Bravo Team - 2

[dsm]

Chapter 2 – Fear

-

Pilot Jeff Coburn was a calm and level man. He chain smoked to great irritation for the rest of the team, having a particular affinity for cigars, but was otherwise a nice, polite man. Like Sarah Blaine, he was a Canadian too. He had been a veteran fighter pilot during the final military campaign to wipe out the demons from the Earth. In fact, rumour had it that he had never touched a tobacco before the invasion.

He did raise an eyebrow when Sanders told him to embark for Phobos. He had expected all the more interesting stuff to be found on Mars, but apparently, that wasn’t the case.

Now he was calmly navigating the spacecraft down on the landing pad outside the Phobos Hangar, masterfully dealing with the delicate manoeuvres as if he was parking a car.

“Base vicinity atmosphere is still breathable – unbelievable! Even after three years of being abandoned!” Coburn announced over the radio.

-

The door slid open with a whining sound that McGee had come to loathe. The layout was fairly similar to that back on Mars and the doors were all the same, bulkhead doors with all sorts of pipes and gadgets on them for the most part.
Cold silence met the team.
“Ok, since ‘it’ happened here, we better be careful McGee – let’s spread out!” Sanders whispered in his radio.

McGee reconnoitred the room to the left of the reception hall. There was a staircase leading up to a few computer consoles. He had barely entered the room when he made a grim discovery.
Four skeletons in filthy military rags. He saw old, blood marks on the tattered fatigues. He quickly examined them. They had all been shot, apparently with a light weapon. Maybe a sidearm?

But what unnerved McGee were the skeletons themselves. The teeth! These skeletons had razor sharp teeth where they should have had ordinary human teeth. He reported “area secure” and asked the others to get into this room.

“What the fuck!?” Ronnie Levine exclaimed when he saw the teeth of the first skeleton. He was the team’s Medic and had acquired quite a knowledge on the anatomy of the demons.
“That can mean only one thing,” Jill said, her voice lowering to almost a whisper.
“They were here before they came to Earth!” McGee nodded grimly.

“They might still be here!” Sanders responded and clicked off the safety on his chaingun.

“Now we’ve seen proof that the UAC is behind this!” Roy Carpenter replied.
“Then why don’t we just get the Hell outta here?” Ronnie exclaimed, his voice slightly hysterical.
“No! We have found evidence that the UAC has something to do with the demons, but we need to find out what brought in those freaks and if there are still some around, we're to exterminate them!” Sanders responded quickly, his voice a low whisper. “We have our orders – let’s move”
Ronnie grumbled to himself.
"If it turns out that there are hordes of these bastards here, we'll be dead meat"

-

“Look! More signs of demon baddies!” Ronnie pointed at a small pile of burnt ashes. During the invasion, people had learned that demons don’t rot after having been killed – their bodies slowly dissolved and ultimately burnt away, leaving only a small pile of black ashes. The dissolving process, which had an even more horrible stench than what would emanate from a normal rotten corpse, could take as long as it took a human body to rot or it could take longer. They had found plenty of such signs and plenty of skeletons from both pure humans and former humans. These signs proved that the place had been swarming with demons, but they had all been killed. Or had they?

The atmosphere in the group was very tense. The two soldiers had their weapons ready, their fingers itching to pull the trigger. But so far, they had only found remains of dead monsters. They were now at the Toxin Refinery on Phobos. They had been through the Hangar, which had proven to be relatively small, the Nuclear Plant and now they were in a building that used to refine and process toxins into fuel.

Now, all the toxic liquids had dried out, but there was still plenty of old dirt and other remains of the toxic slime where it had been, and a terrible stench emanated from these places.

The other team members shushed on Ronnie. The Medic, a 45 year old, thin man, had had his fair share of terrible experiences – just like any other human being during the terrible events on Earth. His mind had been affected by some of the experiences he had had – seeing his whole family dying in the most terrible fashion was not for any human to experience and especially not for a tender guy like Ronnie - and was therefore extra scared of demons compared to the rest of the team. He wasn’t too bright either, but he was a skilled Medic and a friendly person under normal circumstances.

They had walked around in the Refinery for a while when they accidentally found a hidden area. Sarah stepped on something and there was a click. They stood still for a while, then proceeded when nothing seemed to happen. But McGee’s sharp ears had heard something. Like a door opening somewhere.
And they soon found two hidden passageways. The hydraulic mechanisms were damaged from lack of maintenance and the doors couldn’t shut although it was clear that they were made to close again automatically. The first room yielded nothing other than more traces of dead demons, but the other room had a skeleton wearing ruined combat armour. There was a grey, cylindrical weapon next to him – a rocket launcher. McGee scooped up the launcher, cleaned it and checked it.
“yep, still in working condition” he grunted.
A sudden hiss sounded inside a narrow tunnel. Green dirt marks and an abominable stench revealed that the trench that ran across the room had been filled with slime.
“Imp!” Sanders snarled hoarsely.
“I’ll deal with him” McGee replied resolute, put the rocket launcher aside and brought up his shotgun.

