Bravo Team - 4

[dsm]

Chapter 4 - Revelations

-

“Status report,” Sanders grunted and winced slightly in pain. A few of his wounds still bothered him considerably.
“Still got some work to do before we can fire up these computers,” Roy Carpenter replied underneath a large console. He was busy attaching and detaching wires and prodding the internal gadgets of the machine with his tools.

They were in the Main Control Area inside the Command Control Station. They had found no monsters except for the old remains of long dead monsters, but lots of inoperable computer consoles instead.

“Whoa!” Sarah exclaimed as several of the monitors suddenly sprung to life. A few computer monitors were still black and offline, but a series of screens now showed security camera views.
“Security cameras?” Ronnie asked puzzled. “I haven’t seen any damn security cameras around here”
“Advanced mini-cameras,” McGee and Sarah replied in unison.
“The UAC used those a lot in their installations,” Sarah continued. “They are always placed in areas where you wouldn’t have a chance in Hell to see them”
“Please don’t mention Hell,” Roy groaned under the wires and technical gadgets. “It reminds me of recurring nightmares I’ve got since the invasion”

“Shit! There’s a pinky right in this room!” Ronnie whispered, his voice getting hysterical. “No, a whole flock!” He pointed at a monitor and sure enough, the screen showed the lumbering hulks stomp around, sniffing around and opening and closing their terrible jaws.

“There are no soddin’ demons here,” McGee snarled and waved his arm around towards the rest of the hall. He was right, the hall was empty apart from the many bones, ash remains, old, spent ammo casings that bore proof of a hectic battle once fought here between man and demon.
“And notice all those fresh bodies on the screen!” Jill exclaimed, pointing at the screen. Now the others noticed them too. Mutilated marines and demons. The sight was horrible and both Sarah and Roy turned away and vomited.
“This must be a recording,” Jill continued unaffected by the horrible sights on-screen. The screens saw several areas of the base, including areas they had already been to. They noticed that on some screens, there were lots of dead demons, while on others, there were lots of demons still on their feet.

“May 19 2145,” Jill said tonelessly.
“’Scuse me?” Sanders asked and turned halfway towards her, gritting his teeth as he received another jolt of pain from one of his wounds.
“It’s at the bottom of the screen, the date of the recording – exactly on the date where “it” happened”
“What are you talking about, Jill?” Several voices demanded.
“Remember the log file we saw on Mars?” She asked them.
It all suddenly came back to them. Jill elaborated nonetheless.
“The entry for May 19, 2145 mentioned that contact with both moons had been lost,” she finished.

McGee was the first to open his mouth.
“Well, I’ll be damned...-what the H...!?” He interrupted himself and stared. The others followed his stare. On two of the screens they suddenly saw a man in military battle dress. He wore a space combat helmet of the same type as Sanders’ and combat armour. He used a chaingun and the speechless group saw how he swiftly popped back and forth between cover, firing impressively accurate bursts of shots. Every burst hit its target with perfect accuracy and the speed at which the Marine moved suggested that the witnesses were hallucinating.
Sanders was the first to speak.
“Jeezus Christ on speed...” he whispered awestruck.
“I’ve never seen anyone move as fast as this,” he continued. He didn’t sound quite like himself. It was clear that he was impressed beyond words and Sanders was nearly impossible to impress otherwise.
“The super soldier!” McGee mumbled, still not quite believing what he saw.
“Yes, gotta be,” Jill acknowledged equally awed.

Roy went back to work, but it was clear that he had been affected by the revelations. The others kept watching the monitors, but it showed the same tape over and over again. A few minutes later, Jill could go into the system of one of the computers and she soon found a file of interest.

She then turned to the others.
“Hold your breath boys and girls,” she said.
“I know what they were doing here apart from breeding a super soldier”
“Go ahead,” Sanders replied with a curt nod, now back to his old self.

“Teleportation tech,” she replied. The others remained silent, but it was clear that the revelation had some effect – except on Sarah Blaine. Jill thought that was a little strange.
“The UAC constructed two highly advanced machines on Phobos and Deimos – one was the source teleportation gateway – that’s the one here – the other was the destination gate, located on Deimos”
She paused briefly before carrying on.

