Jack was beginning to love the trams.
They were like eyes in the storms, places of peace and calm and tranquility. He felt safe there. It was false, he knew, and dangerous to think so, but a part of him couldn't help it. Jack had spent so much of the past ten years training, working out, hardening himself, building his endurance. He had committed to being a Marine, to helping people, to eliminating hostiles. He could go for days without sleep if he had to, could fight in pretty much every environment known to man, (after that last battle on the surface, he basically had now), he could fight with the best of them. And for a decade, he had. But this…
This was just so totally off the radar that his brain was having a hard time adjusting. He hadn't even stopped to think about the ramifications of what these creatures might mean. Were they aliens? Genetically engineered monsters? Or...were they real demons? Were they from Hell? Was Hell real? He'd been thinking about what Baker had said, about them being from another dimension. He'd read enough sci-fi novels to get the basic concept. So what if the UAC had accidentally opened a door to another dimension?
And what if that dimension happened to be Hell?
What did that even mean? Was this the actual Hell they were talking about here, or was it just an awful, chaotic place that merely resembled their concept of Hell? Demons were supposed to be fallen angels, and it wasn't like shotguns could kill angels, fallen or not. The fact that they could kill these awful entities by itself was a tremendous relief. Well, he surmised as they trundled across the surface to Central Processing, if they were demons, then he wasn't all that impressed. That thought almost made him laugh.
Jack shook himself slightly. He needed to get his head back in the game. It seemed that the farther along they went, the closer they got to the Phobos Anomaly, the worse things were. Which made enough sense, given that it was, as far as he knew, the epicenter of this hellish maelstrom that had engulfed the dead moon. And now they had to go to the Anomaly itself. He hoped Blackmore could pull this off, because honestly the plan seemed a little...haphazard. But the situation was haphazard, so this was probably as good as it was going to get.
The tram was coming to a halt now.
Sighing softly, Jack popped his neck and then checked over his weapons. He was low on ammo for his SMG, so he put that in reserve. His shotgun situation was better, but he didn't really want to use up his shells now when he might need them later so, with more than a little reservation, he put that in reserve too and pulled out one of his pistols. He was pretty good on ammo for that, but it just didn't pack the same punch as the other two weapons. But it was the responsible thing to do, and being responsible seemed paramount in this situation.
The tram finished cycling through the airlock.
"On your feet, Marines!" Blackmore called.
Jack stood up, the pre-battle adrenaline pushing back his lethargy and anxiety. It was time to keep going, time to continue the fight. He looked around the interior of the tram. The others weren't looking too good. Jenkins was still sitting quietly, not a good sign for him. His pain must have been back by then. Blackmore was piloting the tram. Baker was standing now, her shotgun in hand, looking grim and fierce. Jennifer caught eyes with him and smiled tiredly. He couldn't help but smile back. However, he quickly lost that smile as the tram settled into Central Processing.
"Well...shit," Baker muttered, looking out the window.
Some kind of calamity had struck the platform beyond. Consequently, the platform was inaccessible...because it had been blown up. There was nothing beyond the open doors of the tram but empty space and some twisted metal around the edges of the room. Jack flicked on the flashlight mounted at the edge of his pistol and pointed it down, playing it across the darkness below. The wrecked remains of the platform, now nothing more than so much twisted, blackened metal, was about twelve feet below.
"Shit," Jack muttered. "We can probably make the jump..." he said, considering it.
"No," Blackmore replied. "Here, in the front. There's an escape hatch with a ladder. I'll head down first, then Ward. Everyone else, stay up here and cover us while we clear the way."
There were a string of affirmative replies as Jack moved into the front of the tram. Blackmore was crouched, getting a hatch open. Within a minute, he had it open and the ladder extended. He disappeared down into the hole. Jack hovered above, waiting, prepared to spring into action. But nothing happened. He reached the bottom and called up. Jack holstered his pistol and mounted the ladder, hurrying down it.
Being on ladders creeped him out now.
He felt vulnerable.
