Author's Note: Trying something new, more a 'Doom' level writing style. If people like it, the other story missions will be in a similar format.

Action Journal 1: Erchius Facility

I land from the teleport just outside the mining facility, and take a look around. It was very clearly a barren rock, and while the hum of machinery could be clearly felt through my boots, I couldn't hear it. Made me glad that I had also gotten a rebreather implant from that guy that had directed me here. A sign outside made me sigh, before walking forward toward the external airlock. Erchius, not Erebus.

A moment of playing with the external airlock controls made it slide open, and I advanced, pausing as I spotted the second airlock door open. That meant the entire facility was unpressurized, and anyone without a rebreather was dead. I sigh, before waving to the following drone. It was a small unarmored and unarmed thing, so I have no idea why the computer had fabricated it and sent it along. Not like a computer had a sense of humor.

A quick sweep of the control room attached to the airlock revealed no one, and the four consoles had no information, but at least one of them let me turn off the fragging alarm blaring overhead. No clocks, no blood and no bodies, which meant no information. A ladder descended into the floor, and I take it down.

Landed in the middle of a mess hall or recreation room, one leading to what looked like a bathroom and a ladder down again, the other side leading to another ladder down. Quick sweep of the bathroom and recreation room reveals nothing, but the trash can in the bathroom did have a coil of climbing rope. Curious.

I take the nearest ladder, the one near the bathroom, figuring that it would land me in the dorms. It landed me in a hallway, and I already hate this place. A sign pointed to the dorms toward where the other ladder likely came down, as well as a security room in the other direction. I decide to check the dorms first. Survivors would be nice, give me an idea what I was getting into.

Sadly, the dorms were deserted, but my check of the lockers (hey, hoping for a journal that said something about digging too deep before it ended in a distinctly unhealthy gurgle, those are more common than one would believe) revealed a delightful gift. I might even have squeed a little bit. An assault rifle, with a barrel mod that electrified the slugs. I had a new favorite toy.

I slung the new assault rifle over my free shoulder, my other shoulder normally taken by the shotgun that was in my hands, my left hip by the flamethrower, and my right hip held my axe. I felt like a walking armory, but now I could deal with anything! Sadly, nothing appeared to test my newest toy on, so I headed back to the security station. The doors to it were locked, as was the floor hatch that led to the mines proper, but the ceiling passage, likely a maintenance or emergency access passage, was still open.

A minute later, I drop into the security room, and look around. Other than a small pile of rubble on the ground in the center of the room, nothing unusual. The security console was on the far side of the room, embedded in the wall, naturally facing away from the rubble. So I did the sensible and level headed thing, and threw one of my bomblets onto the rubble pile. One explosion later, the pile was unmoved, and I was short one of my two bomblets. I was a very sad earthling space monkey.

I still checked the rubble, and noticed a splash of blood on several rocks on the other side of it. A lack of a source made me look up, and instantly regret it. There was a hatch set into the ceiling, and the hatch and surrounding ceiling was utterly covered in blood. It looked somewhat dried, but not completely, so whoever had gotten pulled up into it had died recently, likely within a couple hours. But it had been at least three weeks since the initial distress signal, which made no sense. One of the first things done would have been to send the signal and engage the security systems. So why was the blood, presumably from the person that had killed, both here and fresh when the signal had been sent at least three weeks ago?

I shake off that disturbing question, and head to the console. And find the first sign of something being seriously off here. Other than the lack of comms, the distress signal, the blood and lack of people, I mean. The console had a timer on it, showing when the main and secondary security systems had been engaged; three weeks, two days, and seven hours ago. With some minutes and seconds on the side. I glance back at the hatch, and slide the shotgun onto my shoulder, and begin working my way through the security system to disable it.

Nearly an hour later, after locking myself out twice and punching the console several times in frustration, I had the main lever reactivated. Once I pulled it, the main security systems would power down, and the main systems would unlock and resume 'normal' status if possible. Many would be locked until all the secondary security systems had been turned off, but I would be able to work my way down to each secondary lock.

The map on the console showed six in total, three on the level immediately below me, two on the level below that, and one all the way at the bottom of the facility. I sigh, and sign off the console, before standing and grabbing the lever. It stuck slightly, but after a second it gave, and slammed into the off position with a satisfying clunk. Rather than make the facility brighter though, it killed about half the lights in the room, even as the sounds of doors opening and locks disengaging rang though the facility.

