"So you're bringing a bomb to that huge glowing thing in the middle of the city?" Vekovious asked as they all finished settling into their seats.
"Yep," Jack replied. "We good drivers?"
"Ready to go," Spencer reported.
"Cortez just arrived, we're set," Holtz said.
"Get to it then."
He'd sent Cortez over to the other APC now that they had another able-bodied Marine around and Wells had left a vacancy. Jack sighed softly as he thought that. Sometimes it was easy to slip into a disturbingly casual mindset about death and those who had fallen. He shook his head, trying to clear it, as the APC rumbled and then started driving again.
"What's so special about it?" Vekovious asked.
"It's experimental. Honestly, I don't really know. All I know is that it's our best shot right now," Jack explained. That seemed to satisfy the Sergeant and he sat back in his chair and closed his eyes. Probably could use a nap, like all of them.
Jack managed to make it maybe three minutes before activating his radio and trying to reach out to one of the other teams again. He tried all three of them, focusing on Jennifer's team a bit longer, but heard nothing in response.
"Piece of shit comms," he muttered.
"She's gotta be fine," Diaz said from her spot in the nest. "She's a complete hardass."
"Yeah," he replied quietly.
Jack sighed heavily and sat back in his chair, doing the same as Vekovious and just closing his eyes. He was exhausted. He was hungry. This day just kept going, and going. And he knew that it wasn't going to stop anytime soon. In a way, it felt like this day had begun the second he'd set foot onto that transport bound for Phobos. It did not seem even remotely possible that he had hit Phobos less than a week ago.
It felt like a decade had passed since he'd argued with Stanmore about leaving the shuttle and heading into that dark, doomed facility. Trying to rescue his fellow Marines, his friends, any humans that might still be alive.
And only he and Jennifer had made it off Mars.
She might be dead by now, but she probably wasn't. It felt like providence was keeping them alive, somehow, someway.
At some point Jack nodded off and then jerked awake as he heard someone shout a warning. A second later he heard the chattering of the chaingun overhead and Diaz shouting. He and Vekovious shot to their feet and Jack slipped into the driver's compartment.
"What's-" he began, and then cried out as something smashed into the front of the APC with explosive force. He heard cursing coming from several different directions, and just caught sight of a Revenant out there in front of the APC before its top half blew into so much free flying bone and metal under the onslaught of the chainguns. Several warning lights and an alarm began flaring inside the cockpit and Spencer cursed sharply.
"Diaz, we clear?!" Jack called as the chaingun chattering stopped.
"Clear!" she called back. "Just some skeletons."
"What's going on?" Jack asked.
"Gimme a minute," Spencer muttered as he pushed a few buttons and flicked a switch. He stared at a screen, muttering to himself, then sighed heavily. "The engine's damaged."
"Can you fix it?"
"Yeah, I can fix it. Just need to replace a part, but it'll take a bit to get the engine open and do the swap."
"All right," Jack said, "let's get out there and we'll-" He was interrupted yet again as his radio suddenly squawked to life.
"This Corporal Ashton with Delta Nine, requesting immediate assistance from any friendlies in the vicinity!"
"I hear you, Corporal. This is Sergeant Ward, what's your position?" Jack replied.
"Oh thank fucking God! Sending a burst of our current position to you now! Get here as fast as you can! We're inside the big gray stone building! Getting overrun by demons!"
Jack's HUD flashed as he received the information. He took a few seconds to digest it in relation to where they currently were and realized it was just a block or so away. "We're close, hold out, we'll be there as fast as we can!"
"Roger! Hurry!"
"Diaz, Rhodes, Vekovious, grab your shit and let's go! Abrash and Cortez, outside watching Spencer's ass while he makes repairs, Holtz on chaingun!" Jack said as he snatched up his rifle and hustled back to the rear exit. He heard a string of affirmative replies as everyone rushed to comply with his orders. Jack hit the button and stepped outside into a blood and ash stricken street, choked with corpses and the skeletal husks of burned-out cars. He took a moment to check the area, and once the other three were assembled, took off.
