They were back outside again, sticking to back alleyways for the moment.
They had six blocks to go through heavily contested enemy territory. Kyra was trying to keep her focus, but she had to admit that this felt utterly surreal. Even after all the shit she'd gone through, fighting in countries and cities all over the world, fighting actual demons on the moons of Jupiter and literally fucking Hell, there was something absolutely bugfuck crazy about seeing them outright ripping into a city on her home turf. As much as she honestly didn't buy political bullshit or patriotic garbage or other propaganda, she still felt like America was her homeland, and she'd never fought here. For over fifty years, no one had, because no one had launched an attack directly on the country. It wasn't unprecedented, it had happened before, but it was before her time, definitely. Seeing a huge metropolis in the Midwest like this being ripped to bloody shreds was just…
Gut-wrenching.
It also just felt like a nightmare. A waking one. Maybe a hallucination. But she fought, and fought very hard, to rouse herself from that mentality, or rather lack of mentality. She was here, this was real, and billions of lives were on the line. The entirety of her own species was on the chopping block and they were going to need every last human to fight tooth and goddamned motherfucking nail to keep from edging over into the black abyss of extinction. Even then it might not be enough, but she absolutely refused to do anything but go out fighting and take down as many of the fuckers as physically possible with her.
Right now, fighting the good fight meant getting her shit together and reporting to that Marine outpost so that she could pass off the crucial data Jensen had given her all the way back on Io. Kyra suppressed a sigh of frustration. She was still tired, even after the rest she'd had on the moon and that farmhouse. Though, admittedly, the night hadn't been restful. Quite the opposite. She was used to her fellow Marines being good in bed but these two were...something else. It was obvious that they were in love and very much on the same wavelength. Part of her envied them, but another part was glad of her singleness.
It made life easier, in some regards.
Kyra shook her head. She was getting off track again, and the end of the alleyway they were traversing was on rapid approach. They would have to cross the first of about half a dozen streets. The alleyway afforded great cover, but the streets were painfully open. She held up her fist as she came within two meters of the end and then slowly crept up the rest of the way. Cautiously, she scoped the situation out. The next street looked clear, just some wrecked cars and a lot of dead bodies and blood. She waved them forward.
They hurried across the street and plunged into the next alleyway between a gas station and what might have been a gym. The next several minutes passed by in terse, tense silence, broken by the distant, and not-so-distant, sounds of combat that seemed to enshroud the metropolis. Her mind was continually bombarded by the desire to disbelieve what she was seeing. Kyra had seen warzones, really bad ones, really fucking bad ones, but this was of a magnitude that she hadn't ever really considered possible. Even after she'd discovered that demons were real and Hell was an actual place you could stroll around in, even after it dawned on her that these horrific things might set foot on Earth in vast numbers…
She apparently hadn't truly believed that it could happen.
Because this seemed impossible. In a way, it was amazing how much your mind wanted to take something and just twist it into something else, without your own input. It was almost like her mind was a separate force, as automated as her heart in its attempts to somehow, someway shift her focus from the unmitigated, wretched, stomach-churning horror that she was currently mired in. But Kyra fought bitterly to keep her focus on the here and now. Even in the face of such unthinkable, vast, bloody chaos she probably didn't have to fight as hard as some people. Because she'd been through so much, even before hitting the moons of Jupiter, and she knew that the simple reality of war was: you had to stay in the moment.
You had to be deliberate in your actions, intentional.
They were about two streets over from the destination when they ran into trouble. The way looked clear as she looked out of the alleyway between a pair of dilapidated duplexes, but it was choked with a skein of twisted metal frames and dead bodies. Readjusting her grip on the Raptor she'd snagged from the store, Kyra stepped out. Behind her, Jack and Jennifer followed. They made it about halfway across the street, quickly navigating between the wrecks, when a hissing shriek sounded. It was a sound that struck fear into her heart.
Kyra looked up.
