Doom Story Update

2k words

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“Easier said than done,” Andreas replied. “You took a particle cannon like it was nothing. If that couldn’t do it…”

“Oh, I’m sure a second attempt will do the trick,” Sharrya said. She tapped a claw to her temple. “I may be immortal, but even I can’t survive without a skull, and regenerating brain tissue is beyond my ability. So hurry up and get on with it.”

Andreas stood over her, raising one robotic leg over her head. Even with the weight of a tank looming above her, there wasn’t a hint of fear in her eyes. He believed her when she said that this time, she wouldn’t survive such a blow, beaten and battered as she was.

“May you reclaim this Earth,” Sharrya said in the following silence.

With a grunt, Andreas brought his leg down, and even when its heavy landing rumbled the ground, Sharrya didn’t so much as blink. One side of her brow did quirk, however, when she turned to see the limb had pummelled the ash right beside her head.

“You’ve been fair with me,” Andreas muttered, his mech clunking as he moved back a few steps. “Now I’ll be fair with you, just this once.”

“Well that was overdramatic,” Sharrya said, gazing up at him in wonder. “You could have just said that instead of pretending to stomp my brains out…”

Andreas found a suitable place to stablise the mech, the joints locking

together as he activated the resting mode. Eva was doing one-eighties as she gazed from him to Sharrya, spinning like a floating top.

“If you won’t kill her, Seargent, now what?” Eva asked.

“Indeed,” Sharrya agreed. “What happens now? Am I free to go, wallow in my failure to best you?”

“Not quite,” Andreas said. The cockpit bloomed open like two petals, splitting into two halves that opened to the left and right. The cracked canopy glass grinded and produced a few more stray splits, but it held, the mech crouching of its own accord so Andreas could hop out onto the ash.

Sharrya’s eyes lingered on him for a second, her tongue snaking out to wet her lips. “Don’t tell me you plan on going hand-to-hand with me? While I’d enjoy the prospect of getting my claws on you, I don’t think you’d say the same.”

Even reduced to her ruined state, she still summoned up the will to chuckle at him, as if him holding her life in his hands just a second ago was now a lost memory. When he disappeared behind the mech’s bulk, then reappeared a moment later, he was holding something in his hands, and when her eyes darted toward it, that confident smile dropped off her mouth.

“What’s that?” she asked warily, shifting in the ditch as if she’d grown uncomfortable.

-xXx-

“I didn’t know you were into BDSM, Seargent,” Sharrya cooed, looking over her shoulder as she trudged through the ash, hands together and out in front.

“Silence, prisoner,” Eva snapped, and rammed her drone into her flank with all the force of a tossed pebble. The Baroness growled like a hungry lioness, but didn’t retaliate. Perhaps she saw the robot as unworthy of the effort.

Sharrya’s hands were bound by a pair of shackles, the blue glow pulsing from where it clamped over her wrists painting her skin in soft tones. A combination of their ability to withstand Sharrya’s strength, her grievous wounds, and the her amusement, had seen the Baroness become their captive.

“How did you even acquire a pair of demonic cuffs?” Eva asked, floating behind the Baroness. Andreas was behind the drone, back inside the mech, arms swinging by his metal sides.

“Nicked them while we were waiting around for Selena to do her thing,” Andreas explained. Eva gave him a cold look. “What? Wasn’t like she was using them.”

“Let’s hope everyone’s too shocked by the prisoner to realise you stole from them.”

The Rallypoint wall was on their immediate left, Andreas had told Sharrya to stay close unless she wanted the guns on the walls to rip her to shreds. On the right, the scattered forces of her legions had vacated the area, leaving a sea of corpses behind, but the battle hadn’t reached its conclusion just yet. The gen one mech had taken to the city streets, just slim enough to fit between the buildings, wiping out any resistance with its array of weaponry, backed up by platoons of footsoldiers mechanised with support vehicles.  

The sounds of fighting were echoed with distance, leaving an eery quietness to settle over the Rallypoint, one that Sharrya was quick to take advantage of with conversation.

“I recognise your voice, little machine,” she said, armour creaking as she gazed at the drone. Her helmet had been discarded, but the rest of her was still clad in that advanced suit.  “Were you the one who interrupted the good Seargent and I’s conversation, way back when?”

“That wasn’t the only one of your schemes I countered,” Eva shot back. “Andreas did all the legwork, but I was there to observe, gather intelligence, and call support as needed.”

“So you’re a glorified stalker, I see. Perhaps it was jealousy that drove you into stopping our banter.”

“The only thing you’ll banter with from now on are your cell bars, prisoner.”

“Rudest floating toaster I’ve ever met,” Sharrya muttered, stepping over a small crater. “I was wondering if this world had robotic intelligence.”

“How do you know she’s not a real person?” Andreas asked.

“Don’t give it away!” Eva hissed. “She could have been bluffing!”

“Yours is not the first people I’ve seen to have machines as their allies,” Sharrya said. “I assume the humans created you, yes?”

“I’m mankind’s creation,” Eva explained. “Why would that be otherwise?”

“Oh, a couple world’s I’ve been to had artificial intelligences of their own,” she said, waving a flippant hand. “Some made by mortals delving into machine-learning, some not.”

“You’re saying you’ve seen computers that were self-made?” Eva asked. “How? Where?”

Behind them, Andreas smirked inside the cockpit. Eva was disapproving of Sharrya at the best of times, and now she was riddling the demon for answers. Sharrya seemed to catch onto this development as well, a smirk curling her lips, which were still caked with dry reams of blood.

“Ah, but I thought my banter was restricted to the walls of my cell?” she teased. “Let me sate your curiosity with this: In the infinite strands of the Cosmos, anything is possible.”