Jack was having deja vu as he led his trio of Marines down a blood-drenched, body-strewn street. The air was laced with smoke and death, and he had to watch to keep from tripping over mutilated and masticated corpses. Hadn't they just done this? Of course, that was the life of a Marine: do the same shit over and over and over again.
Sometimes you could mix it up with a slight variation, if you were lucky.
The howls of the damned echoed across the bullet-riddled, tarnished fronts of factories and warehouses that rose to either side of them like the walls of some hellish artificial canyon. His rifle was an extension of his armored body, prepared to deal with something in half a millisecond. Jack could actually feel the change his mind made when he was out of the APC and in the red zone where hostiles could lurk around every corner, hide in every shadow. He was keyed up and tuned in, his body ready to react faster than his mind could.
Jack hit the corner and checked the cross-street. More blood, more bodies, more hollowed out metal skeletons of vehicles, some still smoking with the charred remains of people inside. He spotted the building they were looking for.
"There it is," he muttered, hitting his radio. "Delta Nine, this is Death Squadron, do you read? Over."
"...ly hear you...quad...zzt...help! Now! Right...ddamned now!"
The channel was badly laced with static but he got the gist of it. "Coming now!" He waved the others forward as he took off. "Move!"
They raced down the street, between more factories and bodies. This place had obviously been hit by the demonic forces hard, and the transformation had begun. The curious gray stonework of the structure halfway down the street on the opposite side stuck out like a tumor. It had begun spreading to the buildings around it. He could actually see a fusion of metal and brick in the two buildings on either side of the...whatever it had once been. It wasn't just brickwork, either. There were more of those wrought-iron windows and, higher up, the color of the brick changed from slate gray to puke green, seemingly at random.
The front door had been replaced, curiously, by the steel silver, UAC-stamped door that he'd seen so frequently up on Mars and its two moons.
There was even one of those giant silver square buttons embedded in the bricks next to it, with the red glass square in its center.
Jack pushed it. It lit up and the door slid into the ceiling.
"What...the...fuck?" Rhodes muttered.
Jack hesitated, but only briefly, as he was thrown off by the sheer asymmetrical nature of the architecture of the room that lay beyond. It was a little like someone took a rectangle, lay it flat, and yanked it sideways, stretching the bottom half to the right. Most of the walls and the floor were made up of tan rock smashed flat with cracks running through every surface. Blood red candles burned in random locations across the room, held in place by chest-high tarnished bronze spears. Cut into the floor about halfway down was a pool of bubbling blood. Over the pool was a set of a dozen high iron poles fitted into the wall.
Several Imps lay dead, pumped full of holes, scattered across the room.
"Move," Jack said, taking the lead, knowing that every second that passed was another potential for the death and slaughter of Delta Nine. They headed into the room at a brisk pace, coming up to the blood pool and skirting it as they continually checked the odd corners of the strangely angled room for survivors on either side of the line. But there was nothing save for corpses here. No dead Marines yet, at least.
Jack glanced through the iron bars affixed to the wall and began to look away when he didn't immediately register a threat, but what he saw there instantly made him look back. Someone, a bald man with pale skin, had been hung by the wrists against the wall just behind the bars. He was clearly dead, as everything below his waist had been utterly eviscerated. There was literally nothing left but a huge bloody smear on the wall that began at his waist and extended outwards in all directions. Jack wasn't even sure how it had happened.
"There, too," Rhodes muttered, pointing in the opposite direction.
Jack turned around and looked, and saw almost the exact same thing, only this time it as a woman strung up there. He hesitated briefly, then pulled out his pistol and shot both of them in the head. He had to be sure.
"Just in case," he said when he noticed Vekovious give him a strange look, "I came across people who were still alive through worse in Hell."
"Wh-Hell?!" he snapped as they started up again, making for the far side of the room.
"I went to the other dimension," Jack said. "I call it Hell. It basically is."
"Fucking...God forgive me for my sins," he muttered, his voice dropping.
"Focus," Jack said.
"Y-yeah," he said, swallowing.
"Okay, that does not inspire confidence," Diaz growled as they came into a short corridor roughly opposite from where they'd come in. There was a door at the end of it, huge and wooden, ringed in rusty iron, with a cluster of demon skulls hung up in the center of it almost like a Christmas wreath. Jack sighed and pressed on.
