Doom: Hell on Earth 1.2

Into the Dark – Part 2

-

I was alone once again. Separated from the other troops in the assault force.

I was lost. I could hear the raging battle in the distance, but couldn’t tell whether it was outside the base or inside.

I was low on ammo. I carried a Beam Frequency Gun model 9000, which was of no use because it was empty. I had an empty shotgun, I had an mx215 pistol and only 59 bullets left.

For the last fifteen minutes I had been running deeper and deeper into the humongous star port, shooting demons whenever I encountered them. But none of them had yielded any ammunition for me to pick up.

Oh boy... I thought somewhat depressed This just reminds me too much of something that I ought to be working on forgetting right now

I remembered the frightening atmosphere. The impact it had on me the first time I stepped inside the Phobos Hangar Installation with only my puny pistol. This situation seemed remarkably similar, inhuman screams sounded in the distance, growls echoed throughout the darkened hallways and eerie sense of foreboding crept up my body. But this time the distant sound of battle reminded me that I was definitely not fighting alone. And now I was so experienced in killing demons that my fears were as good as gone.

..They have no pity, no mercy, take no quarter and crave ….none! I thought, remembering what I was fighting.
They’re the perfect enemy...in a way I smiled grimly. A sinister madman’s smile.

Only now I released that I had not made it through the outer perimeter unscathed. Blood flowed from a minor flesh wound on my arm and parts of my body ached, because I had violently thrown myself to the ground, avoiding destruction when I was outside the base. And the ground had not always been soft and wet.

I stealthily moved forward and peeked around a corner, seeing two former human guards standing with their backs on me. Two seconds later they were both dead.

Angry growls sounded from a brightly lit hallway in front of the now dead corpses. I swiftly rushed past one of the bodies, grabbing the guard’s assault rifle while passing by, and positioned myself around the corner. Peeking around the wall I saw them coming.

Blood lusting humanoid soldiers, some with green hair, all wearing standard military guard uniforms and carrying 5.56-millimeter assault rifles. I pointed the assault rifle around the corner and fired a couple of short bursts at the incoming possessed humans. The satisfying death roars and inhuman screams of agony as the rain of bullets perforated the reanimated humans, reached my ears and I grinned like a madman.

I rounded the corner and saw a former human lying three feet away from me. It was still alive, but its body was torn to pieces. The floor was a mess of organs and blood. I swiftly kicked the former human in its side and it gave a weak howl before it died from its wounds. I quickly collected the magazines from the assault rifles, but I did so while keeping my eyes focused down the bending hallway as I could hear the distinct growls and roars of imps and bull demons drawing nearer…

-

The hum of a computer terminal caught my attention.

I peeked inside a doorway to find a computer room. Moving closer, I could see the parameters. I saw pictures from the battlegrounds outside. Human soldiers were hiding behind wrecked vehicles and in craters fending off the roaring demons that rushed at them from the star base, halting the advance of the humans even further. I saw soldiers getting torn apart by the gunfire of the turrets While they desperately fired at the horrible creatures and I saw troops literally getting devoured alive by the inhuman creatures. But the turrets were the main problem for now, because the creatures were out in the open where the element of surprise was gone and they could be taken down rather quickly. But the turrets were out of reach and could not be neutralized. I realized that the turrets were controlled from this room. I also knew that it required authorization to break into the system and disable the defense systems. I swore. Here I was inside the control room, while my buddies were getting ripped apart outside and I couldn’t do shit about it… or could I?
My eyes fell upon the electrical pipes and wires that led from the computer.

The power supply! If I cut it…
An eerie sense interrupted my thoughts and I turned around in time to see a nimble, brown shape leap at me at great speed. I brought up my shotgun by well-polished instinct and equally well-polished reflexes, shot the imp that flew at me and stepped aside. The creature let out a moaning hiss and its dying body crashed into the computer terminal.

Gotta move! I told myself and started following the cables and pipes leading from the computer terminal.

-

The power generator I thought as I entered a large room. For the last five minutes, I had been blasting my way to this room, killing lots of ugly creatures ranging from lowly former humans to the ugly one-eyed cacodemons. All the time, I had followed the cables and now I had reached it. I saw former humans operate the machinery and watch over it. I went closer and suddenly I froze.

At my feet lay the corpse of a marine. His armor was torn apart and his intestines had been seemingly ripped out of his body by something explosive. I could see the ruined remains of his intestines scattered on the floor in front of him. Something really dangerous had killed this marine quite recently. He had made it inside and had been trying to shut off the power like I wanted to do, but had met something dangerous here.
I looked at the assault rifle in my hands. Would it be good enough to deal with this monster whichever it was?