The rest of the team was frightened, but the short Brit was remarkably calm. Stepping into the trench he peeked into the tunnel.

It was dark in there, but two burning red eyes glared at him through the darkness and suddenly, an angry hiss sounded from the tunnel and a slick, brown shape leapt out of the dark at the soldier at great speed. Sarah Blaine, who was the person closest to McGee, screamed in terror.

The roar of the shotgun was deafening in the confined space and several of the team members reflexively covered their ears.

The imp was hit in midair and was hurled to the ground by the blast. It let out a hoarse groan as it died.
“Demons don’t care about how long time they have to stay in any place” the SAS man mused as he examined the fallen demon. The others slowly went closer. They had all seen these creatures lots of times, but finding one here was strangely different. The claustrophobic spaces and cold, un-maintained steel tunnels of the Phobos base made it all the more frightening than back on Earth.

“Let’s get back to the ship now!” Sarah Blaine whispered terrified.
“And leave this place full of demons and let the UAC go free?” McGee asked.
“You all knew the risk of being part of a team like this,” Jill added. She was remarkably cool despite the recent, horrible shock.
“We’ve only encountered one lone demon so far – we’re not pulling out unless this place is crawling with the suckers,” Sanders replied coldly.

When McGee was sure the demon was dead, McGee bent over and crawled into the tunnel, still with his shotgun brought up.

They heard him think out loud inside.
“I wonder what that button does?” They heard him say, his voice sounding strangely distorted by the echo effects of the tunnel.
A barely audible click followed and the others realized that he had just flipped a switch.
“Who the Hell authorized you to activate that switch soldier!?” Sanders exploded in a hoarse fit of anger, while his face was livid with rage.
“Relax boss...” the calm voice of McGee came back.
“It was a switch to open a door. Mind if I do my job properly?”
Sanders scowled before muttering incoherencies that could be interpreted as something between a ‘yes’ and a ‘no’.

McGee came out with some ammunition for Sanders’ chaingun, but as the Ranger had maximum ammunition for it, the Brit decided to keep it himself.

They returned to the building’s entrance at the lift from the underground monorail station that led from the Nuclear Plant and then Sanders immediately noticed something. There was a ruined fence around a pool which had once been filled with slime. They had noticed that there was remains of a human skeleton lying in the pool. They couldn’t tell for certain if the skeleton had been fully human or reworked, as the skeleton had been almost completely eroded by the slime that had been there. The unfortunate humanoid had been hurled right through the fence with an awesome force.

McGee knew that it must have been a powerful demon of sorts that had done this – no human possessed the strength to hurl anyone through a fence like that. At least not to the best of his knowledge.

What had been changed now, however, was a pathway that had been raised across the empty pool.

“What the Heck!? That pathway wasn’t there before!” He turned towards McGee with an angry glare. “See what happens when messing around with switches, stupid!” he growled at the Englishman.

McGee eyed him coldly, completely unaffected by his temporary superior’s reaction.
“You would’ve done the same mate” He replied tonelessly.
“And besides, I can’t see why we shouldn’t look into it” and with that he strode over the raised pathway.

The pathway led to a narrow corridor, which ended up with a room filled with still living former humans and imps. They roared and hissed at the lone soldier and the air started getting unhealthy. “I need chaingun support!” McGee bellowed and fired a single shell into the group. The deadly pelting tore right through three former humans that stood close enough to each other. Backing away rather quickly, McGee pumped the slide of the weapon and fired at a barrel next to another group of enemies. The barrel disappeared in an orange ball of fire and smoke with an ear-piercing roar.

An imp literally went inside out as its flesh was dissolved and torn off its wretched bones, splattering blood red chunks everywhere. Another imp was hurled into a wall by the force of the explosion, it’s torso filled with sharp shrapnel. It rammed into the wall with a sickening thud and its blood splattered onto the wall. Two former humans were killed in the blast in addition to the two imps.

A bullet suddenly tore a chunk out of McGee’s arm and he screamed in pain. He quickly recovered, but as he watched, he saw a shotgun zombie trooper having its shotgun trained directly at him. He knew that the muzzle flash was less than a second away. He knew that he would be unable to avoid it and that it was too late for him, even with his superior reflexes, to raise his own gun and take out the former human. He expected the roar of the shotgun to ring out and mix itself with the sensation of agony. Would he feel pain if the blast tore his head off?
The shot rang out.
But it was not just one shot, but several shots. McGee, surprised that he felt no pain and that he could still hear sounds around him noticed that the gunfire did not sound like a shotgun blast. Rather it was the brutal drumming of a chaingun and as McGee watched, the possessed soldier was shredded by a hail of bullets coming from behind.
McGee spun around and run past his saviour, who was none other than Sanders who had run up behind him and was now shooting past him.

