Chapter 3: The Assingment
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When the thick steel doors had pulled completly into the walls I was greated by a loud series of beeps followed by a short 'pleasant' welcome message to the United Aerospace Corporation, the UAC. As I walked out into the first room a sentry drone scurrried to its resting point at a yellow square in the ground. I watched the small machine and looked to Helios before I continued up a small flight of stairs to the front desk. The technician here didn't seem to be paying any attentino until I dropped my duffel bag next to the desk and put an armored hand on his computer's viewscreen.

The young man quickly reached under the desk and set a small PDA on the counter near me, he quickly grabbed another when MSgt Helios stepped up next to me. "This is your personal data assasstant... You can send and recie-..." I cut the technician off. "Kid... I know what a PDA is." I told him bluntly. "Oh..." He sighed. "Marine command's through those doors over there, you can leave your equip here it'll be sent to your barracks." I nodded and gestured for Helios to follow me to Marine Command. "Sir, do these civies think we're all recruits or something?" MSgt Helio asked me through our amour's internal comm system. "The civies do what they're told to do just as we are... But yeah they think we're all recruits." I replied somewhat coldly as I walked up another small set of stair and through smaller doors. These doors peeled back into teh walls revealing a large cubic room, there was another marine, a corporal standing in the center.

The corporal was unarmoured, likely a new soldier, and was staring off into another room that branched off from this one. "Great things will happen here... Just you wait." I heard a strange, somewhat sadisitc voice snap fro the other room. Almost immediatly after the voice faded the unidentified marine had walked straight on through the next set of doors across the room. I didn't say anything of what I had just heard, but I did walk across the room to where the other marine had left from, he was likely going to marine command as well.

Asmyself and MSgt Helios walked through the next bulkhead door a marine wearing lighter armour than ours rushed by followinf a sentry drone. I couldn't help but chuckle to myself as the prviate nearly tripped over his own gear. This next room was somwhate empty aside form a group of vending machines so we walked on through to the next set of doors. Another marine, again lightly armouredompared to my group, looked Msgt and me over before saying anything to either of us. "Marine command' down that hall..." He said gesturing to his rleft, our right. As I walked towards the elevated platform the younger 1Sgt had gestured to another sentry drone scurried out of a marine command followed by the unknown corporal we'd seen earlier. As the corporal passed I heard him muttered something about busywork and the drone's speed, which I ignored.

As Helios adn I walked into the command room several screens were flashing various maps and displays. The two largest viewscreens had a large map of the Mars City compound with sevral hundred moving blips across it, the red ones were quite obviously the marines. "Ah... Lieutenant Stukov... I see you made it here wihtou too much difficulty." Major Enixan said quietly over his shoulder. I didn't respond to that statement. "We have a new specimen coming in from Delta Labs..." The major started to explain as the Delta Labs were enlarged on the main viewscreen. "... We need your squad to escor-" The major was cut off as the lights in the room blew out, the computer screens had all exploded as well. The sensors in my armour and Helios' activated the light amplicification of our internal monitors so we could still see as if it were at normal lighting.

After a brief second the room became slightly more illuminated as a pentagram of fire began to etch itself into the ceiling. Several runes began to etch themselves alongside the large pentagram. The marines in here seemed highly confused as a maniacal laughter filled the command room. Many frightening, hellish, etheral beings began to pour through the pentagram, these beings attack all the marines aside from Helios, Enixan, and myself. The Major ran up to one of his fallen marines as their 'dead' cells were reanimated. The major didn't have a chance to react as the marine's teeth crushed through his light armour. I reacted simultaneously with MSgt Helios and drew my high caliber pistol, putting a single bullet into the head of everything in the room including the dieing Major.

Outside of the command room I could hear screams echoing, the sreams also echoed with back-up requests through every radio frequency. I looked over the several indicators within my suit that read the vitals of my squad. Both of my corporals were dead, their vitals were crimson and flatlined. Private First Class DuGalle's blood pressure and heartrate were sky rocketing as his ammo stores quickly depleated. Private Vasquez was unusually calm for the situation, his vitals were stable and his ammunition stores were dropping by three rounds every few seconds.

I looked over at Master Sergeant Heliosand cokced my armoured head toward the bulkhead doors sealing off the command center. She nodded as I walked to the wall and pressed my back to the wall. Helios followed my lead as the heavy doors began to pull pull up into the ceiling and down into the floor with ungodly ammounts of creaking.