I reflexively grabbed the shotgun off my shoulder and turn as something landed behind me with a sickening splat. At first, it looked like a skinned corpse had landed on the rubble pile, still bleeding, but then it twitched, and slowly began straightening itself and standing. Two hysterically small, skeletal wings flicked, and its overly large hands grabbed at rubble as it tried to balance on two spindly, almost atrophied legs. But the face was the worst.

Its eyebrows had sagged, almost covering its small misshapen eyes, and it had no ears to speak of. Its nose curled around, extending down into its mouth, where four broken but still huge teeth stuck out. Its slow climb to its feet paused as it finally saw me, shotgun raised and aiming at it. For a moment, neither of us moved, except the thing's head as it turned one way and then twisted another, trying see me around its own deformities.

I shook of the horrified fascination I had been gazing at the creature with, which was admittedly a bit cute in a really hideously ugly way, and leveled the shotgun at its chest. "On the ground, NOW!"

It responded by screeching, a sound that felt like my ears were being attacked by drills wearing sandpaper condoms but not nearly as comfortable, and then it raised its huge hands at me. And I realized with sickening horror there were MOUTHS on its palms. I threw myself to the side, as the hand orifices vomited blood and flesh at me. I managed to avoid being splattered by the disgusting assault, and charged forward, blasting it again and again with my weapon.

It took four blasts like a champ, not caring in the slightest as it rocked from the powerful blows, and finished regurgitating its approximate body mass in flesh and blood, before it turned back towards me, hands extending again. But it had taken so long to finish and recover from the first attack that I had gotten close enough to have all the pellets focus against one spot instead of a spread. I fired directly into its wrist, blowing its hand clean off. It screamed in rage, otherwise barely noticing the lack of a hand, and tried to spray me with the remaining hand, only for me to use the butt of the shotgun to knock it aside just as it started spraying.

It responded by puking on me with its 'normal' mouth.

I have never been so grateful for a rebreather in my life, as the mixture burned like an acid, and I knew I was going to need a bath at the end of this. Hell, I needed a bath NOW. But while my skin burned and my equipment sizzled, I shoved the barrel of the shotgun against what I hoped was its chin, and squeezed the trigger. With the contents of its stomach on my face, (thankfully not in my mouth or nose) I couldn't see what happened, but I could definitely hear it.

I pulled my canteen off my hip, and doused my face with its contents, luckily grabbing my water canteen instead of my alcohol one. And then I took a look at my victim as my eyes cleared. Its head had been taken clean off. I had survived my first fight with whatever it was, but had learned an important lesson: range was god in here. Especially as I spotted two more shambling slowly down the hallway toward the security room. I splashed the rest of the water over my armor and equipment to get the acid off everything, before slinging the shotgun, and pulling the assault rifle out.

A quick fight later, I learned a few more interesting things. First, even when getting blasted apart, the things couldn't move faster than a slow shuffle, but could actually fly surprisingly fast and far on those pathetic wings, but not very high. Second, they could spew blood, flesh, and acid from their hand orifices remarkably far, but I could easily out range them with the rifle. And third, the acid would eat through metal and didn't appear to oxidize quickly, as the security console was destroyed from the first fight, and the acid was still eating away at it.

I headed back up to the bathroom to refill my canteen, and then returned to the security room to experiment. A few minutes later, I was refilling the canteen again, but learned that almost any amount of water would successfully neutralize the acid, as long as it wasn't a stupidly small amount. Now, I just had to clear the rest of the facility. The hatch down into the mines proper was open, but a number of shuffling and moaning noises were easily audible. I give a sigh of vexation, before jumping down. Sooner begun, sooner dead or done. Or however that saying went.

I landed heavily on a small platform just off the ground proper, and spotted the first secondary security switch. I could see a half dozen or so of the things shambling about, but none of them were heading toward me, so I yanked the switch to see what I was up against. And immediately realized that bliss was to be had in ignorance, as the lights came on, revealing what had to be dozens of the shamblers in the large mining chamber. There appeared to be two passages out, but one was mostly filled with rubble, with a shambler slowly squeezing through the gap, while the other was a sealed mining door.

The shamblers had all turned towards me when the lights came on, and began moving in my general direction, several tripping and falling over the loose rubble in the area. The ladder that connected to the upper area had fallen at some point, lying on the ground nearby, meaning that the creatures were stuck down here. I, however, had other options. So I jumped, and then activated the pulse jets on my hips, boosting me up to the previous level.

