Kyra once more emerged from a glowering portal.
The effect of traveling between dimensions was beginning to get to her and she stepped wearily off the teleport pad. Slowly, she looked around, pistol ready for anything that might be prepared to kill her. She felt significantly more vulnerable without her suit of armor. But as she scanned the lab, hunting for threats, she found none. In fact, as she began moving around the room, which had obviously been subjected to the same conditions as the other two outposts she'd fought through, she slowly began to notice something.
That malignant presence she'd sensed almost since the second she'd set foot in Typhon Station, the haunting atmosphere that had permeated through both stations and Hell as well, was not present here. The place reeked, it looked like the set of a horror movie, it was depressing as hell, but that awful, pervasive feeling was absent. What did that mean? Had the survivors here successfully fought off the invaders?
Kyra looked at the dead scientists, the wrecked workstations, the bullet-riddled and blood-soaked walls. She had a lot to do.
With a sigh, she set to work.
The work was long, tedious, and miserable.
Kyra moved slowly through the facility, and she was at least grateful to learn that Luna Station was all one big building. No tram bullshit here. She worked her way through it, searching room by room, corridor by corridor, and…
Hardly found anything.
The demonic presence here was extremely lacking. Not that she was complaining. But whenever she wasted the occasional zombie she found lurking around, and a handful of fiends, and one injured pinky, she couldn't help but feel that something was wrong. She was missing something. But what? She kept searching, hunting for clues.
She stopped in Command Control, taking the opportunity to check out the two most important pieces of equipment: LifeScan and communications. LifeScan told her what she already suspected: yet again she was the sole survivor. And communications were busted. Refusing to be silenced any longer, Kyra set a diagnostic program on the comms network and, seeing that it was going to take about three hours to run in full, took a look at the other important features of the station. Namely power and oxygen.
Although Luna Station had been abused by the invasion, it was still intact, and she wouldn't be suffocating or freezing anytime soon. As she thought about that, her stomach had grumbled, and she realized at once how exhausted she was, how thirsty she was, how much she reeked. She had to take a piss pretty badly. But not yet. Not before she finished searching the area. She couldn't search the whole facility, but she could clear out Command Control without too much trouble. And so that's what she did, checking out every room and corridor and compartment that she could find. There were just a pair of zombies lurking, and she killed them easily.
When she was finished, Kyra hit the lockdown feature and headed straight for the administrator's living quarters. It was appropriately luxurious and relatively untouched. As soon as she double-checked it, she stripped down naked and took an hour long shower. She scrubbed away every last bit of blood, grime, sweat, and anything else that had accumulated on her body during her adventure across three moons and two regions of hellscape. She also used a full Medikit to deal with all her various scrapes, scratches, burns, and cuts.
It was the best shower of her entire life.
After drying off and dressing in a tan jumpsuit she found in the closet, (she'd find fatigues as soon as she could), she had attacked the kitchenette in the living quarters and eaten whatever she could find. Mostly it was frozen meals. She had a burger, two burrito meals, and a pepperoni pizza, as well as three cans of Mountain Dew Lightyear and two bottles of water. After sitting around for a little while, Kyra had intended to get back and resume her sweep of the facility, but she'd stood up and realized all at once that she was dead on her feet.
She needed sleep.
Although she had a great deal of reservations about sleeping, she knew she had to, and this was probably about as good as it was going to get, realistically. So she double-checked the lock and swept the room, the closet, and the bathroom twice more, feeling paranoid, and then finally had curled up on the bed and, pistol very close by, slept.
Two days passed.
She woke up ten hours later from a bad nightmare and took a long shower and had another meal, then had headed for the comms station. She'd learned that the main array was totally shot, but the auxiliary communications array was salvageable. Looking over the parts and tools needed, Kyra slowly realized that she knew enough tech stuff to actually do this. And so she'd set to work. As she hunted for the parts and pieces and tools she needed, she kept an eye out for hostiles and more weapons for her own personal arsenal.
The Military section was trashed, most of the weapons either missing or used up to fight off the invasion. She worked for about twelve solid hours, first gathering the supplies, then traveling to the few locations necessary to make the repairs. It was a mostly uneventful time, although at one point she had to put on a spacesuit and take a walk on the lunar surface to make one repair. She found a pair of flying skulls hanging out there and as she killed them, two things occurred to her. The first was a question: how the fuck were they still on fire if there was no atmosphere!? And: It seemed like they were left behind.
Had the demons pulled out?
More and more she thought that was the case. But why? She looked up at Earth when she was out there, hunting for signs of trouble, but it looked...well, like it always did from space. She felt terribly lonely as she looked at that big blue-green sphere, and had returned to the interior of the space station. As that twelve hour mark crept up, Kyra became frustrated because the exhaustion was coming back, making it hard to focus.