"Doesn't matter," he replied. He could hear fighting now.
He found a big silver switch on the wall next to the door and threw it. The door rumbled up into the ceiling, revealing a broad stairwell leading up. It was done in the same strange tan rock, though at the head of each step, the design had, for some reason, been done up in skulls. No time for that, the gunfire was louder now.
"Delta Nine, we're closing on your position!" Jack snapped as he raced up the stairs.
The stairs let out into a tall, broad room all paneled in that same old wood and rusty iron. More candles burned on bronzed spears, only this time they were all a brilliant, aggressive blue color. The room was unusually high, going up some thirty or forty feet. He saw a section of the wall near the ceiling that was caved in those same silver poles. Shadows lay beyond them, but Jack thought he sensed some kind of movement…
Suddenly, a fireball appeared and launched at them from between two of the bars.
"Fire! Up high!" he snapped, switching to his rifle and stepping out of the way to give them room to get into the area.
He sighted the vague figure behind the bars and squeezed off a burst. Blood rained down and something shrieked, and then more fireballs began to rain down. Chaos broke out as they returned fire, trying not to run into each other as they dodged fireballs and also not trip over the corpses in the room. He sighted and blasted another shadowy figure, then a third, putting them down as fast as he could. As he ran out of ammo and began to reload, he barely registered a sound coming from behind him and glanced back.
The blood drained from his face as pure terror washed over him.
"Focus fire six o'clock!" he screamed, turning around and flipping on the full-auto. Shouldering his assault rifle and ignoring the Imps with the high ground, he began emptying his magazine into the Pain Elemental that had appeared from a hidden compartment behind them. The thing let out an awful croak as the bullets started punching into its leathery hide and massive maw. It spat out a Lost Soul that shrieked towards them, and was popped within a second as Jack finished emptying his magazine by focusing on it.
He switched to his shotgun and screamed for a cease fire as he dashed forward. Had to time this just right. They'd managed to do some damage in that initial assault, enough that he might be able to finish it off if he just-
Another Lost Soul shrieked out of its huge mouth and he yelled as he ducked it. Coming back up, Jack took the last few lunging leaps and shoved both barrels into its huge mouth, then squeezed the trigger. So much demon gore sprayed across his visor that he was literally blinded for a few seconds. He staggered away, hearing that satisfying and visceral popping sound of the Pain Elemental dying as he desperately wiped away the gore.
"Rhodes!"
Jack began to hear screaming as he finished wiping away the gore. He didn't have time to figure out what was happening, a few Lost Souls had escaped the Pain Elemental as it had died. He hastily reloaded, aimed, and fired, blowing both of them away with a single blast. Then he turned around again as he reloaded once more.
The screaming was intensifying.
At first, Jack wasn't sure what the hell was happening. Vekovious and Diaz were backing away from Rhodes, who had dropped his weapon and was shrieking as he slammed his fists into his helmet over and over again.
"Get it out! GET IT OUT! GET IT OUT!" he roared, shaking so violently it looked like he was having a seizure.
And then he realized all at once what had happened.
That Lost Soul he'd dodged had not been dealt with and had embedded itself inside of Rhodes. Jack felt an awful, wretched sick fury and guilt sweeping over him as he grabbed for his pistol. There was nothing to be done.
Except for one thing.
He took aim and fired, shattering Rhode's faceplate and dropping him, cutting off his screams abruptly.
Overhead, an Imp shrieked and threw a fireball.
"Oh fuck you!" Jack roared as he emptied the pistol into the thing.
"Jesus," Diaz muttered, looking around.
"Grab his shit," Jack said, his voice flat as he reloaded his weapons.
"Is there...is there really no way to save people when those skull things get them?" Vekovious asked, staring in horror at Rhodes.
"There isn't," Jack replied simply. He was trying to think of something else to say as he finished reloading when they all swung around to face rapidly approaching footsteps. Jack saw a blood-covered Marine, his armor more red than blue at this point, coming down from another set of stairs across the room.
