Jack didn't want to leave the tram.
Mainly because this time, as they rolled into the new station, he could see an ugly green glow waiting for them. The platform itself was clear, but one glance down beyond it into the maintenance area below was enough to inform him that there had been a massive toxic waste spill. There had to be six feet of the stuff pooled down there.
"Thank God we found these suits," Jennifer murmured as she joined him in looking.
Jack sat there for a long moment, staring out the Plexiglas windows of the tram, not wanting to move. Neither of the other two said anything, clearly not eager to get back out there. He didn't blame them, he was right there with them. After another few seconds, Jack forced himself to stand up, because if he didn't, he'd just keep sitting there and this would be as far as they made it. Part of him wanted to give up so desperately, wanted to just stay in the safety of the tram and never leave and wait for someone else to come along.
But he knew the chances of that were somewhere between infinitesimal and forget it. When you were a Marine, or really, if you wanted to be successful in life, you don't wait for things to happen, you make them happen.
You do it yourself.
He hefted his shotgun and made his way back out of the cockpit, down half the length of the first tram cart until he came to stand at the sliding glass-and-steel doors. He raised his arm and pressed the button. His limbs felt wooden. He was tired again, a bone-deep exhaustion that was beginning to permeate through his whole being. Trying to shake it off, Jack stepped out onto the platform. It was at least steady.
The trio progressed silently across the metal deckplates. They hit the far door without incident and Jack could feel tension mounting on the air like an invisible, odorless gas. When he opened the door that granted them entrance into the Refinery, he knew why he felt this. The way beyond was pitch black. Sighing heavily, he activated the flashlight at the end of his shotgun barrel and pointed it into the way ahead.
The reception lobby looked like a tornado had ripped through, after an earthquake had hit, but he hadn't expected any different.
"Do the lights really have to be dead?" Jenkins groaned.
"Apparently," Jack replied as he moved into the next room. He played his light slowly across the walls, hunting for enemies, but that strange, vague combat sense that kept him alive told him that there wasn't anything around. He spent a few minutes confirming it anyway, his flashlight revealing broken, bloodied furniture, a scattering of spent shell casings and dead bodies laid out in the gloom. Finally, his light fell on a non-digital map on the wall. Thank God to whoever thought that up. Technology was a huge crutch nowadays.
All it took was one good EMP, one good blowout, and a whole base could be plunged into chaos. Plus, in a place like outer space where there was no atmosphere and it was damn near absolute zero, it could mean death.
"Okay," Jack said slowly as he studied the map. "If we can get doors open, we should be able to cut a fairly straight path through the Refinery and get out the other side to the next tram. All we really have to contend with is the darkness."
"Yeah, just the darkness," Jenkins muttered morosely, looking around.
"We'll be fine," Jack said, but he wasn't so sure.
He'd never liked the dark but he'd made himself get over it. But here, where actual, genuine monsters lurked…
Well, it was a bad place to be.
"Let's get it over with," Jack said, holding his shotgun closely. He moved over to the door that would take them deeper into the Refinery. It was open, which was nice since it meant they wouldn't have to deal with the manual release. Jack hated screwing with those things. He pointed the barrel of his shotgun at the dark opening, revealing an antechamber with several more doors. He stepped inside, clearing the room with a sweeping arc of his weapon. Still nothing, although in the stark silence he thought he could hear something shift, distantly.
Apprehension crept coldly along his skin as he crossed the room, his fingers aching from clenching the shotgun so hard. He just wanted this to be over, but he knew it was a vain hope, a distant prospect at best. If it was going to be over, and not in a nasty, brutal kind of way, it was still a ways off. How many more buildings did they have to traverse? Too many, it felt like. Far too many. In a way, it felt like he would never stop making his way from building to building, plunging into the hellish horror time and time again, fighting infinite monsters.
Jack shook himself and crossed the antechamber, stepping through the next door, which was a split down the middle kind of door and only partially open, leaving maybe a foot and a half of clearance. Just barely enough for them to squeeze through. He stepped through and then-
-something grabbed him, something strong, and yanked him forward. He cried out, shoving blindly, off center. He slipped from its grasp and stumbled, then spun around, raising the shotgun, trying to see whatever it was. Definitely no zombie. He spied an uncertain figure lurching towards him, something broad…
A Spectre!