Jack managed to hit the bottom and as soon as he stepped off, he grabbed his shotgun. So much for conserving ammo for later. He switched on the flashlight and faced the opposite direction Blackmore was facing. The Sergeant was moving slowly forward, towards where the entrance to the facility would be, so Jack covered the back way. He hadn't even known these platforms had open areas beneath them, but he supposed it made enough sense. His light revealed several more of those toxic gray barrels, a stack of generic silver crates, a few bodies…
"Hostiles!" Jack roared as he squeezed the trigger.
Barely a quarter second later, a mule kicked him in the chest. Or at least that's what it felt like. He was picked up and thrown backwards, slamming onto his back among the debris. Vision swimming, ears ringing, Jack staggered to his feet. There was a confusing green glow now and someone was shouting at him and what had happened!? He raised his shotgun, only to discover that it had been thrown from his grasp, and instead his hand fell automatically to the butt of his pistol. He yanked it out and raised it.
There were no more hostiles now.
At least not in front of him.
"Some goddamned warning would be nice next time, Ward!" Blackmore was shouting. Jack finally realized what had happened: he'd been aiming for an Imp that had appeared from the darkness and instead had hit one of those damned barrels. While he was still processing this, a fireball flew over his right shoulder from behind. Gunfire sounded from overhead and Jack spun around, raising his pistol again. He seized briefly as he saw the opposition: in the glaring white, strobing light of the muzzle flares, a dozen Imps, hidden among the shadows, were revealed. He snapped back to reality and began opening fire while backing up.
There seemed to be nowhere to hide, nowhere to duck.
The only option was to fight like hell. Jack emptied his magazine as he strafed to the right, away from Blackmore, as not to make one target or get in his way. He got a shot through the eye of one of the creatures, dropping it like a rock, and put holes in the chest of another, then shot the neck of a third. Overhead, the others rained down death from above. Fireballs scorched past as Jack ejected the spent magazine and slammed a fresh one in. He grunted as one of them smacked him in the chestplate. An awful heat hit his skin as the fire washed over the metal and he did his best to ignore it as he regained his footing.
He ducked down as he opened fire, concentrating on two that were in front of him. One of the beasts roared and reared back to throw another fireball. Its big open mouth presented the perfect target and he put two shots into it. The back of its head opened up like a ripe watermelon hitting concrete from three stories up and blood, brains, and bone fragments splattered the wall behind it. Jack switched aim and popped off another two shots, grazing the other's cheek with one and then putting a shot right through its forehead.
He switched targets, but there were no more targets. They'd put down the rest of the Imps. Jack took a deep breath and let it out slowly.
"Let's finish the sweep and clear," Blackmore said, reloading his SMG.
Jack nodded shakily and resumed the search. They spent another two minutes poking through the area, checking out a small storage room, a workroom, and a simple bathroom before declaring it safe. The others joined them, moving down the ladder, then picked their way across the debris-strewn floor to the workroom, where there was an emergency access ladder. Jack led the way this time, clambering up the ladder and opening the hatch at the top. He cautiously poked his head up and out, finding himself in another small storage area.
"Clear," he said, hauling himself out and bringing his shotgun, which he'd finally managed to track down, into play.
There was nowhere to hide in the room, at least. He waited until the others had come up, then moved over to the door. Blackmore joined him and he opened it up. They cleared the hallway beyond, then moved quickly down it, and came to the ingress to the processing plant. It was definitely a lot bleaker than the other lobbies they'd been to. There was little more than metal and the UAC logo stamped everywhere and a simple desk in the middle of the room. The way was clear for the moment and they went to work.
Jack and Jennifer picked through the remains of the security kiosks while Blackmore and Jenkins secured the area. Baker, being the most technically minded survivor of the group apparently, settled in at the central desk to see what information she could pull from the local network. When they finished up their respective jobs, she didn't have any good news for them.
"Central Processing is locked down," she said.
"What a surprise," Blackmore muttered. "I don't suppose there's any way to circumvent it?"