A flying skull hung overhead, and it had spotted them. It was sounding the alarm, and diving straight for them. She aimed and fired, sending out a spray of lead and popping the thing. A miniature hail of bleached bone rained down from above, and all around them several shrieks sounded. More flying skulls and several fiends appeared from among the wreckage, almost like they'd been lying in wait. Shit, the might well have been.
The three Marines reacted immediately, snapping to action. Jennifer fell back to the alleyway, and she and Jack took cover behind the nearest vehicles, each one covering a different direction of the street. She had a quartet of fiends on her side and a trio of flying skulls drifting overhead. They had to go first, she knew what they could do. Kyra set to work, ducking down out of sight of the fiends and aiming up at the skulls. She squeezed the trigger, connected a burst of gunfire with one of them and popping it without a problem.
The others began to move around with more haste and determination. She aimed and fired a second time, raking the second unholy thing with a volley of bullets and turning it into hail that rained down onto the shrieking fiends. Behind her, she could hear the others firing away. As she began tracking the third target, the car she was behind abruptly shifted and a fiend suddenly appeared over her. It shrieked wildly with its huge mouth and stared at her with its blazing red eyes. She immediately opened fire, hosing its leathery brown spiked hide down with gunfire and churning a bloody hole into its chest.
The thing tried to get a fireball off but died before it could conjure it up. It flopped onto the street beside her and Kyra shifted and fired as she spied a third skull. She emptied the rest of the magazine putting it down, watching it disappear in a cloud of fire and bone fragments. Hastily reloading as she listened to the other monsters advance, she heard a scrape to her left. Jerking in that direction as she finished with the reload, she saw a fiend hop around the back of the vehicle and it was already winding up to throw a fireball.
She fired off a few shots, then ducked as it threw the fireball. It sailed right overhead, missing her by inches, and then she finished it off with another slew of bullets that went right into its huge maw and burst out the back of its strangely shaped skull. As she straightened up and glanced up to make sure no other skulls had appeared, she screamed in surprise as she saw one dive-bombing straight for her. She raised her SMG, uncertain if there was enough time to finish it off, when a spray of bullets came from behind her and nailed it perfectly, killing it.
Taking advantage of the clear skies without missing a beat, Kyra straightened up and looked over the vehicle. The remaining two fiends were navigating the field of debris, coming for her. She fired at the nearest one, nearly splitting its skull in half with concentrated gunfire, and then she shot the final one through the heart three times and killed it. Spinning around, she hunted for more targets, but saw that Jack and Jennifer had exhausted their supply of hostiles for the moment. She began to rally them, urging them on to take advantage of the lull in combat, but then she heard something new. Footfalls. Coming closer to them.
Heavy footfalls.
She immediately tracked the source to the alleyway that they were supposed to be heading down. A large, uncertain figure was making progress towards them, almost totally hidden in shadows. Something about it set her on edge.
"Contact," she hissed, raising her weapon.
Jack and Jennifer joined her, ducking down behind vehicles and aiming. The footsteps continued until they abruptly ceased right at the threshold of the shadows. A large humanoid figure stood there. Something was off.
"Identify yourself!" Kyra demanded finally, because if it was a demon or a zombie, it'd just attack them right away, right?
She began to hear the incredibly distinct sound of a chaingun spooling up.
"We're friendlies!" she snapped. "Marines! Hold fire!"
A heavy barrage of bullets sprayed out of the darkness and all three of them immediately ducked down. The frame of the vehicle she was hidden behind shuddered violently under the attack. "I don't think he heard you!" Jack said, and she couldn't tell if he was joking or not.
"Waste this fucker!" she screamed.
The barrage wasn't letting up. How many rounds did the fucking thing have?! It should have been exhausted by now, but it kept on firing. Jack and Jennifer opened fire, and the onslaught quickly turned their way. With the fire off of her, Kyra opened up. She hosed the figure down and apparently managed to hit something sensitive, because abruptly the gunfire choked off.
"What the fuck was that?" Jennifer muttered as they slowly stood up.
"A zombie maybe," Kyra replied. "Either way, we've got a free chaingun now. Double-time it, Marines."
