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Bravo Team - Epilogue

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Epilogue

There isn’t much to say about our return journey. Our employers were surprised to see a stranger return home with us, but otherwise didn’t seem emotionally moved by the fact that we had lost the majority of the team up there, found live demons and evidence against the UAC or the fact that an FCE employee had actually been on the UAC’s paylist. I guess all the chaos and destruction that they had had to deal with in the past years had hardened them emotionally.

We had had a lot of trouble getting “Phobos” to speak to us. He seemed pretty mad and clearly did not want to talk about Mars or its moons, but it was obvious that he had been there a long time, as he had begun to see himself as a part of the moon. He kept referring to himself as Phobos and claimed that he was no longer Bill Howard. We gave him the best treatment we could on our journey back home.

Several days after our arrival back home, we finally got the lowdown on our ‘friend’ from Phobos. He had indeed been a highly decorated US Ranger, but transferred to Mars to join the security force there as security officer in charge of the security force under a Colonel Elliot Timothy Hauser who was the one in charge of the base. Howard had been in charge of an assault force sent to Phobos to respond to an SOS sent by the Phobos base – the very same recorded SOS we had come across on Phobos – but his comrades were cut down one by one and when he tried to get his remaining men out alive, he had been betrayed by his superiors for some reason he wasn’t aware of and the rest of his men were eventually killed off, leaving him alone. Badly wounded, he managed to hide in a secret room where he was able to regain some strength. At some point, he heard combat outside the hidden room, but he was too weak to join whoever fought the demons at that time. When he later left the hidden room, he had been surprised to discover that pretty much all the demons had been killed off in his area. He managed to find a few supplies to treat his wounds and he managed to survive on the moon until we showed up by avoiding the remaining demons and eating whatever he could find which could be eaten.

When we came along, he had run out of things to eat and his situation was desperate, so our arrival was a stroke of mighty good luck for him. Although skilled enough to kill the last demons, he did not deal with them, simply because there was almost no ammunition left on the base, so he chose the smartest option: to avoid the monsters.

We also got the news that the FCE had sent a heavily armed mopping up force to Mars to deal with the remaining monsters on both Phobos and Mars itself. I was only glad that they didn’t send me back up there. The force later returned with further interesting items. Namely proof that Captain Bill “Phobos” Howard had been betrayed. Apparently, Colonel Hauser hoped to see how efficient killers these demons really were before he would attempt to capture a few of them, have experiments made on them with the goal to exploit them as new weapons. But he had thought the demons were contained on Phobos and incapable of travelling across space, but such was not the case.

The UAC was disbanded after the evidence we retrieved was presented, namely because their management had failed to take the necessary security measures to actually put the gateway project on hold while they had actually continued working on active gateways, and because they had failed to provide the means to destroy the gateways from afar if something had gone wrong, which of course did go wrong.

Shortly after our return from Mars, the good news was passed around to anyone registered by the FCE: All major gatherings of demons had been wiped out. The demon threat had been reduced down to “next to nothing” and for a brief time, naïve people believed that they were gone for ever, but rumours that there were still a few demons left in hiding would soon arouse everywhere and I for one believed that those rumours were all too true. I knew the behaviour of demons too well.

As for the survivors of Bravo Team, Coburn continued to work for the FCE as a pilot. He was also the least affected person of us all. ‘Phobos’ was sent to an institution where he was being treated. Last I heard, his condition was stable and progressing, so I believe he should be all right now. He gave me the impression of being a really tough guy. He had been highly respected by his men before that incident as was evident by recorded information and I didn’t doubt it.

I and Jill had become very closely attached to one another because of our common experiences on Mars. We started a relationship and eventually married. I left the Special Air Service and helped Jill get us a home in England. The rest of our lives were characterized by rebuilding. We lent our hands to anyone we could. The demons had left a terrible mess that would take several generations to properly rebuild. Humanity is still busy rebuilding as I write this.
Jill and I are still happily married, but fortunately, we have never had to look at the horrible sight that is a demon ever again.

We never heard anything about the genetically enhanced soldier we found evidence about on Phobos, but he was well known to people around us. That man had become a legend. People revered him as a god, a saviour. There were countless tales about him. That he had arrived on Earth in the hour of need, helped the armed forces retake the Omega Ground Star Base and even fought his way to the very source of the demon invasion. According to these stories, he was the one that shut down the rift to the other world and put and end to the steady stream of demon reinforcements, giving humanity the long needed chance to reclaim Earth.

Jill and I never knew whether to believe that those stories had some truth to them. I had dismissed them immediately whenever I heard them before my trip to Mars. But after seeing proof of this super warrior, I found them a lot more believable. What happened to this man?

Nobody knows.

<The End>

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Mighty fine job on the series. I'll have to sit down and read through the whole set again.

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Wildman said:

Mighty fine job on the series. I'll have to sit down and read through the whole set again.

That's probably the most morale-boosting comment I've received yet :-]

Oh and while I've got you around, you wouldn't happen to have a new link to your TY story? The old links I provided seem to have been b0rked (reason no. 1: the links to each chapter on Doomcenter are down for reasons that ought to be obvios. Reason no. 2: The pdf file link doesn't work anymore, actual reason unknown).

I'm asking for this particular story, because I'm trying to get ideas for the Wolfenstein story I abandoned. I *might* remake it sometime in the future, but I dropped it because I realized that I hadn't got all the elements into the first parts that I really wanted and because of lack of further inspiration at the time.

Be advised though that it is by no means a certainty that I will resurrect that Wolfie story (though I've made a document in which I've filled in a couple ideas).

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This is the coolest ending. Loved it --- and I'll probably be making my way through the forum to read it again too. I'm glad I was able to read this not only as it was being written, but also as my first real look at pure DOOM-fanfic.

In any event, I kindah liked how this Phobos guy recalled something about hearing gunfire but not joining the fight; I have my thoughts _that_ was our beloved Doomguy, and not Phobos.

Just a thought, but I liked that little passage there; quite cool.

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