"Need help!" he snapped, then turned around and ran back up.
"Go," Jack said, taking off.
Diaz abandoned her efforts to collect his gear and followed after Jack with Vekovious. They hit the stairs and raced up them. Jack just caught sight of the man breaking right. He got to the top and took a quick look around, finding himself in a hallway of green brick that stretched away to the left and the right. The right was scattered with fresh corpses, the left looked empty, ultimately terminating in a hard left turn.
Ignoring it for now, he hurried after the Marine. The corridor simply ran out. No room, no turn, no doors, it just ended abruptly. They passed several dead Marines and far more dead Imps, Demons, and zombies.
"He's hurt," the lone Marine reported as they came to a halt over a single other survivor.
He had his helmet off, his face extremely pale and sweaty, short dark hair a mess. The wound was in his gut. Something had got him bad. He grinned and then coughed, blood spilling from his mouth. "You made it," he said.
The voice on the radio, Jack realized.
"Corporal Ashton," he said.
"Let's get you stabilized and out of here," Jack said.
He shook his head. "No. We came here to do a job. Gotta finish. Demolitions."
Diaz perked up at that. "What's the job?"
"Connors will fill you in, I need some fucking morphine," he grunted. "Go with them to the final site, Private."
"On it," Connors replied.
"Vekovious, patch him up," Jack said. "Diaz, let's do this."
"This way," the other Marine, Private Connors, said, and began leading them back the way they'd come.
"What's the situation?" Jack asked.
"We've been fighting all over this city since these things hit it. The last order that came down from Command about six hours ago was to start blasting any buildings that had signs of the corruption straight back to Hell. So we've been finding survivors and explosives and carrying that out as much as we can ever since," Connors explained. "We managed to get explosives planted in three other locations in the building, just need to do the last one and sync the charges. But our demolitions expert was killed in that battle back there."
"Demo shit is my specialty," Diaz said.
"Perfect. We'll get to the last location and finish this miserable job."
"After that, you two can help me out," Jack replied as they passed the stairs and kept on going down the strange corridor.
"I thought I heard you identify as Death Squad over the comms?" Connors said.
"Yeah. We just got done retaking Haydenfield and the brass sent us out with some experimental bombs to collapse that portal at the center of the city. We need all the help we can get," Jack explained.
"Shit. Count me in," Connors replied.
"Have you been down this way?" Jack asked.
"No, we didn't make it this far. Came up the stairs, basically got bum-rushed by a whole horde of the fuckers," he replied.
"I know the feeling."
They reached the end of the corridor and took the turn. The next corridor extended a little ways and then ended abruptly in a large room that seemed...suspiciously empty. It was basically a big cube, everything made of green and gray brick, with the occasional blemish of some piece of tech wired into the wall or more iron bars placed at random.
"This is weird," Diaz muttered.
"Yeah," Jack replied, trying to see if there was some sort of trap. Nothing obvious, and maybe it was empty because it'd just been emptied out for that surprise attack on Delta Nine. Well, either way, they had a job to do. "Diaz."
"Yep," she said, slinging her weapon and turning to Connors. "Give up the demo gear."
"You got it," he replied, sounding relieved as he passed her some explosives and a detonator. She accepted both, looked them over, grunted, and then headed off a little ways away and ended up against one of the walls.
"How long?" Jack asked.
"Few minutes," she replied as she crouched and got to work.
Jack just made himself wait, continually looking around, because he felt like something was going to happen. But he always felt that way now. He resisted the urge to call up Jennifer again, to see if she was okay, how it was going, if she was even still alive. Instead, after a minute had passed, he radioed Vekovious.
"How's it going back there?" he asked.
"Bad," their latest addition replied, sounding worried. "He passed out. He's lost a lot of blood. I don't think he's going to make it, something important got gutted."
"Do the best you can," Jack said, "and we'll get him to the APC once we can."
"Yes, Sergeant."
Jack glanced up as he heard the faintest of sounds from overhead. He was preparing to ask Diaz how it was going when he saw absolute, mind-shattering terror falling from two slots that opened up in the ceiling in the form of a pair of Arachnotrons.