She headed into the alleyway, flicking on the flashlight mounted on the end of her Raptor's barrel. She illuminated a prone figure and the shiny chrome of a chaingun laying about halfway down the alleyway. At first glance, it looked like a human, wearing some kind of strange red armor. Her light revealed a bald head that looked weirdly big, though the body was clearly very large. Whoever he was, he had to be pushing six six, with a frame to support that height. And as she got even closer, she saw heavy muscles on the arms.
"So it's a human?" Jennifer asked uncertainly.
"I think so..." Kyra muttered, then she played her light across the chaingun. "Whoa, holy shit. Look at this," she whispered, crouching.
"What the fuck? Is it-is it fused to the guy's arm? Where's his hand?!" Jack replied.
"I'm guessing the chaingun is his hand now," Jennifer said.
"I've seen something like this before," Kyra murmured. "On Io. In some machine shops. They were modifying the bulldog-looking bastards. Giving them mechanical back legs."
"We've seen it, too. The CyberDemon, and the Spider Mastermind," Jack muttered.
"What're those?" Kyra asked.
"CyberDemon was a twenty five foot tall son of a bitch with a rocket launcher for an arm, the Mastermind was the giant spider thing we told you about. Basically a big brain on a mechanical platform with a goddamned minigun mounted on it."
"Fuck..." she whispered. Finally, she sighed and kicked the body. It rolled over onto its back, revealing a hideously deformed face. It had no hair, no eyebrows or lashes either. Its skin was a dark green color and the bone structure around its eyes and in its cheeks seemed to have grown and twisted. Its mouth was smeared with blood and its eyes had a faint green glow to them that faded out even as she stared at them.
"So...something new," Jennifer muttered.
"Who gets to name it?" Jack asked.
"You think there'll be more of these things?" Kyra replied unhappily.
"I'd bet on it," Jack replied.
She sighed. "I'll name it...Chaingunner. How does that sound?"
"Sounds good to me," Jack said, and Jennifer nodded.
"Then I dub thee Chaingunner." She kicked the body again. "Fucking asshole. Come on, we're almost there."
They set off once more.
Kyra knocked twice quickly on the front door, then twice slowly, then twice rapidly again. She looked around, waiting impatiently for the door to open. They'd managed to hit the apartment building in question without running into anything else, but that could change very quickly. Abruptly, the door opened up and she found herself staring at a tall, built man in blue combat armor. He held a double-barreled shotgun and behind him stood two other Marines, one armed with a scoped assault rifle, another with a Raptor SMG.
"Staff Sergeant Morgan?" the man in front asked in a clipped tone.
"Yes," she confirmed. "I have Privates Ward and Taylor with me."
"Good. Come in."
They made way and as soon as the trio was inside, the door was shut, locked, and guarded behind them. They stood in a hallway that terminated in a stairwell at the other end of the building and had four doors, all of them open.
"I'm Lieutenant Anderson, I'm very glad you're here," he said as he turned around and began walking away. "Come with me. We need to talk."
They followed him down the hallway. Kyra glanced into each of the doors as they passed by. They were all awash with activity: Marines breaking down, cleaning, repairing, or putting back together a vast assortment of weapons. Some sorted through ammo and gear. She saw two catching a nap on couches. Another three sat around a table, hungrily tearing into meals and talking between bites. The apartment Anderson brought them to was mostly empty. A dresser and the apartment's refrigerator had been shoved up against the windows in the room. There were some chairs and couches scattered around, and Anderson sat heavily on one of them.
"Take a load off while you still can," he said.
All three of them sank gratefully into the couches and for a few seconds, nobody spoke. Finally, Anderson seemed to marshal his thoughts. He leaned forward. "Before we go any further, I need to hear your tale. All three of you. Because that right there," he said, and he reached out and tapped an emblem on Kyra's shoulder, "says you're from outer space. And I want to know exactly what someone from space is doing here, now, with crucial intel."
Kyra looked at Jack and Jennifer. They stared back at her.
"Come on, don't hold out on me," Anderson said.