He fired, letting the thing have it point-blank. Blood sprayed seemingly from nowhere. Then a second shotgun barked and the thing let out a furious roar and collapsed to the floor, still almost totally invisible. His heart was jackhammering in his chest and it felt like it might burst through the combat armor. Jack made himself calm down and scanned the hallway he'd come into. It was hard to tell, but the way seemed clear.
"You okay?" Jennifer asked.
"Close enough for rock and roll," he replied. He was sweating inside the suit now. Frustrated, he turned up the A/C a notch and set off, determined to get through this one way or another. Their boots clanged hollowly in the hallway as they stalked on. They passed lots of closed doors that no doubt led to offices and storage bays and maintenance areas. Thankfully they were pretty much exclusively closed and not easily opened, at least for a monster. So that kept them from who knew how many dangerous gun battles.
They reached the end of the hallway and hit their first obstacle. The door ahead was closed. Jack sighed and spent a few minutes hunting along the door's frame for the manual release. When he found it and hit it, the door popped open and he crouched down, grabbed the bottom and began grunting with effort as he pulled it upwards. His suit provided him some extra strength and he finally managed to get it open.
They came to another huge antechamber, this one leading into the Refinery proper. They would have to enter it and cut right down the middle, through all the equipment and machinery. Almost as soon as he was in, a fireball lit up the gloom and slapped right into his chest. Jack grunted, regained his footing, staggered forward, shoulder his shotgun and blew the damned Imp's head right off. More fireballs appeared to the right, and to the left he began to see the flashes of muzzle flare. Cursing, Jack began to work on the Imps as he strafed, trying to get the two groups to get into a crossfire. He heard Jennifer and Jenkins join in.
The antechamber was ablaze with gunfire and fireballs that crisscrossed every which way. Jack felt a few of the shots connect against his back and was enormously grateful for the badass blue armor. He beheaded another Imp, cocked the shotgun, took aim again and blasted another's arm off. He kept blasting away, kept moving, dodging fireballs. One of the Imps shrieked and leaped at him. Its face appeared in his sights and he blew it off, spraying the others with blood. He saw that there was only one Imp left now and put a fist-sized hole in its chest, sending it flying backwards into the wall behind it where it slid to the floor, leaving a huge smear of deep red blood as it went. Jack turned around and surveyed the situation.
A few of the zombies, Z-Sec variety, were still alive and fighting. He emptied his shotgun in helping the other two put them down. As the last one fell, Jack hastily began reloading his shotgun. Silently, he walked over to the large silver door and approached the control panel beside it. He frowned at the dead screen, the realization that this door was not opening slowly dawning on him. They didn't have manual releases, not doors this size, or if they did, he had no hope of finding it and operating it. Well...shit.
"Dammit," he muttered, hunting for another map. He soon found one tucked away in a back corner and studied it. As he figured out a new plan, the other two approached him. "What'd you find among the dead?" he asked.
"Slim pickings," Jennifer replied, passing him only a single magazine of ammo for his pistol. "Same as usual."
"Well, looks like we're going to have to deal with the generators anyway. One of them, at least," Jack said.
"How's that?" Jenkins asked, sounding nervous, fidgeting in the stark gloom.
"This door isn't opening without power. And while there are other routes we could take, it would honestly be easier to just go turn on the lights. We just have to backtrack, cut through this storage bay, get down a few halls, and then head underground. There's a hatch that should take us right to one of the auxiliary generators. If it's fixable, we'll fix it and restore power to the immediate area. Then we get through the door and be on our way," Jack explained.
"Great," Jenkins muttered.
"Know what you mean," Jack replied. "Let's get to it."
They retraced their steps, heading back into the large hallway they'd initially traversed. As they did, Jack realized there was light, and then immediately wished there wasn't. Lost Souls, about half a dozen of them, floated aimlessly, investigating the shootout, no doubt. Two of them nearby let out hissing shrieks as they spotted the trio and began zooming straight for them. Feeling a spike of cold fear pierce his guts, Jack raised his shotgun and blew one of them away. Jennifer did the same thing and both flying skulls disappeared in plumes of flames and a rain of bleached bone. Naturally, this drew the attention of the others.
The three of them managed to blast away the Lost Souls before they got close enough to pose a real threat, and then they blew away the three more of them that drifted out along the length of the corridor. Once the threat was dealt with, Jack led them ever onward, finding the correct door and coming to the storage bay they were looking for. The bay smelled weird, he realized as he stepped inside.
