(Another) Doom story Pt. 1

Hey chicks and gals, this is my first post on Doomworld forums, and my first story about Doom. I've been (gasp) reading the Doom novels, and I thought they were pretty good, so I though I'd give it a go. This is the first part of my story, which is imaginatively titled "Another Doom Story." Not much happens in this first part, but I'm well into the second part, which promises a good time for all, without further ado-doo, I'd like to present to you wonderful people "Another Doom Story" Part 1.

"Another Doom Story"

"Alright ladies, five minutes until drop!" Lieutenant McPherson barked over the loud, low hum of the dropship's engines, looking back at us from the cockpit. The red warning lights in our little transport compartment made it look like his face was drenched in blood.
He noticed me staring at him, and yelled to all of us, "Stay frosty! That means you, Wiliamson!"
PFC Harold Wiliamson. That's me. My friends call me Harry. My superiors call me dirtbag. Girls call me "you in the bushes." Just kidding. I was trained at Pendleton, 34th Drop Infantry, USDM--the Drop Marines. Baptism of fire in Israel, during the 2037 Afghan--Palestinian conflict. Got a Purple Heart taking a bullet in the shoulder for my idiot CO.

Got it? I like to keep introductions short.

I looked out the window at the red landscape of Phobos flying past us, like a river going at mach .5.
Craters dotted the landscape, sharp mountains jutted out in the distance, spikes reaching uselessly out in hopes of piercing the crimson sky. All of Phobos was red.
I thought it was beautiful.
The guy to the right of me--a pal of mine, Private Jared Stevens--poked my shoulder as he caught me staring out the portal.
"I thought butter bars told us to keep frosty," he told me in that irritating New Yorker accent of his.
"Butter bars can bite me," I replied curtly. He and some of the others chuckled.
I settled back in the small, uncomfortable bench on which five of us were crowded. Something, somewhere on my body itched. Stupid space-suit.
After the chuckling subsided, my comrades around me engaged in hushed conversation with one another, speculating on our mission and what we would have to do. A couple of Privates in front of me guessed it was some sort of police action, another two supposed it was just more training. I didn't care what it was, just as long as I didn't have to do it in the cramped quarters of the dropship. I hate cramped spaces.
Again I looked longingly out the window at the red, flat plain, briefly noticing scattered rock formations and small basins as they flowed away behind us. Red.
Plenty of red.
I wanted to get out there.

A little info on Phobos, and its sister moon Deimos: They're Mars' two moons. Back in 2042, the Union Aerospace Corporation, or UAC, as they print on their ads, established scientific outposts on both moons, looking for water or studying rock or some boring science-type shit like that. During construction of the two bases, the UAC found three strange, alien structures, one on Phobos, two on Diemos. All three structures had markings on them that bore no similarity to any writing on Earth. Initial experimentation with the structures found that they were wormhole generators of sorts, at least two of them. They hadn't messed with the third one, last I heard. The two generators that UAC activated connected the two moons, giving them the ability to send materials, people, whatever, to the other moon, without having to use spacecraft. They were planning to reverse-engineer the two generators so they could use them on Earth. That's all this ignorant marine was told about it. My guess is that there was some secret government project going on in the bowels of the bases, but that's just me.

The loudspeaker system sparked to booming, ear-splitting life. McPherson's voice came through, unfortunately, giving everybody a pounding headache as he spoke. We toughed it, though; we had to listen to the briefing, and on top of that, we were Drop Marines, dammit! We were supposed to be able to withstand this kind of punishment to our ears.

"Okay, marines, we have a very unusual situation on our hands. We have lost contact with both our Phobos and our Deimos bases, both at the same time and abruptness. The Phobos outpost will be investigated first, and once we find out what the problem is, the Deimos outpost will be investigated, if we need to. We are not--repeat, not--on high alert this mission, so do not shoot to kill until you have determined whether or not there is a hostile presence. If you shoot a UAC employee without proper clearance from the commanding officer, you damn well better expect a court marshal! Your unit will be dropped off at the south end of the base, farthest away from the wormhole generator. A second unit, The 25th Drop Infantry, will be dropped on the north end, nearest the generator. Your two teams will radio in status reports every ten minutes until we have discovered the problem and solved it. You are both to rendevous in the administration at 22 hundred, even if there is a hostile presence. Corporal Peterson will be in command for this mission." We all looked at Peterson, who was closest to the cockpit door. He met our gazes with a quiet dignity. I didn't like him much.
"Good luck, and don't kill anybody if you don't have to."
To everyone's pleasure, butter bars stopped talking and switched off the radio. I took my hands off my ears, and said to Private Stevens,
"Sounds easy enough."
"Famous last words," Stevens replied, smirking.
I punched him in the shoulder as the warning siren started blaring, signaling for us to get ready for drop. My unit and I stood up, getting on our military-grade drop jets, which would carry us down to the surface. The dropship slowed down to about 75 kilometers per hour, giving us just enough time to drop.
I strapped and switched my jets on as the deployment hatch in the back of the dropship slowly opened, revealing the moon's crimson surface about twenty meters below us.
The first troops jumped out of the ship seconds later, the sound of their roaring jets fading away below us. A second batch jumped. Then a third. A fourth. Then it was our turn. Stevens and I jumped out at 75 kilometers an hour, and descended gracefully toward the ground.