“Fuck, fuck, fuck!” McGee cursed as he ran behind Sanders. “Still quite a bunch of these fuckers here”

“All right big hero, sector secure,” Sanders’ slightly snarling voice announced.
“What now Sir?” McGee replied.
“There’s a second exit here apart from the one we already found”
“What?”
“Maybe we should check it out – a hidden exit must leave to a hidden place, which gotta mean secret secrets”
“Gotcher boss” McGee replied.
“We’re moving in, let’s hope there isn’t too many more demons around”

McGee was pleased that the Ranger had seemingly forgotten his anger about the switch flipping, but annoyed about his wound. Ronnie would have to fix that wound because so far, it prevented him from using his guns with maximum skill.

...

[Wildman]

Cool. I like those barrels. :)

[Guardian]

Very good, yesh. 'Nother question, if I may, heh: was this a strict depiction of one of the levels of our beloved game? It didn't seem like it, but since you had used the actual names of other levels I thought it wouldn't hurt to ask.

There're a couple mechanical errors, but-eh, they don't matter. Vedy good work.

[dsm]

Guardian said:

Very good, yesh. 'Nother question, if I may, heh: was this a strict depiction of one of the levels of our beloved game? It didn't seem like it, but since you had used the actual names of other levels I thought it wouldn't hurt to ask.

There're a couple mechanical errors, but-eh, they don't matter. Vedy good work.

Well, since this is a "sequel" to my two Doom stories in which I told the story from the doomguy's perspective and since this is a place the doomguy has visited then yes :-)

But know that my descriptions of the levels in Doom are only partially true, because I try to make them into more believable areas, so I may omit or change a few things while keeping the main characteristics in place.

Mechanical errors eh? You mean like, grammatical errors right?

[Guardian]

Yes, when I say mechanical errors I mean grammatical errors. My teachers used both terms interchangeably; my apologies if I confused you.

And I assume when you say 'doomguy' you're referring to the very Mister Person-Man whose 'handsome mug' we see in the game, correct?

[pritch]

The best thing I liked was that it really provked true-Doom images in my mind when reading it. It's very faithful, and, as always well-written.

[Darkstalker]

"No, it isn’t proof enough !"

Don't know why, but it sounds wrong. Wouldn't it sound better if it was "No, there isn't enough proof". English is my 2nd language so maybe I'm wrong.

[dsm]

Guardian said:

Yes, when I say mechanical errors I mean grammatical errors. My teachers used both terms interchangeably; my apologies if I confused you.

And I assume when you say 'doomguy' you're referring to the very Mister Person-Man whose 'handsome mug' we see in the game, correct?

Well, I just asked to make sure I understood :-)
And yes, when I say "the doomguy" I mean what everyone here at DW mean when they say "(the) doomguy": the very Mister Person-Man whose great mug we see in the game ;-)

"No, it isn’t proof enough !"

Don't know why, but it sounds wrong. Wouldn't it sound better if it was "No, there isn't enough proof". English is my 2nd language so maybe I'm wrong

Funny, I was never satisfied with that sentence - I struggled around with it a lot but ended up forcing it because I didn't have a better idea. I needed an excuse to make them stay and unfortunately I must say now, that the excuse I used here is pretty lame :-(

Dunno which sounds better - I would prefer finding a better excuse if I could.

[Wildman]

I would have just dropped the phrase and picked up with the second sentence:

“Now we’ve seen proof that the UAC is behind this!” Roy Carpenter replied.

“Then why don’t we just get the Hell outta here?” Ronnie exclaimed, his voice slightly hysterical.

“Because, we need to find out what they did here that brought in those freaks!” Sanders responded quickly, his voice a low whisper. “We have our orders – let’s move”

[dsm]

I changed it a bit - hope it's a little better.

[Guardian]

Ahh, thanky-vedy-kindly dsm. And as always, a good read.

[Rotting Corpse]

Wow,its realy cool.I cant wait to read the next chapter. I love the barrle part. Needs more gore.Have you ever written any hexen stuff?

[dsm]

Rotting Corpse said:

Have you ever written any hexen stuff?

Yes.
Unfortunately, it's very unlikely that I'll write the rest of the story, though I might post the first three or four chapters of it (which I have basically already written) - I lost my interest in it after struggling around with the battles in it as I didn't seem able to come up with original ideas.