Normally she had a lot more endurance, but she supposed all that she had gone through had really taken it out of her. Or maybe it was a side effect of the gateways. Either way, she went back to sleep for eight hours in the administrator's dorm. After another shower and meal, Kyra returned to work. And near the end of the second day, she finished the repairs.
"Okay," Kyra whispered as she fired up the auxiliary comms array, "please, please fucking work. I need this to work."
She looked over the workstation she was sitting at, trying to make sure everything was functioning. She'd made sure that comms were up. She'd set the radar to scan the immediate area, to see if there was any traffic. (She'd also taken the opportunity to check the hangar, just in case there was a ship there, but they were totally cleared out, not even a basic vessel was left.) She'd even discovered the official call sign of the station: UAC Lunar One, for whatever reason. And the radar had just gotten a ping.
There was a ship within range.
Kyra leaned in to the mic and began transmitting. "This is Staff Sergeant Kyra Morgan of the United Marine Corps on UAC Lunar One and I need immediate assistance. I am declaring an emergency situation and require immediate assistance."
She waited, listened, fought the urge to pray.
Nothing happened.
Kyra felt fear and anxiety ripple through her, and she quickly repeated her message. Then she waited. Still nothing. Kyra kept at it, repeating the message over and over again. Five minutes went by. Ten. Fifteen.
Right as she was about to scream in rage and frustration, the radar pinged again.
The ship was changing course.
It was coming for her.
"Oh thank fucking God," Kyra whispered. She snagged the shotgun she'd found abandoned in the Military HQ and began hurrying towards the hangar.
She was waiting for them when they began cycling through the airlock. She was clearly visible, hands not on her weapons. Attempts at shortwave communications had finally yielded some goddamned fruit. They knew who she was, her situation, and were coming in. They sounded extremely eager to talk to her.
The airlock door opened. Three people walked in, two men and a woman in full combat gear. "Staff Sergeant Kyra Morgan?" the man in the lead asked.
"Yes," Kyra replied.
"Private Jack Ward," he replied.
She hesitated. "Private?" He sure as hell didn't seem like a Private.
"Private according to the fucking UAC. This is Private Jennifer Taylor and Sergeant Pierce. Jennifer and I have just come from Mars. I need to confirm that you have indeed had contact with the forces of Hell."
"Oh yeah, I've had contact," Kyra replied, offering a grim chuckle.
"You've seen the zombies? And the red spiked things that throw-" he continued, but she cut him off.
"Fire? Yes. And the flying flaming skulls. And the big bulldog looking fuckers. And the fat, one-eyed pumpkin things that vomit balls of energy. And the giant fucking spider bitch. And the goddamned shoulder rocket launcher toting skeletons."
"Haven't seen the skeletons," Jennifer muttered.
"Perfect. We're really going to need your help. We just faced down the fuckers on Mars, Phobos, and Deimos," Jack said.
"You been to Hell?" Kyra asked.
"All over it," Jennifer replied.
"Then you and I have something in common. Okay, what's the plan? How bad is it right now? Is Earth under attack?"
Jack hesitated, looking startled. "I...don't know," he replied. He began to speak again, but their radios crackled to life and a new voice came onto the line.
"Sergeant Pierce, you're going to need to get back here right now! Something's happening!" Whoever it was, probably their pilot or XO, they sounded genuinely panicked.
"Fuck," Pierce snapped. "You're the only one here?"
"Yes," Kyra replied.
"Then let's go."
Kyra secured her armor, (she'd managed to find another suit), grabbed her weapons, and followed the trio back into the airlock. It cycled too slowly for her taste, but finally finished. The quartet hurried across the landing pads to where the Marine's ship rested. They stepped quickly into the ship's airlock and cycled through again. She followed them rapidly through the ship to the bridge, where they found several Marines gathered.
"What is it? What's happening?" Jack asked.
"We just saw an explosion on Earth, somewhere over South America," the pilot replied. He was dead pale and sweating badly. Already his hands were going across the controls and he began to bring the ship up. "I'm taking us in."
"Good," Pierce whispered. "Fast as you can."
"Don't we have radio?" Kyra asked.
"No. Solar flare fried our comms," Pierce replied.
"Shit. What are we going to do?" Jack muttered.
As they began heading for Earth, they all fell silent as they saw another explosion, a mushroom cloud, appear somewhere in North America.
Kyra was the first to speak. "We're taking this fight to the surface." They all turned to look at her. She stared firmly back at them. "We're going to fight like hell."