Grimm listened to the sound of the elevator as he rode it down 4 levels to the Marine's barracks. The adrenaline high that he had been riding had worn off as he had checked his weapon in at the Command Center. Unlike in the RRTS or even any other standard Marine base, the soldiers at Enyo were not allowed to have personal weapons or even a weapon specifically assigned to him. That meant taking whatever they gave you when you logged in for your shift. Thus, Grimm always made a point to log in early so that he could ensure his weapon was in working order before heading to his post. Many of the other Marines and security personnel mocked him. No-one had had cause to discharge a weapon in the line of duty for over 6 years. Though a few had been discharged for other purposes. These events were only noted as "accidental discharges" on the man's death certificate.
John was not a man typically given to spending much time on introspection, but he knew he had to be careful in the coming days. Sarge (as Grimm could not bring himself to refer to him with his new rank) did not make idle threats. The man meant to do him harm. Serious, possibly life-threatening, harm. He was going to have to do the one thing he had sworn never to do here. Ask for help.
As he stepped from the elevator he decided that during their next shift together, right after their four hour break, he would ask Walshy to set him up with some way of keeping an eye on Sarge. Make sure he knew where the man was so that he would not be caught unaware in a wrong place at the wrong time.
Grimm walked down the dimly lit hall. The UAC saw no reason to light the living quarters, particularly the hallways, barely above a flashlight level. It had been real tough, at first, to get used to. There were a lot of shadowy passages with corners so dark they were invisible. A lot of places for an enemy to hide. No-one made a game of it though. Taking a bone breaking hit, winding up in the infirmary for a few weeks or even worse tended to put people off from such foolish action. Though, he had heard the lab techs still had real fun with it. Of course they weren't trained to break necks, arms, legs or gouge an enemies eyes out to survive.
He punched the in the passcode to enter the living quarters he shared with Frank Walters. They barely saw each other as Walters actually volunteered to work the graveyard shift. As he saw it, there was no reason to go by the Mars daylight clock since they rarely saw daylight. He preferred to work when most of the lab workers were asleep. He did not like interacting with other people and avoided it as much as possible. In a strange way he reminded John of one of his former teammates, Goat. Only Frank had dark hair and pale, icy blue eyes.
But he didn't want to think of Goat now, or any of the other men from that ill-fated squad.
Grimm quickly washed up and then fell into his bunk. He had less than three hours to rest before he needed to get up and report in for his next assignment. Usually he would go to the gym and exercise between his two daily assignments, but today he needed the rest. His body was in excellent shape, he needed his mind to be just as sharp now.
Less than an hour later the alarms went off. Jumping up he ran to the monitor in the room. It was the master alarms. They were only triggered by a very few events, an outer wall had been compromised and the life support systems were in danger, the energy core was overloaded, a major security breach had occurred or, worst of all, there was release of a biohazard in the labs that had not been successfully contained by the immediate emergency lockdown process.
The computer did not specify the event, but ordered all Marines and security personnel, who were not on duty, to report in. Grimm threw his uniform on and grabbed a small pack with emergency gear and rations that he had put together for himself. It was not much, but it was better than the nothing that UAC had issued him.
He, along with the rest of the Marines in the barracks, raced up to the Command Center. No-one knew what was going on, but then again, he would have been shocked if anyone had known what was going on. UAC did not share its secrets, especially not the dirty ones.
He stood in line to receive his orders along with gear. He was not particularly surprised, though he was deeply disgusted, when he was ordered to the pumping station and issued nothing more than a flashlight and a transponder. Clearly word had already made it back about his confrontation with Sarge.
As he walked away Ryan bumped into him and slipped him a small PDA. Grimm didn't have to ask if it was standard issue. No doubt Walshy had made some modifications to it. Once he had some privacy he would take a look at it. Hopefully it had some information on it about what was going on. A gut feeling told him something very bad had happened and it was only about to get worse.