Oh, right, remember me mentioning the tech chip I found? Yeah, it had pulse jump written into it. Dang useful, and I was quick to equip it into the matter manipulator after the computer identified it. Effectively gave me a double jump, like a ninja! Now on the upper level and high enough the creatures couldn't fly up to me, and couldn't figure out how to arc their shots to hit me, I could take my time sniping them. First, I killed the one crawling through the rubble in the collapsed hallway, sealing the tunnel to prevent letting more in, before I began putting shots into brain pans.

Despite my elevation, weapon experience and accuracy, it still took nearly half an hour to put all of the creatures down. For those playing the home game, I got forty three Shamblers in the first room alone. Considering the security console had stated that there had been three hundred and sixteen miners, twenty admin staff, a single security officer, and five specialists that worked as medics, communication techs, or mechanics, I didn't expect to find any survivors down here now. No way they could have fought off this many creatures, not in the mine.

Oh, by the way, named the bile pukers Shamblers for lack of a better name. If they have a better name, don't care, going with Shamblers.

Anyhoo, the fighting in the hallways of the mine was mostly the same after the first one, so I am going to skip them for more interesting things. Basically, I checked corners, moved slowly, and made sure to watch my back. I was alone down here, and ending up dead in a bile puree courtesy of a Shambler was NOT how I wanted my life to end. That ending involves human female twins, the galaxy's biggest pizza, and a big pile of explosions.

Anyhoo, I eventually found the second security switch on the first level of the mines, and yanked it, only to have a Shambler fall out of the door next to it. Luckily it was as surprised as I was, but it couldn't move fast to save its life, unlike me. So I killed it, and then a bunch more of its buddies as they wondered what the noise was on the other side of the door. I dropped down another ladder, and found myself on the second level of the mines. Which had, surprise surprise, even MORE Shamblers.

The novelty of the situation quickly wore thin (and it was pretty thin already), and only got thinner as I lost track of my kills at about one hundred. A corridor led to a room to a dead end to another room to another room, eventually it all began looking the same. My chrono showed I had been at this four hours at the point I got to the first security room on the second mine level, and I was quickly getting irritated.

So when I yanked open the door, and a bullet bounced off the door, you can imagine I was a bit… shocked. I may have yelled something vile, derogatory, and insulting about the shooter's accuracy and mother as I dodged behind the door, before I realized that none of the Shamblers had had either the brains or the hands to pick up and use a gun. So I slowly stuck my head around the corner, and was shocked to see three human miners, but not human minors (lawl), a male and two females, staring back at me in equal shock from behind the crates that littered the security room.

After a moment, I sighed, and stepped into the room, sealing the door behind me, and turned to look at the three surprisingly healthy humans. "So, Donner party or were there supplies stored here?"

The three humans exchanged a look before one replied. "What?"

I sigh, before heading for the security switch. "Nevermind, making a joke. Let me get the switch, then I can escort you to the surface facility area. The ladder to it fell, and I cleared the surface facility already. You can wait there for evacuation. Probably more comfortable than sharing a bunk."

The two women turned bright red while the male sighed and rolled his eyes. "The other door out is blocked, did you clear everything that way?"

I nod, and yank the lever, bringing the lights back up in this section. At least it would make it easier to spot the ones I had missed. "Most of them at least. Any idea how many there are?"

The male nodded. "Oh, only a few. They relied on ambushes, and drag whoever they catch off to the bottom of the mine for some reason."

I just stare at him, before letting my eyebrow twitch. "Right. So the hundred plus I fought through to get here?"

That shut him up real quick, so I turned and headed for the door. I opened it carefully, and fired at one of the Shamblers that was lumbering forward from around a pile of rubble. Done with that, I scavenged what I could from the room, but most of the crates were empty, and what was left was pretty useless, pickaxes and drills, though the few spare pieces of ore were discretely claimed. "Right, keep close, but not so much that you run into me or that I can't back up suddenly. I have to head back to the main room anyway, so I can get you to the surface area while I am there."

The male miner held up his pistol. "Don't suppose you have some spare ammo we can have? This is almost empty."

I sighed, before shaking my head. "No, I have a matter manipulator that fabricates the ammo I need. Though... actually…"

I snatched the pistol from his hands, and after a moment the manipulator chimed, indicating that it needed to replenish the pistol's energy store. I handed the recharged weapon back. "Should be nearly, if not completely, full now. Don't waste shots."