"Not unless you want to take a space walk," Baker replied. "We're going to need three different keycards. Two of them are accessible right now. Unfortunately, the third won't be accessible until we find the other two. Then, once we get the third card, we can access the processing center itself. Then we can pass through it and get to the tram and take it to the Military Base," she explained.
"Fine," Blackmore said. He studied the screen and called the others over. "All right, looks like they're in two different wings. These are accurate?" he asked.
Baker nodded. "Yeah, we can pinpoint their exact location. Lower security in this building," she replied.
"Okay. So, Ward, Taylor, Baker, you'll head into this maintenance area and get the blue keycard. I'll take Jenkins into the storage area and we'll get the red keycard. We meet back here as soon as possible," Blackmore said.
They split up. Jack didn't like the look of the maintenance section. From the map, it appeared like a confused network of corridors and rooms. Not exactly the most confidence inspiring environment. Didn't matter, though. He had to go there. At least he had backup. Jack took the lead, finding himself in a long, broad corridor of decent lighting and gleaming silver metal. They stopped to check whatever doors came to them, finding only storage areas full of those awful barrels and, thankfully, nothing to shoot at.
When they came to the entrance to the maintenance sector, Jack opened the door and then stopped dead in his tracks.
"You've got to be kidding me," he muttered.
There was a small room beyond the door with three tunnels snaking away from it and the whole area was bathed in a slowly dying and resurrecting strobing light. Even worse, he heard a zombie groan, and something else let out a low growl.
"Well this sucks," Jennifer said.
"Let's get this over with," Baker replied.
Jack sighed and stepped through the threshold and into the simple room beyond. He looked down each one of the three tunnels. None of them looked any more inviting than the other. Remembering that the keycard was supposed to be towards the left, that's the way he went. The others followed him, reassuring at his six.
Almost immediately the strobe effect began to get to him. It made it difficult to focus. He paused as he reached another intersection with three more tunnels branching away. The room was small but packed with gear. There were a pair of heavily used workbenches and a row of lockers. It was hard to believe anyone had to work here. Jack turned right, pressing deeper into the network. He gripped his shotgun more tightly as he thought he saw something flash by further down the corridor. He hesitated, wondering if he'd actually seen something or not. Damn these lights! Cautiously, he resumed his forward progress.
It was slow going, as he had to stop every ten feet or so, wherever a cross corridor cut through the primary one. When he hit the third cross hallway, which marked roughly the halfway point in their miserable journey, he turned to the left, saw nothing, turned to the right and found himself staring at an Imp that was winding up to throw a fireball. He didn't give it a chance, raising his shotgun and pounding out a shell.
It was a good shot, punching a fist-sized hole in its chest and spraying the area around it with deep red gore. Unfortunately, it alerted everything else in the pulsing maze to their location, and apparently there were a lot of hostiles around. A chorus of roars, groans, and shrieks sounded from all around them. Jack snapped a curse and prepared for the worst, hurrying down the corridor. If they could just get to the workroom the damned keycard was in, they could snatch it and get out. A zombie stepped out in front of him, a pistol in its hand, though there was no black armor on it. Jack aimed and fired, blowing its head clean off.
Behind him, he heard the boom of another shotgun firing.
"On our six!" Baker called.
"Keep pushing!" Jennifer yelled, punctuating her sentence with a blast from her own shotgun.
Jack cocked the gun, aimed and fired again, blowing the left arm off an Imp that appeared in the corridor ahead of him, then shifted aim and blasted once more, ripping away a good chunk of its skull in a spray of brains and blood. They kept going, shooting their way through the complex of tight corridors, the lights pulsing madly, made all the worse by the muzzle flare. He emptied his shotgun putting down another pair of zombies, three Imps, and a Demon. He made sure to kill that one fast. That was not something to fight in this environment.
His visor became streaked with blood.
"We're here!" he called as they hit the end of the hall. He punched the open button and stepped inside, clearing the workroom quickly, finding nothing alive inside, then spun around. "In!" he shouted as he quickly fed more shells into his shotgun. Baker was walking backwards at this point, blasting away at whatever remained. Jennifer hurried in and got out of the way. Once Baker was in, Jack finished loading his shotgun, then switched out to his SMG, leveled it at the remaining creatures coming at them and unloaded.
