Thompson showed them the entrance to the spaces beneath the surface of Phobos. Jack had an immediate dislike of it, but, then again, he had an immediate dislike of most of the things he'd encountered on Phobos Base so far. It was a service lift that looked as if someone had stepped inside and promptly exploded. Blackmore sent Jack and Thompson down first, to make sure the area was secure and to not risk them all at once.
The pair of them stepped onto the lift and Thompson hit the button. The doors closed and it began its slow descent.
"Man, I gotta say, you're like a legit badass," Jack said.
Thompson laughed. "Why do you say that?"
"You managed to survive all this crazy ass shit by yourself. And in the sewers, too. I've managed to have someone with me basically the whole time," he replied.
"I guess so. I wasn't really thinking about much, honestly. I was just...you know, going. Doing. Killing."
"What do you think about these things?"
Thompson shrugged. "Man, I've got no idea. I mean, zombies I could kind of get past. But flying skulls? Big red bastards that throw fire? Those shaved gorillas? It's nuts. I think they were doing some kind of genetic experiments or something."
"I think they come from another dimension. That's what the Phobos Anomaly is. It's a gateway that leads to another dimension, I think."
"Holy shit, like that old movie Event Horizon?"
"I'm not sure I've seen that movie."
"It's really old, like, from before the year two thousand. I like the horror classics." He stopped speaking as the elevator settled into its metal nest. "Go time," he muttered.
Both men raised their chainguns, and good thing, too, because the doors opened to reveal a half-dozen Demons pounding around in the receiving bay beyond. Jack squeezed the trigger of the chaingun and knew what it was to feel true power in his hands. Both huge silver guns spoke and began churning out rounds. The Demons roared as they were converted into piles of smoking, chewed-up meat. Bloody gore and viscera was sprayed and splattered across the bay beyond, painting the walls, floor, and ceiling in red.
When the guns fell silent, gunsmoke drifting from the twelve barrels, all was still and silent. Jack checked the ammo counter. He'd used up three quarters of the box. Damn. But wow had that been badass as hell.
"That's what I'm talking about!" Thompson said, grinning broadly. He stepped out into the bay beyond and Jack joined him.
He activated his radio. "Room's clear. We're sending the lift back up. Over."
"Affirmative. Out," Blackmore replied.
He hit the up button and stepped out, letting the doors close. While he waited for the others to come down, he studied the receiving bay they'd come to. It was a large, roughly triangular room, the wall behind him being the bottom and the way ahead narrowing towards one of three exits in the room. The doors were at least closed and looked relatively secure. Though that could change at any moment. Judging by the amount of corpses in the area, it seemed like this was another feeding area for the Demons.
He hated those things.
The elevator returned and deposited the others. They stepped out and surveyed the scene. "Nice," Blackmore said. "We need a map."
"I've got one," Thompson replied. "Sorry. Forgot to mention it. This place has got me a little fried," he added, passing Blackmore a bloodstained PDA.
The Sergeant accepted it wordlessly and studied it. Slowly, he nodded and passed it to Jennifer. "Pass it around, study it. All we've got to do is make our way through the initial complex, then, once we hit the main tunnel that connects the Military Base to the Computer Station, we'll be fine. Unfortunately, there's no direct underground route to the Phobos Anomaly. If we want to get there, it has to be across the surface," he explained.
They each passed the PDA around, studying the map, then Blackmore accepted it at the end and secured it. Jack went on point again, an assignment he just loved, and moved up to the front of the room. He opened the big silver door there and found himself staring down another long, dark hallway, lit occasionally by flickering lights. The walls were lined with all manner of pipes and some of them leaked steam.
"Fantastic," Jack muttered. He took a moment to switch out his weapons, letting his chaingun hang across his back and grabbing his SMG. He flicked on the muzzle-mounted flashlight and aimed it down the corridor. He waited a few seconds and when he didn't see or hear anything immediately threatening, he took off, leading the team in a single file down the metal tunnel. He listened intently, trying to pick out signs of life, but a variety of sounds soon assaulted him, most of them mechanical. They were in the guts of the base now.
Power generated, water ran, atmosphere filtered, machinery clanked. Not exactly the most ideal environment. Especially considering that everywhere seemed to be flooded with a misty kind of steam. They reached the end of the passageway without incident and came into a larger room. It was obviously some kind of central control area. There were more pipes along the walls and the ceiling, along with several larger pieces of machinery and workstations scattered across the main floor. Most of it was dead or sparking.
The remains of the maintenance personnel were here, there, and everywhere.
