Command Control (to those that don't visit my site)

Now this was certainly an interesting turn of events. Nowhere did McKnight read in the manual nor in the briefing about this base about vacuum transfer tubes of any kind in a U.A.C installation. Then the thought crossed his mind that the U.A.C made all sorts of innovations that only the military had any idea about at first. Is that not always the case? The military always hides products and devices from the general public, to "ensure the common welfare". Why not make stuff for the rest of the world to enjoy?
Then something else hit him; was this tube really meant for human passengers? It did not seem like it at all. More like a cargo transport tube to him. But it made no difference what went through his mind right now, because the fact still remained, he was sucked down into this tube at speeds unheard of for simple human transportation.

Another dream came upon him, more like a hallucination this time. The tube represented the path to Hell itself, or whatever eternal damnation awaited McKnight on the other end. The tremendous force that sucked (or pushed, depending on how one looks at it) him down into the depths of said pit. At end of this never ending path, something started to take form. As he got closer and closer, McKnight could finally make out the face of what came up. No, it wasn't the face of the monster that he had seen in his dream. He would rather not have dreamt about that again. This face, in fact, belonged to one of the hideous pink pig-like demons he encountered only a couple of levels before. Specifically, this demon had its mouth open, awaiting the unsuspecting victim. In this case, that victim happened to be McKnight.

He finally snapped out of that delusion when the demon mouth faded away, yet it seemed to laugh maniacally as it faded. The face was replaced by an opening with light coming through it. At last, the trip in the tube finally ended. He met the ground with a hard slam, bruising his already severely bruised body.

The pain ran throughout him like ten million hammers pounding onto his flesh at once. Again, even the toughest Marines have their limits. "WHY?" McKnight angrily thought to himself. "WHY AM I MADE TO SUFFER THIS FATE? I DID NOTHING WRONG! IF ANYTHING, I HELPED HUMANITY BY BEATING THE LIVING SNOT OUT OF MY C.O.! WHAT MUST I DO TO PROVE THIS? THE UNIVERSE MAY BE UNFAIR, BUT I DID NOTHING TO EARN THIS! WHY? WHY? WHY?"

These thoughts lasted only for a brief second, however, as he clenched his teeth trying to absorb the pain. Hey, he may have been human, but at least he was tough. Eventually, the pain went away, after about 5 minutes, more or less. Though the answer to the next question on his mind was pretty obvious, he wanted to make sure anyway. He looked behind him and saw the door to the lift he would have come out of had he followed the blue door in the toxin refinery, or at least he thought. A small sign appeared on the ceiling not far from where he emerged. Sure enough, the sign said 'Phobos Facility Command Control Center'. Now he finally came to the destination he had hoped to arrive at before.

One other thing about this room, it only consisted of one other door. Right in front of the lift door was a door of the usual type on this facility, thought it had a greenish tint to it. McKnight walked along to this door, then noticed something to his left. The wall had a very slight color variation to it, making it hardly notable. "If this is the U.A.C's idea of making things dumber, they sure are making progress," he said to himself. Following his instincts he pushed on this wall gently, just enough to see if it really was a hidden door. No questions needed to be asked later, for it was a secret door, just as he expected.

This room, however, didn't end up being as large as McKnight anticipated. It looked more like a small closet with practically nothing in it, save another backpack and box of shotgun shells. He entered very casually, as he thought nothing short of an intelligent being such as a human would even be able to figure out how to find such rooms. He was in for a surprise, though a horrific one.

His face met the side of the stock of another shotgun. Luckily, it didn't hit him hard enough or in the right place to knock him out, though he still reeled a little bit. Shaking his head trying to regain his temporarily blurred vision, the figure decided to take a dive at him. Fortunately for McKnight, Marine training kicked in, as it had over the past few hours. The unknown figure plunged into McKnight only to be thrown back down to the floor face first. Now it was his turn to be reeling. A few seconds later, McKnight decided to walk on over to see if whatever this thing was, most likely a zombie, wanted to play some more. His cockiness led him to another blow, however, when he walked over and the figure elbowed him right below the abdomen, almost hitting his sensitive area. From a scrawny little guy as this, that actually hurt a lot. But this figure took another opportunity and JUMPED ON MCKNIGHT'S BACK! He actually rode piggy-back on him. A few punches were thrown here and there, almost throwing McKnight's orientation out of whack. But the little figure was ignorant of the fact that he was about to approach a wall back-first. McKnight, however, planned this. With as much force as he could, McKnight slammed the back of this thing into the wall about three times. It finally let go and hopped down to the ground, a bit shaken up and holding its head in pain.

