PART FOUR
–INFERNO–

"Hey, you okay?"

Jack looked up. He realized that he'd been staring at the gently vibrating deckplates of the ship for several minutes now.

"I'm not cracking up...I think," he replied.

Jennifer looked worried, but also tired. But she wasn't exhausted anymore, at least. Neither was he. Their brief R & R in the Hangar had helped. Green had taken over flying duty on the grounds that...she was the only one who knew how to pilot. Stratton was up front with her, leaving him and Jennifer alone in the back. A part of Jack found it strange and somehow hilarious that, even when they were almost literally in Hell itself, they were still pairing off and hooking up. But he supposed that was the nature of humanity.

Almost everyone wanted to fuck.

Especially if they were going to die soon.

Although...he looked over at Jennifer, who was still looking at him. He took her hand and squeezed it, she squeezed back. For him, it was a little more than just looking to hook up. "I'll be okay, Jennifer. What about you?"

"I hope I will be too. This is...this is all so much. I mean, we're in...Hell."

"It's not Hell," Jack said.

"How do you know? I mean, we can't know."

He shook his head. "It's not actually Hell, Jennifer. It's just another dimension that's home to a bunch of sick assholes that need a lesson in manners."

That made her laugh, and some of the tension seemed to disappear. "I guess you're right," she murmured. "This is just freaky."

"I know. I'm scared shitless myself. But...hey, we've made it this far, right? I mean, seriously, we got thrown into the meat grinder on Phobos, and it was even worse over here on Deimos. And we kicked their ass all over those two moons. Yeah, it's gonna be tough, but we can do this. We're gonna make it home."

He almost believed it himself.

Jennifer nodded. "Yeah, we got this."

The whole shuttle jerked suddenly. A shriek of rending metal sounded and, on the heels of it, they could hear Green cursing sharply.

"What's happening!?" Jack called.

"Strap in! Mechanical problems! I think...shit! We're going down! Stratton, get your ass back there and strap in! Now!"

As Jack and Jennifer strapped into their seats, Stratton stumbled back to join them. He sat down heavily across from them and quickly snapped the restraining straps into place over his chest, then gripped the chair tightly. The engines sounded horribly strained now, and right as Jack began to ask what was happening, he heard a series of sharp pops, followed by a small explosion, and then the awful silence of no engines.

"We're a dead stick!" Green roared. "We're going down! Hold on!"

They were in free fall now. Jack could feel it, his stomach flipping over and over, icy terror filling his veins. Goddamnit, he refused to die in a shuttle crash, not after all the crap he'd gone through, all the dangers he'd faced down. Not here, not now, not like this. But what could he do? Nothing but hang on and hope.

Wasn't that the fucking story of his life?

The shuttle was rattling violently now, and every now and then it would shudder powerfully as something was ripped off by the sheer winds. It was awful, terror given a voice. He could hear Green cursing occasionally as she fought the controls, trying to make their landing anything but lethal. He reached over and took Jennifer's hand, squeezing it again, harder this time. She squeezed back. He had just begun to open his mouth to ask something, how much longer or when this was going to finally happen, when there was a rending shriek.

And then he was being yanked and twisted in a dozen different directions.

And then something hit his head and all was black.

"Jack? He's still breathing..."

"I'm fine, thank you."

"Shut up, Stratton. Check his eyes. Here, pull his lid up, take this."

A brilliant light exploded into existence. "Ah! Shit! Get that outta my face!" he complained, clawing weakly.

"He's awake," Jennifer murmured. "Sorry, babe. You've been passed out for fifteen minutes."

The world slid into focus and Jack got his vision back. His head was killing him, and he could feel a dozen other hurts spread across his body like a topography of pain. "Is anything broken?" he muttered weakly, closing his eyes, trying to get his bearings again.

"The shuttle," Green growled. "It's a total wreck."

"Your armor too, babe. All of our armors. They helped us survive the crash basically intact, but they were so torn up from Deimos that they're pretty much useless."

"Of course," Jack muttered.

"That's not all," Stratton said.

He opened his eyes again. "What's the rest of it?"

"Most of our weapons were dinged up pretty bad in the crash."

Jack groaned and slowly sat up. "So what do we have left?"

Green and Stratton moved aside. Green pointed at the deckplates beside her. "You're looking at our current arsenal and inventory."

Jack's gaze fell on four pistols and a handful of magazines. "That...that's it? How?"

"Well, on top of most of our gear getting messed up, there were several hull breaches and stuff got sucked out. We've been searching this damned ship up and down, in every nook and cranny we could find, popped open every compartment...this is literally it," Green replied.