The team slowly made their way through the area, the tension beginning to mount. Jack moved between a series of workstations, his boots squelching loudly on the blood, SMG in hand, light playing across the darker corners of the room. The place reeked, but he was already beginning to get used to that awful smell of spilled guts, blood, and rotting meat. He managed to cross the room first, but as he came closer to the door they were supposed to go through, he noticed that something was wrong with it. Namely, it was dented outwards severely.
In fact, it was so dented that he could see through parts of it. He approached the door slowly and peered through one of the larger holes, confirming his suspicion.
"We've got a problem, Sergeant. The tunnel's collapsed," he reported.
Blackmore joined him and looked in through the hole, then sighed heavily. "Gimme a minute," he muttered, pulling the PDA back out and studying the map for a bit longer. "Okay, here's an alternate route we can take, through this oxygen plant, then this heat generating room."
They located the entrance to their secondary route and continued their journey. As Jack approached the door that would take them into the oxygen plant, he hesitated. A chill rippled through him. Gripping his SMG more tightly, he gathered his courage and opened the door. A pitch black room waited beyond. Stifling the urge to curse, he reactivated his flashlight and pointed it in through the door. A narrow path between two huge, rectangular pieces of silvery machinery covered with screens and nodes and buttons was revealed.
"Crap," he muttered, then set off.
The oxygen plant was still functional, which was reassuring, but it presented a problem, because it was loud. He moved slowly down the narrow alcove, gun tucked tightly into his shoulder. He reached its end and stepped out, finding himself in an open space between several more large pieces of machinery. There were a good dozen dark niches in practically every direction where something could possibly hide.
There were also three more alcoves snaking away into the darkness. Jack played his light across the alcoves and the niches between the machinery. He froze as the light came to rest on the face of an Imp. Being discovered, it issued a hissing shriek and geared up to throw a fireball at him. Jack didn't give it a chance, squeezing out a burst of fire and punching holes in its hideous alien face. Thick ruby blood sprayed the machinery around it. He heard several more shrieks and a few groans as everything else in the mechanical maze became aware of their presence. What was it with this damned moon and tight spaces!?
"Incoming!" Jack called.
He spun as he heard a hiss from his left and saw another Imp crawling along the ceiling. Cursing, he aimed and fired, stitching a line of bloody holes up its back. It lost its grip and slammed into the metal floor. He put it down with a shot to its temple, then turned and blew a zombie's head off as it lurched into view down one of the alcoves. A second one stumbled into view and he finished off his magazine killing it.
No Z-Sec down here, at least.
Although they were the ones with ammo usually.
He heard the others opening fire around him as more Imps and zombies tried to claw their way into the opening.
"Push forward!" Blackmore called.
Jack moved forward, into the alcove he'd murdered the two zombies in as he slammed a fresh magazine into his SMG. Down to the last one now. He ran down the length of the alcove, found himself in another opening, this one smaller, and then screamed as an Imp leaped at him. He brought his SMG up in between them and bashed the thing in the face, sending it stumbling backwards. He brought his weapon up again to kill it, but then felt heavy hands fall on his shoulders. He was yanked backwards and fell into a second Imp.
Falling onto his back as the thing lost its grip on him, he aimed up and loosed a spray of bullets into its sexless crotch. Blood and gore splashed down onto his visor. The thing shrieked and staggered away from him. Jack aimed forward, towards the other, and prepared to blow it away, but its head disappeared in a plume of dark red gore as someone else discharged a shotgun shell. Jack scrambled to his feet.
"Come on!" Thompson called, stepping into the opening.
With the others at his back, Jack plunged into the next alcove, now following the immense Marine as he led the way. Thompson paused at the head of the alcove and fired his huge gun, killing several zombies from the sound of it. Once they were dead, he rushed on. The next area was larger and held the exit. Thompson opened fire again as Jack crossed the room and slapped the open button. He let out a shout of surprise as an Imp appeared in the doorway and he shot up its chest, then kicked it back into another pair of zombies.
He put them both down with headshots and then moved on into the next corridor that connected the oxygen plant to the heat room. The whole area seemed alive with activity. He could hear the others pounding down the hallway behind him. Jack hit its end and punched the close button. The heat room was larger and more open and had actual freaking light! He couldn't see anything alive. He secured the area while the others rushed in and once the last one was through, the door was closed and locked. They kept pushing.
The squad managed to make it quickly through the heat room. Unfortunately, the fact that this next room was easy to get through didn't mean much because the final exit to the tunnel that would take them to the Computer Station was blocked off by a locked down pressure door. Jack felt his patience beginning to wear thin as he stared up at the huge silver door.
"Well, this is great," Blackmore growled. He walked over to the console next to the door and took a moment to search it over. He heaved a sigh. "Apparently this pressure door was tripped during the invasion. We need to get to a control room and unlock it."