"You know, for a zombie, you sure have a lot of endurance!" McKnight said, just as he poised his shotgun for the final blow.

"I'M NOT A FRIGGIN' ZOMBIE!!!!!" the thing said. Now this disturbed McKnight. Never in his experience on this moon did any zombie talk to him at all, let alone in such an intelligible tone as this.

"And neither am I," McKnight responded. He finally put the gun down.

After a long look at this person, now that he knew it was a human, something felt really weird inside McKnight's gut. This young lad had the features on his face that which belonged a boy no older than maybe twenty. Sufficing from the uniform, he was obviously a Marine, but fresh out of basic. That would explain the muscles not as built as much as McKnight's. But the most odd feeling of all didn't happen to be this boy's face, but rather a strange feeling of deja-vu. The only problem was that McKnight for sure had not seen this boy at all in his life, yet something familiar about him struck his mind. The haircut, the wrinkle- and scar-free face, even the timidness of this boy had a hauntingly familiar essence to it.

Putting this aside for the moment, McKnight spoke again. "State your name and rank, Marine!"

"Private First Class Jeffrey Lamb, uhhhh, Sergeant...," he looked at the name tag on McKnight's uniform,"... Sergeant McKnight!"

"How long have you been here?" McKnight asked.

"Sergeant, I have..." Lamb said before McKnight cut him off.

"You may drop the formalities, Private. We are in serious situation after all," McKnight responded.

"I have no idea how long I have been in here. My watch was lost in the battle, if I may," Lamb answered. "If you don't mind me asking," he continued,"how in the the world did you get here, uhhhh, what do you want me to call you then?"

"Just call me McKnight," was the first answer. "Anyway, I was just dropped off, literally, from the military base, which I had no idea even existed until I found a secret elevator in the toxin refinery." A shudder ran through Lamb's body. "Is something the matter?" McKnight asked him.

"I'm sorry, it's just that a few vivid details are coming back to me about that place," Lamb responded.

"That's alright, you can tell me about it later," McKnight said back. "But in the meantime, something just hit me...I haven't had a bite to eat since I entered this war zone!"

"Funny you should mention that," Lamb responded. "When I came into this closet, I noticed a box of high-energy nutritional bars on the floor. I pocketed them instantly, thinking I was the only one who would survive this firefight. Turns out I was wrong. How about I split them with you?"

"Grand," said McKnight, happy to have nourishment at last. He munched on one or two of the bars before talking again. "Alright, Jeff...may I call you Jeff? Ah, forget it. Alright, what we need to do is find a way out of here. We're not going to be able to accomplish that by just moping around in this closet. We've got to fight our way out, and with our Marine instincts. Are you with me?"

"I sure am, McKnight!" Lamb said back to him.

"Good! Let's get moving then!" McKnight extorted. Shotgun ready, he and Jeff Lamb proceeded on through the green door.

This surely was command control, all right. Just on the other side were hallways that bent around to who knows where, as well as some some other small hallways atop those. Right in the center of this "lobby", a large incandescent light, which should have been fluorescent, cast a huge light down onto the floor. And to put the icing on the cake, which would be black licorice flavored in this case, three zombies showed up at the opposite end of the lobby McKnight and Lamb were in. Luckily for them, it was a huge lobby.

"Bah, a mere teaser," McKnight said as he pointed his shotgun towards the former humans. He mowed two of them down with no problem, then a few bullets from behind him ended the third zombies misery. He turned to Lamb.

"What the? Don't you have anything heavier on you?" McKnight asked Jeff.

"Actually no. The rest was lost during the massacre of my unit," was his response.

"Tell me about it later," McKnight said. Now they had a choice of three hallways to choose from; one to their left, one to the right, and one in the center. "My gut feeling tells me to take the middle road this time," McKnight suggested. Jeff didn't question this argument one bit. As they moved into the hallway, a small elevator lowered on the other end. This, of course, didn't surprise McKnight one bit since he recognized the computer layout of the consoles on either side of him. A button was sighted just to the left of the lowered elevator, but it served no use right now, as the elevator was already lowered. McKnight and Lamb both rode to the top.