“The Corporation termed them “Translocator Devices” – they supposedly worked through opening a sort of rift in the fabric of time and space through which people and objects could travel miles as good as instantly – does this mean anything to you Sarah?” Jill turned towards the red haired Canadian, suspicious at her facial expression, which all too clearly revealed that it was familiar to her.
“Yes, it does,” the scientist replied.
“Many Astrophysicists discussed a revolutionary theory, but many considered it too complicated to be achieved with current technology, even though experiments in teleportation have been carried out since the early twenty-first century – seems like they found a way here”

While the others digested the news, Jill went back to searching the computer data until she uncovered a recorded SOS message.

“Listen to this, this might tell us something,” she told them and punched a key on the console. A panicked voice sounded from a couple of loudspeakers.

“Heelp! We require immediate military support! Something frigg..*screech* evil is coming out of the gateways! Most ..*crackle*.. *fzzzzt* dead! Computer systems *kzz* .. gone berserk *crackle* *fzzt* out of control! *screeeeeech* nowhere *buzzzzzz* security failed *fzzzzztz* backup now!………”

The loudspeakers went silent.

“I knew it! I just knew it!” McGee suddenly exploded in a fit of anger. “Those daft scientists opened a rift to the other dimension and a whole planet paid the price!”
“Shut up McGee – record as much of the info in your helmet computer as you can and the rest of you, keep the info secured somewhere. We have enough info now,” Sanders cut in.
“And we need to get it back to Earth,” he quickly added.
“Roger,” McGee muttered dryly. He didn’t want to argue, but he was still angry. He had lost so many good friends on Earth. He found comfort that several UAC officials had been brutally killed by demons, but there were still a few left on Earth.
No! They shouldn’t be allowed to restart that wretched Corporation! By golly! he thought and clenched his teeth. He would ensure the info reached the FCE officials’ hands – they would see to that the UAC got disbanded.

His thoughts were interrupted when Roy suddenly announced that he had fixed the last circuits. The remaining monitors sprung to life and they could hear how the entire station’s machinery came back to life.

“Would you just look at that!” Jill exclaimed, pointing at a monitor. On the screen loomed a strange device. It was hard enough to see that it was a device, because strange growths of things they couldn’t identify covered most of the machine, but they could see a few man-made gadgets under a few openings in the abominable substances.
The machine formed a sort of doorframe and in the centre of the frame was a swirling mass that looked like the very fabric of the air was twisted and bent into a crazy vortex. There existed no doubt in the minds of the team members. This was the Phobos gate.

Just as they watched, they saw a familiar figure approach the gate. It was the marine from before – the soldier who had killed off the demons in the other recorded videos. They saw him eye the gateway like he was judging an opponent – almost like a Mexican standoff. Then he raised a weapon that the two Special Forces soldiers recognized as a standard anti-personnel rocket launcher, aimed at the machine and fired.

The marine fired off a couple of rockets and the machine went down in flames before them. But when the smoke and fire subsided, the rift itself was still standing!
They could clearly see that the marine on the screen was surprised, even though his face was hidden behind his helmet visor. He stood for a while, clearly thinking, then suddenly, he seemed to have made up his mind. With determined strides, he went closer to the rift and then he plunged through it and disappeared.

“Shit, the gate is still active,” McGee said doggedly. “We’ve got to find a way to shut it down!”
“Yes but how?” Sanders replied slowly.
“Our Astrophysicist babe here should be woman enough to figure out a way don’t you think?”
“Astrophysicist babe!?” Sarah Blaine hissed offended.
“Look!” Ronnie interrupted and nodded to the screen.
They all turned in time to see the rift on the screen disappear. It had begun to dissolve while Ronnie had been watching. Now it was gone.
“The other gate,” Sarah whispered. “I think he arrived on Deimos and ruined the gate there as well – it is highly probable that one gate could maintain an unstable rift, but with both destroyed, the rift was closed again”

McGee breathed a heavy sigh, but suddenly stiffened again. “Roy!” he said. The little man answered immediately, ready to be of service.
“See if you can get the camera system working – we need to get a fix on the Phobos gate, or rather what remains of it today”
“That’s already taken care of,” Jill told them and punched a key on a console. The screen went black before a new image appeared on-screen.
They saw a pile of metal rubble, but no sign of the mutations. The surroundings looked mangled and ruined. More damaged than if it had just been a matter of lacking maintenance.

