammo, making sure all the buckles on their armor were secure, and other nervous habits marines were prone to on the brink of action.
Eventually the shuttle reached the airlock closest to the squad's designated area. The marines heads bobbled in unison as it jerked into position, and as soon as the hiss of the airlock had subsided and the shuttle doors opened, Sergeant Tsu sprang to life exiting the craft and motioning for the troops to follow him.
Corporal Blackfield found himself in an enormous lobby which instilled a sense of déjà vu as if he was back on Earth in a fancy hotel. Even though it was quite apparent that the lobby was abandoned, the twelve soldiers reacted instinctively to the undesirable position of being forced into an open area by immediately aiming down the sights of their assault rifles and scanning the room for any signs of movement while identifying potential areas to seek cover if they were fired upon. But the area, dimly lit by weak but mysteriously functional wall mounted lights, greeted them with nothing but silence. One by one their weapons lowered and they took in their surroundings more subjectively. One of the marines shouted "Clear!" out of procedural obligation, but it was an unnecessary gesture.
"Okay," Tsu said after an intermediate pause, "Eli, remember, you're the point man. Let's sweep the surrounding hallways starting with the first floor."
Each floor of the lobby had entryways that formed semicircles around the exterior and presumably followed through to the openings on the opposite side. Blackfield lifted his gun once again to eye-level and started circling counter clockwise through the first floor hallway.
The corridor was extremely narrow, the mounted wall lights flickering and faint, but providing just enough illumination to make the hallway navigable without the employment of "shoot me I'm right here" flashlights. Tattered wallpaper that was once red and marble flooring that was once white blended together into a lifeless brown under a coating of Martian dust. The outside wall had doors with numbered plaques at steady intervals, entries into the likely never inhabited apartments. Blackfield slowly followed the semi circle around until something brought him to a screeching halt. One of the apartment doors was opened just a crack, with a much brighter illumination spilling out and forming a cone around it. Blackfield's heart fluttered momentarily, something else that gave him pause. He never got ancy during missions, whether in the heat of combat or the suspense of the hunt. He realized that it was the surprising coincidence that made him uneasy. Everything, the lack of a status report from the first battalion, the subtle absence of urgency in the hangar, Tsu's bizarre behavior, and now, searching an area with miles and miles of extremely sparsely populated terrain, the luck of finding something suspicious within the first ten minutes; it all seemed wrong. It all compiled into a bundle of mystery so profound that even Corporal Blackfield, the ever stoic, ever suspicious Space Marine was impacted.
"Okay, Eli," Tsu nudged him from behind, causing Blackfield to force himself slowly forward. He placed his back against the wall inches from the door from which the light was emitted. He pressed his ear to the corroded wallpaper but heard nothing. He strained to see through the opening, but it was too narrow. There was only one option left.
With a sudden surge of energy Blackfield tore open the door and burst into the room, his eye tight against the sights of his assault rifle as he swept his weapon from side to side to cover every angle of the visible interior.
"What the hell?" he heard himself say.
While there was no sign of movement, the bare room which he found himself in was coated with streaks of fresh looking black paint. While the stripes across the floor and side walls seemed random and meaningless, on the far wall a giant but crude pentagram stared him down. Still at the alert he slowly approached it: bold and dripping with sludgy paint, an omen of the evil to come. Suddenly Blackfield felt a sharp sting in the back of his neck. Instinctively he reached back and pulled out a grey metallic object. He recognized it. A tranquilizer dart, the kind Space Marines used for non lethal detainment. He swung around, his surroundings already starting to swim around him dizzily as he felt the poison work itself through his veins. The perpetrator stood before him, the tranquilizer pistol slowly being lowered by the assailant. It was Tsu.
"Tsu! You treacherous bastard!" Blackfield tried to lunge forward and attack his betrayer, but his limbs simply wouldn't yield to his commands. He heard the clatter of his rifle hitting the floor, though he hadn't even felt himself drop it. "Why?" he cried desperately, his voice fading with every syllable, "you.. Stupid.. Bastard… Why?"
Though his vision was nothing more than a spinning kaleidoscope of blurry colors, he could hear the tearfulness in Tsu's voice. "I didn't want to, bro, I swear," he pleaded, "I'm sorry, Eli, please forgive me."
The world suddenly turned black, and the last sound Eli Blackfield heard before losing consciousness was that of his own body striking the floor.
What seemed like an eternity of nightmares tore through Eli's mind while he slept. Darkness. The swelling darkness, a sea of eternal black, burning the skin from his bones, turning his bones to ash, incinerating his entire physical being with black fire. And yet even without a body he remained. Choking, suffocating in darkness. Unable to scream, unable to move.