It's cold(!!!) on Phobos. Though I didn't feel the freezing temperatures on my skin, my suit's thermometer read an extremely cold -13 degrees Celsius. One would most definitely not want to get caught outside a properly heated area on Phobos without a Space Suit. It would prove rather fatal, not only because it's damn cold on Phobos, but also because there is no oxygen on Phobos' surface, and that proves itself a difficulty as well. But, fortunately, we had our suits on and running, and my squad and I started heading north, toward the southern airlock of Phobos Base.

*****

There was no cause of alarm when we reached the entrance to the base. Everything seemed normal, except the usual, deafening sound of mining machinery was absent. Maybe everybody had a day off. But we still had to be cautious in making our slow way towards the main airlock.
The red dust of Phobos was kicked up by our jets as we landed, and hung for a few minutes in the low gravity. I tried get my bearings, looking towards the base's yellow security lights through the dust.
As we were lost in the red dust cloud, Peterson started issuing orders, putting soldiers into small teams and telling us when and what to shoot if it ever came to that.
"LeTroi, Betz, and uh….Nguyen. You three take the point. The rest of you pair up. Roland, you're with me. Williamson and Stevens. You two are a pair. Kosky, you and……"
I tuned him out as I sought Private Stevens out in the lingering cloud. I finally found him close by, and we joined the rest of the group as the dust settled. We headed towards the airlock.
Nothing seemed amiss as Nguyen punched in the entrance codes. We waited patiently as Nguyen punched the keys for a minute, then spoke up.
"That's weird, the doors are locked. The thing here says we need level six security clearance to get in, but we have level ten security clearance. Maybe it's just a bug in the system, but to get in, we'll need to either bypass the system, which requires special equipment, or blast through with charges, which we have. I still can't make contact with anybody on the inside. There's too much interference, though from what I'm not sure."
The corporal stood there for a second, lost in thought, probably considering what other options we had like a good little soldier. Finding no alternatives, he ordered the squad to stand back and the demo expert, yours truly, forward to set the charges that would surely make a dent in UAC's nice little airlock door. I pulled two C4 charges out of my little space-backpack and stuck them on the large door. I put the detonator plugs in them and walked backward, unwrapping the cord from the detonator as I went. The squad stepped back with me. When the cord was fully unwrapped we were about seven meters away from the door. I turned back to the squad to explain what to do once the doors were blown.
"Once the shrapnel and stuff stops flying, we're going to need to act quickly to get inside. The computers are going to detect the breach in the walls and start to close the auxiliary blast doors. This won't happen immediately, but we'll have to act quickly regardless. Once we're in, though, there shouldn't be much of a problem--other than what's inside."
No one had any questions. Grinning in satisfaction and anticipation of the coming fireworks, I turned towards the door.

I pushed the button.

The sound was muffled because we were wearing our helmets, but it was enough. We were deafened by the blast, and nearly knocked down by the concussion. I made a mental note to ask for longer detonator cord. Debris flew in every direction, but didn't fly fast enough in the low gravity to do much damage to our suits. Red lights started flashing inside the airlock. We made a run for it as the auxiliary doors slowly closed. The last soldier--Peterson, that wuss--made it inside the airlock as the two door halves slowly closed the gap in between them. The primary door beyond it had been blown into slag; some small fragments of it still floated mournfully in the air.
The door fully closed, leaving us separated from the outside. The red emergency lights stopped flashing, and returned to their normal yellow-orangish hue. We were in.

Hope you liked it as much as I enjoyed writing it. The second part will be written and posted within the next few days. Tell me what you think; constructive criticism is quite welcome, so long as the words "Piece of shit" don't enter into it. A good day to you and yours.

T3K

I've been (gasp) reading the Doom novels, and I thought they were pretty good

I thought they were good too. Charmin isnt as soft as the DOOM novels.

Well, might as well get the one nitpicky thing out of the way...

It's court-martial, not court marshal.

Oops. That error got past me in the editing process. Thanks for reading it, though. Have you any thoughts on the actual writing, though?

Oops. That error got past me in the editing process. Thanks for reading it, though. Have you any thoughts on the actual writing, though?

Pretty good. BTW, have you looked at the community story? We seriously hit a case of mass writer's block - add to it, please. :->