Despite the extra juicy targets, we only met a couple new Shamblers on the way back. I also learned that I had explored more than half the mines now, rubble had blocked off most of it, likely by miners trying to contain the Shamblers. I held the ladder steady as the three survivors scurried up, before heading to check the first pile of rubble on a hunch.

Sure enough, the Shambler I had shot that had been crawling through had released its acid, dissolving the pile. Or at least, a bit of the pile. I still had to contort, shuffle, and squirm to get through the hole, but didn't have to go and blindly crawl through it. I did use the flamer on the body, cleaning the mess, and then on the massive horde on the other side of the rubble after getting through the hole. I just blindly fired the flamer at the approaching horde, and then swept the flamer back and forth, before retreating from the hole. As one tried to crawl through, I flamed it, and could hear screams of rage and what I imagined was distress as the flames swept through the tightly packed Shamblers.

Some time later, the flaming Shamblers had stopped trying to crawl through the hole, and the noise on the other side had stopped as well. I cleaned up the mess on the rubble, which had been dissolved even more, so now I didn't even need to contort to get through. The sight on the other side, however, made me stop and fight back memories of an older battle. But at least this time it was monstrosities, rather than Apex conscripts.

The room was absolutely covered in burnt and burning Shambler corpses. They had been packed so tight the flames had spread from one side to the other without the Shamblers ever trying to flee. There had to be at least another one hundred Shambler corpses in the room easily, which meant that the Shambler numbers were quickly approaching the number of miners, which only reinforced a sneaking suspicion I had about the source of the Shamblers. A security room, on the far side of the charnel house that this room had become, beckoned, so I began slowly picking my way across.

Once I made it across, the first thing I noticed about the security room was that both doors into it had been melted to allow the Shamblers entry. The containers that had been in the room were twisted and destroyed, so no point checking for supplies here. Finally finished with the upper level, I now had only two switches to find before the facility was secured, and I had a sneaking suspicion the last switch, the one at the very bottom, was past whatever was converting miners into Shamblers. But first, I had to get to the one on the second level of the mines.

Luckily it wasn't that far to the next security room, literally a couple short ladders and a few short corridors. Sadly, the ladder for the drop into the security room was missing, so once I dropped, I would be down there until I found and replaced the ladder. It looked a little too far for the pulse jump to get him back up. A quick glance into the room, and using the flashlight as the lantern wasn't good for directed light, revealed no opponents, and nothing to hide them, but it did reveal two sealed doors and a switch.

I sighed, and grabbed the shotgun, before dropping down. I tried landing as quietly as I could, before my foot slipped on something wet and slimy in the darkness; eventually I stood up and moved to the switch. Once thrown, the lights flickered on, and both of the doors opened. One door, the closest one, revealed another short passage, a switch, and a sealed door. The other door revealed a large open area, and a miner holding a piece of rebar with a concrete block on one end with the hand closest to me.

He wore blue jeans, a long sleeved shirt, a reflective vest, and a safety helmet that included a safety visor that could polarize for welding. His visor was polarized, and the helmet sat lopsided upon his head. The way he stood and how his helmet sat alerted me to the fact something was wrong, but before I could say anything or move, he spotted me and brought the hand not holding the improvised club up. I nearly lost my stomach as I saw the arm was the same fleshy color and shape as the Shambler arm's, and even had that extra orifice in the palm. Thankfully, this one couldn't vomit bile at me yet, but it was smart enough to be carrying a club.

I raised the shotgun, and blasted it in the gut, trying to immobilize it, but the thing didn't take a hint, and charged at me. To my horror, I realized this one was as fast as I was. I could either run and yank switches as I did, but if I messed up I was going to get splattered by that club. So instead I slammed the slide of the shotgun back, and fired again, this time aiming for the head. And missed.

It roared and charged, and I tossed the shotgun aside, drawing my axe and shield just as it started swinging. I barely got the shield into position, but the movement and angle of the shield caused the blow to slide right off, the impact of the improvised maul against the ground putting a dent into the steel floor. I was too busy swinging the axe as hard as I could to notice. And with the infected miner off balanced even more than it normally was, its neck was wide open for a nice heavy swipe.

The flaming axe slammed into the creature's neck, and exited the other side, cleanly removing the head. Well, cleanly if you discount the mess the stump was making on the floor, even with the flames. Done with the infected miner, I turned and yanked the lever in the hallway, to reveal… another hallway and lever. I sighed, and pulled the new lever, only to reveal ANOTHER ONE. Wondering who the fragging underworld had decided this hallway needed so many locks and doors, I yanked this one, and found myself staring at a room. And then something hit me in the chest, and I dropped.