Eva grumbled like a child denied their desert, Sharrya’ shoudlers hopping as she snickered.  She seemed in fine spirits for someone who’d been captured, and their army in full retreat, strolling along with only a slight limp in her off step. Andreas noted that her missing fingers were already starting to reappear, growing back like the stems of a blooming plant. The armour on her upper stomach, disintegrated from the particle cannon’s blast, had taken chunks of her flesh along with it, but they too were coming back, its off-white flesh knitting the tendons together before his very eyes. Give her another hour, and Andreas guessed she would be right as rain.

To say the guardsman at the gate were surprised by the three of them would be an understatement. Clicking plastic rose in a cacophony of startlement as about twenty soldiers turned their guns on them, and it was only by Andreas stepping protectively in front of Sharrya that they didn’t open up on the Baroness, who was striding forward without pause all the while.

“Hold your fire,” Andreas called, putting a hand on Sharrya’s shoulder as he held her behind. “We captured a live one, someone fetch the Commander immediately.”

“My my,” Sharrya purred, reaching out and brshing the mech’s canopy with the back of her fingers. “You almost took a rain of bullets for me. Such chivalry should be rewarded, but how?”

“Just keep walking and don’t cause any problems,” he said, and motioned her forward. He anticipated some sort of comment or retaliation, but she moved on without complaint, though she met his gaze through the glass as she did.

The men parted to let his and Sharrya’s bulky forms through, Andreas walking by her side. It felt strange to just be so close to the Baroness, not quite touching each other but well within arm’s reach to do so.

Once they were through the threshold, Sharrya’s expression took on a thoughtful quality, her gaze moving up and to the sides as she took in the Rallypoint’s interior. There were winged imp bodies littering the ground in places, but the majority of the demons had fought up on the battlements, leaving the courtyard mostly unscathed. A few of the imps had reached as far as the warehouses, but from the way the men looked more at ease than not, it seemed any stragglers had been cleaned out.

“I always wondered what this base looked like from the inside,” Sharrya thought aloud, a few of the soldiers raising their rifles, as though shocked by her ability to speak. Andreas remembered reacting the same way. “It seems I got my wish, though perhaps not in quite the right circumstances. What’s that thing on the ground?”

“Grass,” Eva answered. “You should touch it, it’s not like you’ll get another chance.”

They didn’t have to wait long for Valeria. The Commander had to be forewarned of Sharrya’s presence, but she might not have quite believed it, the way her eyes parted just a fraction wider when she laid eyes on the Baroness. She was bodyguarded by two additional soldiers, and like the gaurds at the gate, they never took their weapons off Sharrya.

“I wish you had told me beforehand you planned on capturing this… thing,” Valeria said, directing her statement to Andreas. “but I must commend you nonetheless. So,” she added, folding her arms, addressing the Baroness directly. “You are the puta who’s killed so many of my people.”

“I know not what a puta is,” Sharrya replied. “but I’ve slain my fair share of mortals, correct. I assume you’re in charge of this place?”

Valiera didn’t answer, knotting her face as she staired up at her demonic counterpart.

“You’ve done a fine job of this place, very fine,” Sharrya continued, craning her neck to peer at the headquarter rooftops. “There’s a solidity to this ‘Rallypoint’. So stalwart, despite its immensity. You and your fortifications have once more proved unrelenting against my legions.”

“Save your petty comments, abomination,” Valeria snapped. “Instead tell me why I should not line you up against that wall and have you shot? You deserve no less for all those you have slaughtered.”

“Oh please, like your hands are any less bloodied. You send men to death, I send men to death, those men kill each other just as surely as planets go round. And all that death leads back to us, the Commanders, the Baron’s, the only difference is that I’m in the front, while you sit pretty behind these walls, watching fights through cameras than with your own eyes.”

Valeria looked like she wanted to tear Sharrya’s face off, but the demon just offered her signature I-couldn’t-care-less grin, Valeria throwing her hands up in anger.

“Hijo de puta! No nos parecemos en nada, maldito saco miserable de pis y viento! Te haré pagar por cada pizca de crueldad que has puesto en mi pueblo!”

“What the fuck did she just say?” Sharrya demanded, turning to Andreas, the motors in his suit whirring as he shrugged his metal shoulders.

Eva hovered in between the two women, pincers held up like a referee breaking up a boxing match. “Commander Valeria, do not let this… temptress get to you! It knows things that could turn the tide of this war, and the successful interrogation of one could be the key to reclaiming Spain, and all of Earth! That cannot be done if you do something rash now.”

Valeria rubbed her temples, marking the last moment she would ever refer to Sharrya directly. “There’s no part of the Geneva Convention that puts demons under its protection, is there? ARC has not made any edits to it?”

Eva turned her drone in her approximation of a head shake.

“Good. We’ll spare no expense for it. Take the creature down to the labs,” she said, waving at her guards. “Seargent Andreas, please escort them. You have my permission to use the particle cannon should it try anything. Now get it out of my sight.”

Eva and Andreas were joined by first four, then ten additional soldiers, the procession flanking Sharrya on all sides, every muzzle pointed at her face as they led her down the nearest path.

“Temptress?” Sharrya whispered, leaning conspiratorially towards Andreas.

“Just keep quiet, Sharrya.”

“Why, am I bothering these fine gentlemen?” she shouted, turning the other way and peering down at the nearest soldier, the man quaking under her gaze, even despite her sincere smile. “Greetings, mortal, do you think me a temptress too?”

Andreas yanked her by the arm, and she bounced after him, the troubled guard taking a step back. “I like that mech, Seargent,” Sharrya said. “You can really handle me around. I like that in a man.”

“Keep moving, Sharrya, don’t make me drag you outta here.”

“Don’t threaten me with a good time.”