When his gun began clicking, there wasn't anything left standing in the corridor. He looked down its length, seeing a good twenty or so corpses strewn across it. Well...so far, so good. None of them were dead, at least.
"Baker," he said as he reloaded his SMG with its last mag, "guard the door. We'll look for the keycard."
"On it," she replied, standing at the room's point of ingress.
The pair of them moved slowly over the room. It was a mess, even by normal workroom standards. Several crates had been toppled and burst open, spare parts and tools spilled everywhere. There were a few ravaged corpses for company as well. After several minutes, Jack finally found the card in question hidden away in the pocket of a suit wrapped around a severed leg.
"Got it," he said, holding it up to the light and double-checking it. Yep, it looked good. He slipped it into a secure pocket. "Let's-"
"Contacts!" Baker shouted. She stepped out of the room and there was a sharp report from her shotgun. Jack moved to join her and help fight whatever it was, but let out a startled cry as the door suddenly slammed shut.
"Shit!" he snapped, rushing forward and hitting the open button. Nothing happened.
"There's too many of them!" he heard Baker scream over the radio. "Get the door open!"
"It's locked!" Jack yelled. Shaking with adrenaline, he suddenly dropped to one knee, pulled out his knife and jammed it in between the panel and the wall. He forced it open and popped the panel off. Outside, he heard more gunshots and roaring. He had enough tech knowledge to be able to override the door's controls. He ripped some wires out and began bringing them together. Baker screamed. Sweating and trembling furiously from fear and adrenaline and desperate need, Jack finally managed to get the door open.
"Baker!" Jennifer screamed.
Jack felt his veins turn to ice as he shot to his feet, raising his shotgun. They were too late. Baker was still screaming as an Imp ripped her arm from her body, armor and all. At the same time, a zombie was grabbing her neck, strangling her. Another Imp punched its fist into her stomach and yanked out a fistful of her foamy guts.
Jack screamed as he blasted away. The first shot took Baker's head off, because she was dead and there was nothing they could do to save her. The only thing he could save her from was the pain. He turned and blasted away one of the Imps, blowing its head off, then shot the second Imp in the neck. Jennifer was blowing away the zombies. Another one wandered into view and Jack decapitated that fucker next.
His shotgun was dry.
He dropped it, pulled out his pistol and emptied the magazine putting down the stragglers. He stood there for a long moment in stricken silence with Jennifer, neither of them moving. Finally, Jack broke the stillness by reloading his pistol and holstering it again. "Come on," he said quietly, stepping out into the corridor. "Let's get her gear."
It was slim pickings between what Baker had left on her and the zombies they'd killed. His shotgun was still dry and he'd only managed to pick up a few more magazines for his pistol, which he was currently using. He didn't like how sparse ammo was or how fast it all seemed to go, but there were just so many hostiles around. It was what many referred to as a target rich environment. Well, at least the pistol was sturdy.
It didn't take them too long to reunite with Blackmore and Jenkins in the main room. The Sergeant accepted the keycard from Jack and solemnly swiped them both. The quartet of them lined up, ready for whatever lay beyond the large, silver door. It slid open, revealing the next section of Central Processing.
It wasn't all that impressive.
Mostly it was just an intermediary area where they seemed to have routed a lot of pipes and power junctions through, mixed in with some generic storage bays and maintenance areas. They still had to get through the main plant. The four of them spent ten minutes hunting through the maintenance areas and pipe rooms, putting down a handful of zombies and Imps, before they managed to find the third and final keycard.
Once they had it, they gathered at the primary entrance to the plant.
Jack readied himself, trying his best to banish the encroaching hopelessness and despair that seemed to bubble up to the surface whenever another one of his fellow Marines died. All he could do was push back against the darkness. Had to stay sharp, had to keep his head in the game. Or he was going to end up like Baker and Peterson and McGee. He wondered, suddenly, where Thompson had ended up, if he was even still alive. Then the door was opening. He was at its right side, crouched down, scoping the situation out.