Immediately to the left of them stood three more zombies. One bullet hit Jeff in his fresh body armor, causing no real damaged. McKnight took care of all three of them, however. He pillaged the ammo clips they dropped and handed them to Jeff. There was no need to go left, for they could see it ended in a dead end, so they decided to go right. At the end of this tunnel right in the middle of the room stood a small storage kiosk. What lay inside of it was anybody's guess. McKnight and Lamb decided to take that risk.

The room had a vague octagonal shape to it, but only four doors. That made sense, why make every side a door? It wouldn't even be possible to do so! They ignored the geometric details for now, however, and pushed on through. What better entity for them to be waiting on the other side than a horde of five imps? The first one caught them totally by surprise, and the fireball it lobbed at them barely missed. This might have been a challenge for McKnight, unless a miracle happened in the next few seconds, and Jeff sure couldn't fend them off with just a pistol.

Actually, a miracle didn't quite occur, but one was sighted near the center of the room. Just a single toxic barrel's metallic sheen caught McKnight's attention. He waited for the door close, though, because he wanted to show Jeff a little tactic and explain it to him first. "You want to know a little trick to thinning out those hellish SOBs?" he asked Jeff. The Private patiently waited. "Well, did you see that barrel in there? A full stock of those can make life easier with just the pull of a trigger, if you get what I mean." Jeff had no problem understanding. "Wanna give it a shot?" McKnight asked. Private Lamb rose to the occasion.

They stood a little bit farther back this time so they could dodge the fireballs if they needed to. Luck was on their side when the door opened again, for the group of imps crowded around the single barrel. A few pop-shots from Jeff's pistol, and two of the imps were blown to Heaven. He took down one more with about two bullets. McKnight took care of the rest.

It was mop-up time. On the floor, right in the center, lay yet another minigun. "There's you heavy artillery now, Jeff,' McKnight told Lamb. "Now you might not need the barrels if you have enough bullets. Consider it my treat for letting you have this one."

"I suppose you can say that from experience," Jeff commented.

"Heh, you bet I can," McKnight said back.

Another object of some importance next to the minigun was a blue security key. "Here, you might need this too. I already have one, but just in case you come across a blue when and if we do split up, you won't get anywhere without it," McKnight told Jeff. He tossed it to him and Jeff caught it with no problems.

Nothing more of interest lay in the current vicinity, so both Marines left. They were now surrounded by another series of hallways. About the only one that they had not explored, however, was right in front of them. The back wall had a light against it, and it split into yet two more hallways, one going left and the other right. "Well, I guess I spoke just in time. Neither way looks too promising, but I guess the only way to find is for each of us to take a separate path. You go right, I'll go left, " McKnight told Jeff.

Lamb went his way while McKnight went the other. The action started just as the Marines split up. Atop a platform in an all brown-brick room stood a really buff zombie. This particular zombie carried another shotgun. McKnight hated those. Despite this difficulty, he managed to pluck off the undead lump of flesh with ease, then life became harder. Three more zombies carrying shotguns emerged from around the back of the platform. One more shell managed to strike McKnight's armor. It almost faded away completely now.

Big mistake for the zombies; McKnight finally had enough. Having been shot one too many times by a zombie in the past 5 hours, the anger finally reached the boiling point in him. He let out a loud "YEAHHHHHHHHHHRRRRRRRRGGGG!!!!!!!!!" fright before expending three shells, even though it oddly took only one to kill the three zombies.

McKnight finally noticed a door to the right of the platform he faced. It had a blue trim on each side of it. He pulled out the blue security card he obtained from the military base. With a swipe of the key and "whirr" of the door, McKnight looked ahead to find something very annoying...a small maze carved out entirely out of stone. "Great," he said, annoyed,"what do they think we are? Minotaurs?" Little did he know how bad a choice of word he used at the moment, he would regret it some time later.

One step in and one step to the right, McKnight actually found an easy way out of the maze. Though a small path lay to his right again after he turned, he decided not to risk it for now. This maze had a small oddity to it though. It had rises and falls in the floor in certain areas. He payed no mind to it, however, until he ran into some imps hiding around corners of some of the bends. Luckily for him, he was still in a minor berserk mode. The imps went down with no problem. Real trouble came, however, when he exited the maze and found a pink demon charging his way. It was trouble because he barely had any room to move. One shot, two shots fired, then his gun jammed. It seemed about impossible for McKnight to kill this thing now, until blood started bursting in small pockets from the demon's back. It fell down dead, shaking the ground as it hit the floor.