It wasn't death. Well, the smell of death and blood and spilled guts was common, omnipresent across the two moon bases. No, this had the strange, thick, ropy aroma of rotting vegetative matter, of a compost heap. It was cloying. Jack played his light across the wall to the right and hesitated. "What the hell is that?" he whispered.
The other two lights joined his and focused on the same thing he was seeing. In between a pair of huge crates was a section of wall, slate gray in color. But it was covered in what seemed to be thick green vines that twisted and writhed as if they were dreaming.
"Could they be...from a greenhouse?" Jack asked uncertainly.
"They don't look natural," Jennifer murmured softly.
She was right. Although they looked kind of like creeper vines, they were covered in small white thorns, like miniature versions of the ivory protrusions that the Imps sported. After a long moment, Jack determined that he had no idea what the heck they were and simply vowed to keep away from them, then kept going.
They made their way quickly through the storage bay and only had to put down a few Imps and Lost Souls before they hit the generator room. Jack lowered himself into the room beneath the deckplates and checked out the auxiliary generator. It was in working order and all he had to do was activate it. Why hadn't it been turned on? Whatever, it didn't matter. The lights in the room flickered weakly to life.
This light was better than not light, at least.
Jack climbed back up.
"Well, halfway there," he said.
"Hopefully," Jennifer replied.
She had a point. But they didn't run into any real trouble on the way back to the door. Just a few zombies that had wandered out of their hiding places. He was worried that they'd have to track down keycards to open the thing up, but when he pressed the button on the control pad, the door began to slide up into the ceiling.
"Well, that was easy," Jenkins muttered.
"Yeah," Jack replied slowly, worry creeping up into him, icy and menacing.
The door continued to rise. The area beyond was still dark. Not exactly the best sign. When the door reached chest height, Jack couldn't stand it anymore. He ducked down and pointed his barrel-mounted flashlight into the stygian abyss beyond. He saw huge refining tanks, larges rectangular pieces of machinery spread out across a broad open floor, several bodies...the light came to rest on something. For a second, he didn't know what he was seeing.
Then he raised the light a little bit and lit up the face of another one of those tall horrors with the goat horns. Red energy crackled in its eyes as it opened its mouth and loosed a roar that froze him where he stood.
A name for the thing snapped into his head on the heels of the paralyzing fear: Baron of Hell. He was looking at a Baron of Hell.
Jack screamed and fired off a shotgun shell. It glanced off the thing's shoulder and though a spray of blood escaped the wound, it didn't seem to do any real damage. The thing raised its hand and hurled a green ball of fire at him.
"Fall back!" he roared, blasting away with his shotgun.
The other two opened fire as well. Jack emptied his shotgun a second time and was reaching for more shells, (the last of his shells now), when his elbow bumped the chaingun he had hanging across his back. Trembling in fear, he dropped the shotgun and brought the chaingun out, swinging it around from behind him. He did it so hard and fast that he threw himself off balance and stumbled to his right. It saved his ass.
The giant goat demon had just lobbed a green fireball at him which would have taken his head off. As it was, it narrowly avoided him, scorching right past his helmet. He regained his footing, aimed the big, six-barreled beast at the Baron and squeezed the trigger. The barrels spun up and then began spitting out red hot metal death. It hit the thing right in its broad, carved-from-granite chest. Blood and chunks of gore spewed as the thing roared and flailed. He ended up going through the entire magazine putting the monster down.
"Holy shit, I thought there were only the two of them," Jennifer whispered shakily.
"I guess...I guess there's gonna be more of them," Jenkins said.
"We should name them. I think we should call them Barons of Hell," Jack said. He was trying to reload the chaingun with its final box of ammo, but he couldn't take his eyes off of the corpse he'd just created.
"That's a really good name," Jennifer replied.
Jack didn't say anything, finally managing to get the box slotted. He made himself let the thing hang back in its original position, then retrieved his shotgun. Wordlessly, he led the way into the refinery beyond. He moved with great trepidation, they all did, but they managed to reach the other side and locate the tram without seeing a single other hostile. Jack felt a tremendous relief as he slid into the cockpit and fired the thing up.
But as he looked up into that fiery red sky, and looked down to the surface where he saw more Lost Souls and Cacodemons than ever, and now even the distant shapes of Imps, Demons, and zombies marching across the surface, he couldn't help but feel that his luck wouldn't last forever, that they were living on borrowed time.