She sized him up as she considered her words. He looked like a career Marine. He was probably pushing forty, maybe even past it. Hell, he might be pushing fifty with good genes. His head was buzzed, just some blonde stubble adorning it and his square jaw. He had eyes as blue as his suit of armor and a gaze that spoke of extreme confidence and certainty. He was big, probably six two or six three, and he looked like he was probably pretty jacked inside his suit. He struck her as the kind of Marine who could inspire his troops without much more than a few sentences. The kind of Marine she seemed to not be.
"I think we're deciding who should go first, we've got a lot to say," Jack said finally.
"You should start. You've had more experience, I think," Kyra said.
"All right," Jack muttered. He took a deep breath and let it out slowly. "This is what happened..."
As he began to give a report of the events that had befallen him and Jennifer, Kyra realized that they hadn't yet had a chance to actually relay all this intel to each other in depth. It was an interesting listen. Their ambush on Phobos, the slaughter, the surprise jump to Deimos. The brutal realization that they were in Hell. The gruesome, miserable, savage battle across that realm. The jump back home to Mars City and the return to Hell to kill the Spider Mastermind.
That, in particular, intrigued Anderson.
When they were done, Kyra gave her own version of events. Fighting across Jupiter's two moons and going through Hell itself just to wind up back on Earth's moon with some crucial intelligence from Doctor Jensen.
She wondered if the son of a bitch was still alive, waiting on that rescue.
Well, if so, he'd have to wait awhile longer.
"What is this crucial intel, anyway?" Anderson asked.
"According to the doctor: instructions on how to properly calibrate the portals so that we can not only safely pass through them, but take gear with us. Guns, ammo, equipment, medical supplies, building materials," she explained.
"And we're going to need that. Okay, give me the PDA," he said, holding out his hand.
She gladly passed it off to him. He studied it briefly, then secured it inside one of the compartments on his armor. "If I die, it'll be your responsibility to recover it again."
"Understood."
He sighed heavily, staring at the floor for a moment, then pressed on. "I have no idea how bad it is worldwide, but the intelligence reports I've managed to pick up over the past several hours indicate that it's bad. Really, really bad. We're looking at potentially the end of the human race here, if we don't get our shit together. I know there's some kind of plan in place, and they're gathering local forces for it. But that's all I know. There's an extraction point about three kliks north of here at a park, I think. We need to get there basically as soon as we can."
"We're ready," Kyra said.
"Good. Once we get to wherever we're going, I imagine you are going to be heavily debriefed, because what you've been through is crucial." He shook his head suddenly. "God-fucking-damn the UAC! You know I had no fucking idea where these things came from before you just told me?! Nothing. I thought they were fucking aliens. I mean, we at least knew that they were coming from portals..."
"What actually happened?" Jack asked.
Anderson sighed. "I don't know how much I can tell you, because I'm just not sure. I know that someone knew something ahead of time, because about three days ago, suddenly, I got called off shore leave. R and R was canceled. And not just for me, either. I get back to base here in Hayden, and I started hearing reports that there was some kind of attack on Las Vegas. And then on California. Whatever was happening, it was big and sudden. Then the reports started coming in from everywhere. An 'enemy force of unknown origin' was attacking Germany, Madagascar, Australia, Ethiopia, Russia, Brazil, Canada...and that's when some portals opened up in Hayden. We got deployed, been fighting ever since."
"We saw nukes going off when we were coming down," Jennifer said quietly.
He sighed. "Yeah. I know for a fact that New York got nuked, so did DC."
"Holy fucking shit," Jack whispered. "Is President Romero still alive?"
"Last I heard, yes. President Romero and Vice President Blazkowicz are still alive and kicking." He laughed and shook his head. "Fucking Rock Star President," he muttered. "Of course the end of the world would be under his tenure." He groaned and got back to his feet. "Come on, we really need to get going. Armory is directly across the hall, grab everything you can take, we aren't coming back."
"Understood," Kyra said.
The three of them stood and headed for the makeshift armory.
It was time to get this show on the road.