Jack sighed heavily and massaged his temples, closing his eyes, sitting there and taking in this new situation for a moment. No ship, no armor, just a pistol and twenty rounds for each of them. Oh wow, what a shit situation. Finally, he opened his eyes. Slowly, with Jennifer's help, he got to his feet. The ship had landed at a slanted angle. Silently, they each grabbed their pistols and ammunition. Jack checked his sidearm over. It was dinged up, and there was some blood on the barrel, but it was still functional, as far as he could tell.

This sucked even more than Phobos.

Now, all that stood between him and oblivion was twenty bullets. And the situation was even worse. Well, probably. But this time he had people with him. Good, solid Marines. They helped this situation a great deal.

"Well...might as well get started. I don't suppose there's any information we could gather before we go out there?" he asked.

"Well, the atmosphere is breathable, at least, or we'd be suffocating," Green replied. "But our gear is shot, totally fried by the blowout. The best I can do is that I saw what seemed to be a human structure ahead of us by about a quarter mile. It's probably an outpost."

"I guess that's where we should go?" he asked, looking at her.

She nodded. "Yeah. Come on, let's get this over with. I think the easiest way we'll be able to get out is through the cockpit. One of the windows broke completely, pretty much popped out of its frame," she replied, turning and heading back into the cockpit. The others followed in her wake. Jack's brain still felt like it was trying to catch, like it had been knocked offline and was attempting a cold reboot. Which, technically, he supposed was true. He was knocked out for awhile. How many times had he been knocked out recently?

He was going to end up with brain damage.

They found the broken out window and Green began to crawl up and out. Jack looked around the ruined, sparking interior of the cockpit. It was a miracle that she'd survived, and had gotten them down in roughly one piece. How long would their luck hold out? Hopefully until the end, at least. Whatever the end was. Green gave the all clear, and Stratton went up next, then Jennifer, and finally Jack. She turned and offered him a hand and he took it. Her grip was strong, her strength certain as she pulled him up.

Jack felt his breath momentarily leave his body as he got his first good look at Hell.

Not Hell, he reminded himself, not Hell. Just...somewhere else. Some really crappy, awful other dimension that sure looked like Hell…

To their right side was a huge mountain range, the rocks black and red, rising into the bloody crimson skies. Off to their left, he saw a more traditional looking mountain range rising from the land, and at its base, what appeared to be a deep trench. Cutting across the landscape were several rivers of what seemed to be blood, and also lava. Behind them was a vast toxic blackish-green ocean that extended as far away as he could see.

And, dead ahead, dominating their view, was a structure.

It was immense, a giant fortress of black steel, built like a layered cake. It was hard to tell from this distance, the thing might have been a mile off or so, and there was a weird haze to the area, but the base of the structure looked like black rock. It almost looked like the thing had been carved out of what had once been a stand alone mountain. It looked intimidating as hell, but what was worse was the fact that there seemed to be several blood waterfalls coming down the front of it, feeding into a blood moat. It was…

A thought came to Jack, and he almost burst out laughing.

It looked like the most hardcore, metal thing ever.

Far less intimidating was a structure ahead of them, not too far away. It definitely looked human. It was a good first destination.

"I hate this place," Green muttered as she led them down the top of the ship. They hit its edge and jumped down onto a hard, packed ground covered in black sand. "Hated it the first second I set foot in it," she added as they started walking.

Jack wanted to ask her more about her tenure here, he couldn't imagine regularly coming to this place, but the smell started to get to him. It was...horrible. He detected several different scents in there: puke, blood, shit, urine, rotting meat, sulfur, like eggs gone bad, and other, worse things that he couldn't immediately identify. He coughed and spat, but the pervasive scent persisted. He guessed he was just going to have to get used to it.

He couldn't wait to find some more armor.

God, what a nightmare this was turning out to be.

No one spoke as they crossed the surface at a brisk pace. Something was nagging at him, well, a lot of things were, but something more immediate was bugging him. He finally had it when he shivered. It was cold here. Hell was supposed to be hot, this place looked hot, but it was maybe fifty degrees or so and a light, chilled wind was drifting across the area. He pushed it out of his awareness as much as he could and kept up a steady pace, pistol in hand, looking for signs of life, signs of trouble. But there was nothing.

The area around them was pretty flat and empty. When he looked back, all he saw was their wrecked ship and that toxic ocean. The ship was still smoking lightly. Something else occurred to him. Jack looked up. He could see no sun, not even a sign of the sun through the strange red mist that hung like a pall of death over the whole area. He returned his attention to the task at hand. They were almost to the outpost now.