I let out a yelp of pain, before cursing and screaming. "Gods frag you! Check your forsaken targets before you fire you retards! Seriously, I come here to rescue you, and you SHOOT me!"

Several minutes later, I had an apology from the twitchy and now very sad miner that had reflexively taken a shot at me as the door opened (the man admitted that he had never fired a gun before in his life, barely even knew how to hold it, and had drilled me dead center of mass, frag my life), a medic had helped him with applying the nano-bandages I carried with me, and I had realized I had found at least forty or fifty miners. Which meant more than likely all the miners had been accounted for. A quick look around revealed they were in a barracks that also had a security room to one side, meaning I had found the next to last switch.

I eventually got the miners moving back up to the main facility, where they would at least have supplies. Once I had pulled the security lever, a ladder had apparently descended from the ceiling where I had fallen in and met the infected miner. While the surviving miners were heading up, I continued downwards toward what was clearly the source of the problem.

Ten minutes later, I was at least two hundred meters deeper into the mines than before, and my kill count had gone up by four infected miners. It wouldn't have been nearly as annoying if I hadn't had to deal with two sets of two infected. But obviously, I survived. And now there was a security switch in front of me, and a mining hatch that led down, further into the mines. This was mildly concerning, as I hadn't found the source of the Infected and the Shamblers.

But the mining hatch did not completely drown out a dull whine coming through it, or rather two dull whines. One was clearly the sound of machinery running, but the other sounded more like the whine of a starship grade laser battery powering up. Since the sound had been going on the entire time I had been staring at the last security room, debating the merits of actually unlocking it, it clearly wasn't a laser battery. With a sigh, I grab the switch and yank it to its off position, unlocking the mining hatch. "Lets do dis."

A short fall later, and I landed at the bottom of the mine. A quick look around showed a launcher of some kind in the center of the large room, a lot of clear pinkish crystals lying around on the ground, four switches attached to what looked like pillars of some kind sunk into the ground, and an unbelievably massive geometric crystal floating in the center of the room, larger than my space paperweight that had delusions of being a starship. Even as I gaped at it like a loon, it suddenly spun around, and a massive, bloodshot eye stared down at me. Worse, I realized I could make out vague outlines in the crystal, what looked like miners, Shamblers, and some who were halfway through the transformation. Clearly, this thing was the source.

The charging laser noise was coming from the launcher, which had a large indicator showing two lit bars on it, and two empty ones. However, a third hum suddenly joined the laser and machinery hums, and as the hairs on my arms stood up, I realized it was likely being aimed at me. I ran to one side, and suddenly a thick beam of energy shot out of the crystal, and began slowly tracking toward me. I did a quick lap around the room, hitting the two switches that were not activated, and then ran up and hit the launcher.

The laser charging sound reached almost unbearable levels, before the launcher fired, blasting bits of the crystal off, and cutting off the energy beam. The impact also caused the crystal like creature to screech in utter agony, before it refocused on me.

The next ten minutes were filled with frantic running, misfires, several unhappy Shamblers, the unpleasant discovery the room had no cover relative to the creature, the loss of my shotgun to one of the energy beams from the creature, and several nasty burns, before I FINALLY got the third shot off. The creature had gotten canny about using its energy beams to cut me off from the launcher, which would reset if at max charge and not fired quickly. But with the third hit, the crystal, which had been fracturing with each hit, completely shattered. Several half converted Shambler bodies hit the ground, the Shambler that had been chasing me fell over, and one of the miners that had been inside stood up.

The other miners looked partially melted, or maybe digested was a better word, but this guy looked fairly healthy, if sticky and covered in crystal monster goop. He wasn't coherent, but didn't freak out as I led him to one of the crates at the edge of the room and had him sit down. I then climbed up the only ladder in the room that wasn't destroyed, and found a mining machine. As I shut it down, the small drone suddenly beeped at me, and then the computer spoke through my headpiece. "You survived. Odd. Anyway, grab the crystals in the hopper of the mining machine. We need those to repair the hyperdrive. Then I will teleport you back to the ship."

Finally finished with the most annoying rescue mission I had ever been on, I collected the two dozen or so crystals from the drilling machine's hopper, and was abruptly teleported out, along with the drone. I hate computers.