“Yep, the gate is gone – don’t worry about that anymore,” Jill told the Englishman as if she had read his thoughts.
“Ok, that’s a relief.” McGee replied, and suddenly stiffened again, sniffing loudly.
“Let’s get out of this damn place – I smell demon odour!”

A loud crash sounded in response and before their very eyes, a burly pink shape crashed right out of the computer consoles and slammed into Sanders, hurling him off the platform. Sarah and Jill screamed in terror while Roy and Ronnie let out surprised yelps of terror. The Ranger landed on the floor with the heavy beast on top of him and he screamed in pain as his already hurt back hit the floor with great impact. McGee doubted that Sanders’ armour had saved his back.

McGee emptied several rounds into the burly pinky demon, killing it. He had taken the risk of hitting Sanders because he knew that his comrade would definitely have had it if he hadn’t done anything. It was a miracle that he had not hit the Sergeant, but the Ranger was still in bad shape. He groaned and couldn’t get off the floor.

And now sounds reached their ears. Growls, hisses and other horrible sounds echoed throughout the hallways of the station.
“Shite! Where did they come from!? Battle stations!” McGee roared. He quickly pulled out the rocket launcher and hurled his shotgun to Jill. He gave Roy the sidearm, then he noticed Ronnie.
“Hey you! Where are you going!?” the Brit hollered.

“I’m going back to the ship! It’s too dangerous here!” Ronnie replied hysterically.
“You stay right here boy! They have us surrounded and might cut you off!”
“We’re gonna die anyway!” Ronnie screamed. McGee could see that Ronnie was in a hysterical state of panic – there was nothing he could do.
“Stay here you fool!” he yelled anyway, trying desperately to change the mind of the Medic.
But Ronnie was already heading towards the lift that led to the sub monorail station to the Refinery when an imp suddenly came out of an adjacent hallway. McGee could see Ronnie’s figure in the gloomy hallway and then he saw the spiny creature dart directly at Ronnie. He didn’t even have time to yell, “look out!” when the wretched demon slammed a fireball into the Medic’s back. Ronnie’s scream reverberated through the hallway and reached the ears of the other team members.

The next instant, the imp slammed into the badly hurt Ronnie’s side and hurled him to the ground. They could hear his screams of terror and agony as the creature tore him apart. His screams soon died away.

That stupid dolt! No more Medic in this team, McGee thought feeling a start of panic. The imp appeared in the hallway again. Its red eyes turned towards the team. McGee opened up with the chaingun, cutting the brown demon into two.

...

[Rotting Corpse]

Wow, realy good.Great job DSM. More?

[Guardian]

Ooh, super marine! I like that tribute --- it was a tribute, right? Or quasi-tribute?

Been wonderin' where you went man. Yay! Great story for a great return!

EDIT:
Jeez that was a shitload'f typos! *corrects*

[Darkstalker]

Yeah, keep up the good work.

Rotting Corpse said:

Wow, realy good.Great job DSM. More?

Heh, well he'd better do more, stopping now would be cruel of him. :P

[Job]

McGee? Named after American McGee? Hm. Well, good story either way, dsm.

[TheBlackKnight]

Eggzellent story...

...except this one part:

No! They shouldn’t be allowed to restart that wretched Corporation! By golly!

"By golly" just sounds weird in that context. But that's just one tiny thing, the rest is great. :)

[Wildman]

Nifty. I like this one a lot.

[Cyb]

needs more impsex

[Rotting Corpse]

I still say We are a bunch of Imp Humpers.

[Guardian]

"Heh, well he'd better do more, stopping now would be cruel of him." -- Darkstalker

Dah-yang straight man.