An eerie sound suddenly reached my ears. Like a distorted howling sound. It wasn’t far away. Then my eyes fell on an object lying near the dead marine. Peering closely, I saw what it was.

A double-barreled combat shotgun.

These combat shotguns were rarely used by the military because of their limited effectiveness in rate of fire and range. But using it against demons instead of humans was a different story.
The combat shotgun used a special drum which contained two standard shotgun clips – each clip would be placed under each of the two barrels. The reload system had been a problem in development of this weapon as far as I had been told, since the weapon had two barrels, there were structural problems associated with implementing a typical pump-action reload system and an auto reload system was out of the question for the same reasons as with the single-barreled military shotgun – the advanced firing system required to fire the projectile shaped pellets correctly did not leave enough room for that.
Instead they had developed a break-barrel reload system. I chuckled to myself as I remembered how the war veteran I once met as a kid when my own life was in trouble had told me about old-fashioned, double-barreled break-barrel shotguns that his granddad had told him about. The old ones could be fired once and then the gunman had to break the barrel and insert two shells into the barrels from behind before he could shoot again. But it was different with this weapon and yet, ironically enough, the same.
In order to insert the next two shells into the firing chamber of the combat shotgun, the gunner had to quickly break the barrels open and shut quickly.

I could hear a menacing rattling somewhere, put I couldn’t put my finger on it. It almost sounded like rattling bones.

I noticed that this guy had sawed the barrels off to make the spread even wider, making it easier to take down a group of weaker enemies if the distance was right.

A terrible, inhuman scream suddenly startled me. I spun around to find myself face to face with a revenant.
Seeing this skeleton terror in real life was definitely something different from the computer image I had seen of it so far. Bits of dried blood and remnants of dried flesh adorned its bones. It was tall. At least three meters tall. It wore a shiny, silver-colored armor vest on its torso and I noticed the two metal guns mounted onto its shoulders – one of these, the largest of the two guns, could launch a homing missile that could track its target. I noticed the tiny spikes on its bony knuckles. The huge skeleton lurched at me and threw its bony fist at me. I dove down next to the dead marine, let go of my assault rifle, grabbed the double-barreled shotgun and rolled back onto my feet. I saw the revenant lean its torso forward – its shoulder mounted guns pointed straight at me.

I quickly brought the combat shotgun up and pulled the trigger. An audible click reached my ears.
Crap!
I needed to break the barrel to move two shells into the firing chamber and I didn’t have time for this. I leapt aside just as the revenant fired. I heard the missile soar out of the barrel of one of the undead creature’s two guns, I quickly looked over my shoulder and saw a round metal object shrouded in a burning glow of red electricity fly past me. It suddenly started to turn in midair.

I quickly leapt to my feet and ran around the revenant, hoping that the homing missile would slam into the revenant instead of me. I quickly broke the barrel open and shut while running. Looking quickly over my shoulder, I saw the revenant turn around and howl angrily at me. I saw the missile home in on my course and fly straight past the revenant, which fired another missile – this time, a regular mini-rocket.

I leapt behind a wall, avoiding the explosion of the mini-rocket and I also heard a second explosion – the homing missile had slammed into the wall, because it hadn’t followed my path completely and the wall had come between me and it.

Gritting my teeth I aimed the combat shotgun around the corner just as the revenant came rushing at me. It moved fast with its limbs dangling loosely.

I fired at it. The weapon in my hands roared and threw itself backwards with enormous force. I saw the skeletal monster getting thrown to the ground with a howl, its armor torn up, revealing rotting skin and flesh covering its bony ribs. I saw that two of its rips were broken and the decaying tissue behind its armor torn up by the shotgun blast. I quickly broke the barrels open and shut just as the creature began to get up again. I aimed at it and just as it got back up, I fired again and the undead revenant’s torso exploded in bones and chunks of rotting meat. The bony remains fell motionlessly to the floor.

“Welcome back to the world of the dead where you belong!” I hummed quietly.

Gunshots echoed across the room. I ducked back behind cover and pulled the single-barreled shotgun from my back. The regular shotgun would do more good against former humans than the combat shotgun.

...

Sweet.

very nice. a very good mood change from your previous entry. I liked the explaination of the ssg. very cool. I do think the revenant battle seemed a little brief, but it works. hit us off with some more soon.

These are realy good stories, DSM, but I can't seem to figgure out which level of Doom 2 you are in. At first, it seemed like you were in MAP02, with the two former humans facing away from you, but the Revenent isn't there. a little clarifacation would be nice.