As they drew closer, it became obvious that things had gone very wrong at the outpost. All they could see for now was a wall of gray metal, flanked on either side by guard towers. The walls had holes in them, holes ripped into them, and they were riddled with bullet holes and scorch marks. There was a lot of blood, but no bodies.

Never a good sign.

"Move in, nice and easy, standard sweep and clear," Green said.

The three of them acknowledged the order tightly and moved in. The way in, a gate built of pretty solid, sturdy metal, set into the wall equidistant between the two guard towers, was torn open like someone had taken a giant can-opener to it. Green and Jack moved in first, each of them clearing one eighty degrees of the open area beyond. Jack saw four structures: one in each corner and a fifth in the dead center.

He also saw a lot of destruction and signs of battle.

The four of them moved slowly and carefully through the structure, but they might as well have been clomping around and cracking lame jokes: there was no one here, friend or foe. The structures were all very basic things and, despite their ruined state, Jack could discern their nature. One was a simple bunk room, another served as a basic mess hall, a third was storage, a fourth was an armory and the final one, in the center, was a kind of command post. The armory was mostly cleared out, though they managed to find a few more magazines for their pistols, enough so that they each managed to get one more.

So that was nice, at least.

Thirty bullets instead of twenty.

The most important find, however, was the thing that dominated the center of the command post. They all gathered around it, staring at it intently. It was a holographic projector, a solid slab of metal about four feet long by two wide by three high. Green fired it up and, surprisingly, it booted to life, showing them a map of the whole region. Jack immediately recognized the huge black structure he'd seen at first and used it to orient himself.

"Well...this helps at least," Green murmured. She began working the screen in front of her and suddenly the map zoomed in on the big black structure they'd seen, the one they would no doubt first be going to. "Okay, let's see if we can actually, for once, come up with a plan that looks more than fifteen minutes into the future. It seems like they managed to gather some data on all the different structures...even named them."

Info came up on the first structure.

"Hell Keep," she muttered. "It looks like...they set up shop inside the Hell Keep, including...a big armory, a security network, and a motorpool. Perfect. Okay, that's going to be destination number one. We grab guns, get whatever intel we can, and then get a vehicle. It looks like our final destination is the Tower of Babel, just like Doctor Asshole said. It's pretty far away...jeez, that'll take days, even if we manage to drive..."

"See if there's a hangar or something in one of the other structures," Jack suggested.

They moved on to the next nearest structure, what would no doubt be their second destination. It was lovingly labeled the Slough of Despair.

"Jeez, who thinks up these damned names?" Jennifer whispered.

"Well, this place sucks enough for these names," Green replied. "Wait...what's this?" she murmured, frowning, studying the information. "Holy shit. There's a network of portals between these structures."

"What? Like...the ones between Phobos and Deimos?" Jack replied.

She shook her head. "No, no, they're..." she frowned, her brow wrinkling in confusion. "It says they're natural to this place. They were already here. Well, shit."

"If we go through them, do we lose all our stuff, like when we went through the portal between the two moons?" Jack asked.

"No, there's a few reports here. They tested them. They say they're safe, they work as intended. And I trust that about as much as I trust the UAC right now but...I think we're going to have to take these portals if we want to make the journey in a reasonable amount of time."

"I don't suppose we can just take the first one to the Tower of Babel?" Stratton asked.

Green shook her head. "No, it doesn't work like that. We'll have to move through each structure, apparently."

Jack sighed heavily. "Great. How many are there?"

Green worked the controls for a bit, and the map returned to its original view. A handful of what might have been called structures became highlighted. Jack's frown deepened as he studied the names of the structures ahead of them. In total, there were eight. They were going to get to visit such lovely places as: Pandemonium, House of Pain, Unholy Cathedral, Mt. Erebus, and Limbo. And that was in addition to the Hell Keep, Slough of Despair, and the Tower of Babel. Holy shit. This was going to be a hell of a trek.

"There's no way around it, is there?" Jennifer asked.

"Not that I can see. This terrain is insanely dangerous..." She trailed off, frowning, studying a specific spot on the map. A mountain range, or more of a cliff sheer, off to the west. She zoomed in on it and a small, though bleak, smile briefly touched her face. "There," she said quietly. "That's where we were. My team and I, and the other teams. Back when we thought that our little outpost in the mountains was the only human presence..." she sighed heavily. "How goddamned naive I was. We all were..."

"You're alive, Stratton's alive, that's what counts. And what you do with it counts even more," Jack said.

Green seemed to snap out of her reverie. "Yeah, I guess so. Ugh, I really don't want to do this. But it's not like we have any choice. Come on, let's get started."

They left the base, the four of them, and began their long march.

Towards the Hell Keep.

Towards hope.