"That thing reminded me of my older, fatter brother," Jeff said from across the small room, his minigun still smoking as he spoke. "But I'll give it this much credit, it sure did need a lot of punishment!"

"Thanks for not shooting me," McKnight told Jeff. "What've you got to report?"

"Gee, I thought the formalities could be dropped," Jeff responded. Rolling his eyes, he continued. "It took almost an amazing feat trying to get here. Just around the path I took was housed a green slime pit with a staircase going down to it, don't ask me why. I thought no other way was available, then I saw a very small ledge in the wall. Mind you, this ledge not even a supermodel could fit onto easily. I had to hug the wall just to stay on the ledge. Let's just say balance was a luxury. I finally made it to the opening on the other side, but not without dropping my blue key in the pool first. As it turns out, I didn't need it because the only door waiting for me was a yellow door, and I just happened to find a yellow card right before I reached it. About the only thing keeping me from going into it easily was one of our brown thorny friends guarding it."

"I call them imps," McKnight told Jeff.

"Call them what you will, they're still ugly. Anyway, I popped him off with a few bullets, recharging with another box I found on the way, then I heard fatso here snort. I followed the sound of both that and your shotgun blasts. Seems as though I arrived just in time."

"Yeah...JUST in time," McKnight responded. "My gun jammed. But thanks to you, I guess I owe you the next weapon we find." He walked over to the carcass of the demon. "This is for being so ugly," he said to the carcass as he pulled the trigger, thinking that nothing would come out of it. The shot the fired ended up splattering some of the demon's blood onto him. "Son of a...," he said, while Jeff laughed to himself . "What are you laughing at, Private?!" he snapped back while wiping the blood off his face. "That makes one more wasted shell! Every bit counts here!" Private Lamb sealed his lips.

They moved on to the yellow door Jeff talked about. Just next it was a switch labeled 'PRESS TO ACTIVATE BRIDGE TO EXIT LIFT'. It would have been foolish not to press it, so McKnight did the honors. Then they passed through the door and found out that the switch did in fact raise a bridge, because they saw it rising up. They had to find a small staircase leading to the bridge. Another door was behind the stairs.

"You wanna go through it?" Jeff asked McKnight.

"No thanks, we're at the exit anyway. Besides, I've had enough fun on this level of the station. We need to get moving and try to find some answers," was McKnight's response.

Without arguing, Lamb followed McKnight to the exit room. The lift inside could barely accommodate the two of them. McKnight flipped the switch, and down they went.

"Oh man," Jeff blurted out, "all this has been too much for me to handle! I just got out of Basic a month and a half ago!"

"I don't know," said McKnight, "I had a dream about an hour ago, and something tells me we ain't seen nothing yet!"

not bad.

He waited for the door close, though, because he wanted to show Jeff a little tactic and explain it to him first. "You want to know a little trick to thinning out those hellish SOBs?" he asked Jeff. The Private patiently waited. "Well, did you see that barrel in there? A full stock of those can make life easier with just the pull of a trigger, if you get what I mean." Jeff had no problem understanding. "Wanna give it a shot?" McKnight asked. Private Lamb rose to the occasion.

Hmm, two marines alone on a base filled with nightmarish critters and then the older one lets the younger marine try and take out a bunch o' imps as if he was lettin' his own son try out a gun for the first time - pardon me, but this doesn't seem awfully believable in my eyes. Sure, Mcknight could've told him about the "trick", but the "wanna give it a try?" stuff just seems a bit weird in the situation they're in.

Also, considering how much you "brag" about this story being oh-so-true-to-Doom I think that inserting this Jeff guy kinda deviates a *tad* from the game don't you think?
Anyway, this isn't a bad thing, but I just thought that I'd point that small thing out for ya - nothing wrong with it though.
Basically a very well-written story, but please consider my first negative point above, ok?

you have mis-used the word 'sufficing'.

Well, yeah there is the touch of familiar storyline here but it's mostly well-executed. Crendo's stories always have strong beginnings, which is good.

There are one or two very familar phrases, such as 'reached boiling-point'

In Masters Creative Writing at uni, we are taught to avoid cliché like the plague, heh, and it sure does look good if you can come with original metaphor. But there are some nice rhythmic sentances here, and the story is worth re-drafting in the future.

In Masters Creative Writing at uni, we are taught to avoid cliché like the plague

I think you're confusing that with formal writing.