When Eli Blackfield woke up he found himself fastened to an operating table. The table was tilted up to an almost 90 degree angle, but even in his sedated state, the steel clasps around his wrists and ankles held him upright, tightly secured against the coffin sized metallic slab. His equipment was gone: his body armor, his weapons, his communication devices. His pants were still in place, thank goodness, though they felt strange without a belt or the usual accoutrements, and his black, skin tight thermal undershirt remained as well, although one of the sleeves had been torn off.
The room he was in was bathed in an eerily bright light that seemed to make everything glow. It was a painfully stark contrast to the blackness he'd been swimming in during his dreams. Suddenly, as if in answer to his visible discomfort over the blinding light, the power went out with a snap, casting his surroundings in a dark but comfortable evening shadow. The humming machinery around him groaned as it hastily settled into dormancy. The next sound he heard was the clacking of an automatic door being forced open. Through it emerged an attractive yet disheveled young female holding a duffel bag. She approached him with a "jumping at shadows" sort of nervousness, darting glances at inanimate objects and bare corners as if afraid something might be lurking behind the wash basin or perhaps the bundle of electrical wire. Eli was surprised she didn't peek inside his pockets for signs of ghosts.
"We have to hurry, we don't have much time," she dropped to one knee and dove into her duffel bag, flinging her long, curly hair past Eli's face just long enough for him to catch a whiff.
"That's that Pure Essence shampoo, isn't it?" he asked her, though his voice was coming out sharp and perhaps a little spiteful, an interesting contradiction, "good stuff."
"I'm sorry, Corporal Blackfield, but I really don't have time to flirt right now," she sounded very professional, but he could almost hear her heart thumping with terror.
"It's always a good idea to wash your hair a couple times before going on your Martian espionage mission, don't you think?" Eli continued sarcastically as the young woman inserted a small key into the steel shackles around his wrists and ankles, freeing him one limb at a time.
"You surprise me a little Corporal," she told him, "I would think that the first things you'd want to know are where you are, who I am, and what's going on." As she undid the last clasp Eli attempted to stand under his own power, but was seized by a sudden nausea and almost collapsed to the floor. He leaned back against the table for relief, panting and suddenly aware of a cold anemia. "Be careful, just a second," she ordered and removed an I.V. from his left arm that he hadn't even been aware of.
"At any rate," he continued the conversation, "I don't really care where I am or what's going on. All my friends and everyone important has betrayed and forsaken me. I have nothing to live or die for, and you know what? There's nothing more dangerous than a man with nothing to lose."
"Be careful," she warned him, "in this place, on the very shores of Hell, you have everything to lose."
Eli gave her a puzzled look. "Okay, fine," he relented, "tell me what the hell is going on."
"Listen," she looked him in the eye for the first time, "power outages are a common occurrence here, but if this grid stays offline for long enough someone is bound to investigate. I don't have time to give you all the details right now. My name is Emma Bradley. I'm part of a very small underground movement trying to sabotage Director Sparks' plan to open the Hell Mouth. Sparks is paranoid, he needed your blood to open the Hell Mouth, but he took a dangerous amount so he'd have extra just in case his plan didn't work the first time. And then as an extra, extra precaution he left you alive for now, because if you died your blood would be useless to him."
"What's so special about my blood?" Eli asked.
"I don't have time to explain that now," Emma reached back into her duffel bag, "here, I got you some things: boots, they're not yours but hopefully they fit," she removed a crusty pair of brown work boots from the bag, "here's a pistol, 9mm, fully equipped. I know it's not ideal for combat but it's the best I could do," she handed him the weapon.
Eli, though still weakened, was now able to stand on his own. The boots were a bit too tight but wearable. He examined the handgun, checking the magazine and testing the slide.
"And take this too," she handed him an object wrapped in brown paper.
"What is it?" he lifted it up and down, testing its weight.
"It's a sandwich," Emma said, "you lost a lot of blood, it'll help you regain your strength a little faster."
Immediately upon hearing that he tore through the paper and began stuffing his face. It was stale, it was dry, but it was much better than the cooked vomit they served on the Cronos iii.
"Okay, this is where it gets tricky," Emma led him to a hatch labeled "waste."
"This is the quickest way out," she explained, "you're going to need to squirrel out of the second opening you see down the hatch. You'll arrive at an underground maintenance area. Follow the catwalk straight for about two miles. Don't turn. You'll hopefully be able to rendezvous with Forrest, he'll be waiting there. He'll have more information for you, now go."
Eli climbed into the waste chute without complaint; though it wasn't the most glamorous escape route, he didn't feel like begging the girl to sneak him out another way.
"Oh, and Corporal," she said finally, "don't let yourself drop to the bottom or you'll be swimming in a river of toxic waste. Good luck."
"I might owe you a 'thank you'," Eli told her, "but I want to wait on that to make sure you're not sending me toward an even more horrible death." With that Corporal Blackfield began to shimmy his way down the waste chute, wondering what was going on with his blood and this Hell Mouth, but more importantly to him, wondering if perhaps fate would grant him a chance at revenge against General Stone. That would indeed be something worth living for.