"Connors! Move!" Jack screamed, but it was too late.
The man managed to look up, but didn't even have time to scream as one of them landed on him and turned him into an explosion of metal shrapnel and blood.
It was like a blood grenade going off.
"Fuck! Diaz, hurry!" he screamed as he stumbled away, raising his weapon. "Vekovious! Get down here now! Reinforce me!" he roared as he opened fire.
Both Arachnotrons let out high-pitched wailing sounds and opened up with their plasma rifles. The cyber-spider fuckers were going to kill him if he didn't move. Jack moved. He ran as he unloaded into them, careful not to hit Diaz. She was behind them, and they were facing him, and he had to keep it that way. He wasn't sure if he could kill them, even with Vekovious's help, but once Diaz had finished the job, they could run like hell if need be.
Jack emptied the assault rifle, barely managed to dodge the streams of plasma coming his way, and reloaded. He kept running until he ran smack into one of the walls, bounced off, and then kept running in the opposite direction. He couldn't even use his grenades for fear of hurting Diaz! As he kept running he suddenly heard fresh gunfire in the room with him. Vekovious came racing into the room, opening up with his assault rifle.
"Don't hit Diaz! She's behind them! Keep them distracted!" Jack yelled.
"Fucking shit!" Vekovious cried as he started running in the other direction while still firing.
This was a level of chaos Jack was unaccustomed to, even after all he'd been through. The next segment of time passed in a frenzied, confused blur as he ran around, firing, screaming, dodging. He felt the burning pain of plasma as some of the energy balls slapped into his armor and melted through a portion of it.
What he wouldn't give to be able to run back behind them and grab Diaz's chaingun. Why hadn't he thought to get it from her while she was working?!
But it was too dangerous now.
It seemed to go on for far, far too long, but suddenly Diaz yelled that she was done and emerged around from behind the pair of giant mechanical spiders, firing her chaingun in bursts as she went. One of them lost a leg as a solid spray of bullets connected with it and hit something crucial.
"Go! Go! Get the fuck out of here!" Jack yelled. "We gotta grab Ashton!"
"He didn't make it!" Vekovious screamed as they sprinted through the door and back down the corridor.
"Fuck!" Jack snapped. He grabbed one of his grenades, activated it, and tossed it over his shoulder. And then they were running for all they were worth. They hit the stairs and Jack fell down them, yelling and groaning as he banged his way down, eventually coming to a clattering halt on the floor of the room where Rhodes had died, his rifle flying from his hands.
"Come on!" Diaz shouted.
Jack snatched his rifle back up as she yanked him to his feet and they kept running. He could hear thundering as the Arachnotrons kept coming after them, but he couldn't tell how successfully they were actually managing their pursuit.
The strange structure passed by them in a blur as they ran for all they were worth.
And then, suddenly, they were back outside.
Abrash and the others reacted on instinct as they rushed out the front door. Jack slammed his fist on the button and closed it behind him.
"Where's Rhodes?" Abrash asked.
Jack shook his head, trying to catch his breath. "Didn't make it. Neither did Delta Nine. Demons got them."
"Fuck!" Cortez screamed, kicking the APC.
"Are we good to go?" Jack asked, making himself straighten back up and jog over to the vehicles.
"We're good, we can leave," Abrash replied.
"Then let's go. We've got a building to blow up."
"What building?" Abrash asked as they headed for the rear of the vehicles.
"That's what D Nine was doing there, planting explosives. We finished the job. Just got to push the boom button now," Diaz said.
"Mount up! Let's go!" Jack snapped.
He wanted away from this godforsaken place. As he headed into his APC, locked it up, and confirmed that everyone was where they were supposed to be, they took off and he sank back into his seat. What a waste.
What a fucking waste that had been.
More dead Marines. Good men and women.
Dead. At the claws of the demons.
"Sergeant?" Diaz asked.
He glanced up. She was holding up the detonator. "Blow them back to hell," he said.
She pressed down on the button with her thumb, and a rumble immediately began to rattle the vehicle around them, but he saw no look of satisfaction on her tired face as she tossed the detonator aside.
It was silent after that as they drove on, deeper into the wretched city.