Blackmore was on the left side, doing the same, and the other two were waiting in reserve. A vast, expansive area awaited them beyond the threshold. It was definitely the main processing plant. Huge silver tanks lined either side and catwalks provided a kind of second story overhead, crisscrossing between the processing stations and monitoring terminals. The main floor was basically clear of obstructions.
Jack couldn't help but think of a shooting gallery.
There was a lot of darkness, a lot of bad space in the immense room beyond. There were no hostiles visible in that moment, but the whole place stank of ambush. They continued lingering for a few moments longer.
"Come on," Blackmore said finally. "Quick and quiet. Tram station is just on the other side of the processing complex."
He took point. Jack was right behind him. Jenkins and Jennifer brought up the rear. They plunged into the gloom, preparing themselves for the worst. Jack felt his whole body tensing in anticipation as they cut right down the middle, not wanting to risk getting too close to either side. Anything could lurk among the dark machinery there. Their footsteps echoed in the huge room and Jack strained his ears against the sounds to detect any hints of enemies, constantly scanning the periphery of the area. He began to see things.
Shifting shapes and uncertain shadows that might just have been their lights playing across the area or might have been something alive and evil. They hit the halfway mark. That's when the room seemed to shriek to awful life around them. Jack saw about a dozen fireballs spring into existence and began sailing towards them...and that was just from the right side. At the same time, muzzle flare began popping around them, from the ground floor and the catwalks above.
"Run!" Blackmore roared.
They bolted, breaking into a ragged formation and sprinting for the far exit. It was a good thirty meters away but it might as well have been thirty miles. Jack didn't even bother shooting, instead focusing on getting the hell out of there. He felt a bullet hit his armor and knew from the stinging pain that he'd have a bitch of a bruise there soon. A fireball scorched past his face. Another just barely missed his hand. The room was alive with hostiles. He heard the others grunting as they endured pain of their own.
And then, suddenly, after pounding across the deckplates for what felt like ages and eras, dodging here and there, nearly tripping over each other, skirting around big pieces of machinery, they were there, at the exit.
"Get it open!" Blackmore roared, spinning around.
Jenkins got to it and Jack and Jennifer dug in their heels and spun around, pistols out, ready to rock and roll. Some of the Imps had leaped down from the catwalks and emerged from the shadows and were coming for them, hissing and shrieking. Jack braced the pistol with both hands, aimed down the iron sights and blasted the first thing that he saw. He punched holes in the hideous red face of an Imp, dropping it, then turned and fired again, shooting a second demonic beast three times in the chest and spraying its fellows with blood.
Beside him, Jennifer and Blackmore were plugging away, the good Sergeant with his SMG. Jack heard a groan from his right and spun. Two zombies were coming out of the shadows there, in between two big pieces of machinery. He capped both of them, then turned back to the front, and emptied his magazine into another Imp.
"Any day now, Jenkins!" Blackmore snapped.
"Almost there!" Jenkins called back.
Jack sighed, ejected the spent magazine and slapped a fresh one in. There were still a good two dozen Imps and zombies visible and more were emerging all the time. Jack had taken two more shots in his armor by now and a fireball had come perilously close to ending his life. He emptied the second magazine putting down another pair of zombies and a trio of fire-spewing Imps. Right as he finished reloading again, Jenkins gave the call.
"It's open!"
"Go! I'll cover our retreat!" Blackmore shouted.
Jack didn't need to be told twice. There were more of them coming and he thought he heard the pounding footfalls of Demons now. He turned and ran through the door at about the same time Jennifer did. Once they were through and they took the bare minimum few seconds to ensure the room was clear, they spun back around and opened fire, providing cover for Blackmore. The second the Sergeant was through the door, Jack punched the close button, then the lock button. As soon as the little pad turned red, silence fell.
Jack almost felt like collapsing now that it was over. Except that it wasn't over, not really. This was just a temporary reprieve.
"Come on," Blackmore said after a few breaths. "Tram's just ahead."
Jack made himself keep going.