I've already begun the "planning phase" for my Doom 2 story - it's going to deviate a li'l more from the game than this story (in terms of the areas that our hero visit etc.), but the basic Doom 2 story elements (Demon invasion of Earth, humans launch attack to retake star port, Doomguy retakes star port, doomguy tracks down Hell gate etc.) will be there.

VileSlay said:

I do think the revenant battle seemed a little brief, but it works. hit us off with some more soon.

Huh? How? Killing a revenant with an ssg doesn't take much more than 5-10 seconds - I actually prolonged the fight so that it lasted a little longer than originally intended. The revenant may be a high-hierarchy monster but it's definately one of the weaker in terms of hitpoints.

And Insomniac: As Epyo indicated above with his quote, this story does not try to describe ANY of the Doom 2 maps (because they suck in terms of realism).

Nifty.

An interesting read. I am not sure it is up to your usual quality though. I hope you know me well enough by now to know that I don't mean this as a slam in any way at all; it is not like I am an expert anyway. I just want to keep you motivated and challenged. :)

If you like I can elaborate.

Admittedly, I don't have as much energy as I used to have - that's probably why this thing could've been better, because otherwise I'd have thought more about coming up with interesting aspects in the story.

dsm said:

Admittedly, I don't have as much energy as I used to have -

I know the feeling. :)

I am working on the backstory for Ebola's Q2 project and I am finding myself feeling the same way.

dsm said:

Huh? How? Killing a revenant with an ssg doesn't take much more than 5-10 seconds - I actually prolonged the fight so that it lasted a little longer than originally intended. The revenant may be a high-hierarchy monster but it's definately one of the weaker in terms of hitpoints.

don't take my comment the wrong way. your stories are great. I just figured maybe a punch or back hand blow that connected so that our hero can feel the pain and know not to get hit again, maybe another fireball. but hey, this is your story man.

Wildman said:

I know the feeling. :)

I am working on the backstory for Ebola's Q2 project and I am finding myself feeling the same way.

Heh, nice to hear that you're still doing some writing though :-)
Say, are you planning to do any work on good ol' "Incident on Tei Tenga" some time? (not to sound impatient or anything but...).

don't take my comment the wrong way. your stories are great. I just figured maybe a punch or back hand blow that connected so that our hero can feel the pain and know not to get hit again, maybe another fireball. but hey, this is your story man.

I'm sorry if I gave you the impression of responding in a negative way. Chiefly, I did not want to let the revenant be the creature to successfully harm our hero, because personally, I find the revenant the lamest Doom creature (just my personal opinion) - I read Rellik's Doom Movie script and in that, he almost let the reveneant win - something that sure as Hell didn't appeal to me.

My revenant part in this story was a way for me to, hm, "react" to what I read in the abovementioned script, so therefore I let the doomguy trash the skeleton without too much trouble. After all, the danger of the revenant lies in its homing missiles and not its punch.

dsm said:

Heh, nice to hear that you're still doing some writing though :-)
Say, are you planning to do any work on good ol' "Incident on Tei Tenga" some time? (not to sound impatient or anything but...).

Actually, I have been working on it a bit. I am not happy with the pacing so I am trying to fix that and make the story a bit more coherent. I do want to get this out soon. Right now it is still looking like a fairly sizable piece (about short-novel length) so I'll probably package it up in a pdf.

Nice one, dsm.
Hey Wildman; I finished your story (Gaaa, I can't remember the name. RTC and some numbers? Something...)
nice story.

dsm said:

I'm sorry if I gave you the impression of responding in a negative way. Chiefly, I did not want to let the revenant be the creature to successfully harm our hero, because personally, I find the revenant the lamest Doom creature (just my personal opinion) - I read Rellik's Doom Movie script and in that, he almost let the reveneant win - something that sure as Hell didn't appeal to me.

My revenant part in this story was a way for me to, hm, "react" to what I read in the abovementioned script, so therefore I let the doomguy trash the skeleton without too much trouble. After all, the danger of the revenant lies in its homing missiles and not its punch.

I can see where your coming from. the revenant, at close range, is easy to take down with the ssg. I was actually expecting a hit when our hero dry-fired the ssg, followed by the projectile attack. take that as a sign of how well you write. it gives the impression that anything can happen instead of predictible action sequences.

two words: Kick ass! keep up the good work, DSM

footman said:

two words: Kick ass! keep up the good work, DSM

Um, that's more than two words. :) Heh, sorry. I do that to everyone.

Keep it up DSM.