Blackmore led them down a side passageway. Jack plodded after him. He was getting tired and his stomach was growling now, switching between extreme hunger and roiling terror. He shook every now and then and he couldn't tell if it was from low blood sugar or adrenaline or fear, he hated it all the same. He needed this to be over soon, he was definitely developing some cracks in his psychological armor. This was getting to be a bit much. But he told himself he could do this, he could keep it together…
He had to.
All they had to do was unlock the door, get down the tunnel, through the Computer Station, and to the Phobos Anomaly. Then blow that thing to hell and call for help and last long enough for someone to come up and rescue them.
And then they could nuke this place from orbit as far as he was concerned.
Just a bit longer. Just a bit farther. He'd trained his entire life for something like this...except that he'd never imagined he'd face down something like this. Fighting goddamned zombies and alien demons in space, forced to battle through an isolated base where the walls were painted in blood and the bodies were stacked like firewood in every room. As they reached the end of the corridor they were in and moved through the large transitional chamber, they ran into another problem. The control room was locked down.
Blackmore showed great restraint by not screaming a string of curses. Luckily, there was a security center nearby and they discerned that the blue keycard they needed to raise the lockout wasn't all that far away, apparently tucked away in an abandoned storage bay. Frustrated and paranoid more than ever, the squad of battered and battle-weary survivors left the main transitional room and headed off down another wrecked corridor.
They found the entrance to the storage room at its end in the form of another large, dented silver door stamped with the UAC logo. The Marines got into position. Jack hit the button. The door slid open, up, into the ceiling. He stared into the bay beyond. It was large, scattered with bodies and crates, cast in a flickering, broken light. There were no immediately obvious threats, but...something was wrong.
He didn't know what, but something about the bay bothered him.
"Move in...slowly," Blackmore murmured.
The team moved in. Jenkins stayed at the entrance to watch their back. They moved carefully into the large underground room, spreading out, playing their lights over the darker areas. Jack's light passed over crates, blood, and bodies. He hesitated as his light fell across something blue. Focusing in, he saw that he'd located the blue keycard. It was still held in a severed hand. It was about twenty feet away, deeper into the bay.
"Found the card," he said.
Blackmore and the others moved to join him. "We'll cover you," he said.
Jack nodded and began moving forward. Something shifted in the bay. He hesitated, listening intently. He could hear breathing. Heavy breathing. He'd made it about half the distance. Jack played his light again across the area, his combat senses screaming at him. The light froze as he spied some kind of movement.
"What the f..." he whispered.
Suddenly, the movement started up again and he heard heavy, meaty footfalls. All at once, with a crashing revelation of terror, he realized what he was looking at.
"Spectre!" he called, hosing the thing down.
The monster roared as blood flew on the air and accelerated towards him. Jack emptied his SMG and still the thing didn't go down. He heard the others opening fire, but only one stream of bullets blew past him and hit the nearly invisible beast. The others were opening up on several more shadowy figures. Dropping his spent SMG, he brought his chaingun around, aimed and fired. That did the trick. Jack put the thing down with a few shots from the chaingun, then turned the stream on another Spectre that had appeared beside the other and put it down with the remainder of the bullets in the gun. There was no time for a reload.
He let it hang, pulled out his last resort weapon, his sidearm, and aimed at yet another Spectre as it lumbered towards him, roaring bloody hell. Jennifer appeared at his side, shotgun in hand, and together they put the thing down, punching holes in its broad frame. As it fell, the gunfire fell silent. "That's the last of them," Blackmore said finally.
Jack let out a breath he hadn't even realized he'd been holding and finished his job. He marched over, grabbed the bloodied keycard, and then retreated. They left the bay in a hurry and got back to the control room. Jack swiped it and moved in, pistol at ready, given that it was the only weapon he had that was loaded. There was nothing in the control room. Well, nothing alive, anyway. The bulletproof windows along two of the walls had been broken out. The window frames were ringed with bloody glass teeth.
The windows overlooked a sewage treatment plant. The control room itself was a bloodied, battered, sparking mess. It seemed like almost everything had been broken and there were at least twenty bullet-riddled, shredded, ripped-up corpses, almost all of them Marines, spread out across the square room. Judging by the sheer amount of spent shell casings and bullet holes in the walls, it seemed like this had been the site of a last stand.
Jack wondered where the enemy corpses were.
While Blackmore worked to get the pressure door raised, Jack took the opportunity to reload his chaingun, then he joined the others in searching through the fresh necropolis for ammo. There wasn't a great deal, but he managed to finally replenish his depleted shotgun. He had enough to load up with a full two reloads behind it.
"Okay, I got it, let's get the hell out of here," Blackmore said.
They began the final leg of their journey out of the sewers.