Doom Story Update

2k words

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The winged legion had roosted upon the battlements in full, choking the fortress’ immediate air with their lithe bodies. The mortals on the walls turned their weapons to the skies, filling the air with bullets, clipping tens of demons in each volley, but such casualties were acceptable with such sheer numbers.

“You should have given yourself up, Andreas,” she muttered. “Now look at what your pride has wrought upon your friends. If it were only so… what’s that noise?” she demanded, darting her gaze from side to side.

There had been a tremendous thunk a moment ago, as though a thunderhead had set off nearby, yet the only storms overhead were those of the demonic quality. The sound carried on into a series of small clicks echoing across the battlefield, as though great cogs were grinding together.

When her gaze fell upon the Rallypoint, her question was answered. A portion of the wall was lower than the rest, sliding away into a gap in the ground, the imps caught on the moving piece flinging themselves clear. It was the gate, blooming open with a dramatic slowness, the realisation making her tilt her head thoughtfully.

That was ahead of schedule, and not at all part of the plan. The winged imps were to target the guns, then the field generator. Opening the gate was unnecessary and dangerous, but not unwelcome. Perhaps she should give the imps more credit.

The demons that had made it through the anti-air gun’s blanket fire gathered eagerly around the foot of the gate, forgoing their climbing attempts now that they could simply walk through in a few moments. A second echoing bang chased the first as the gate lowered a quarter of the way, the weight of the construct palpable in its gentle descent.

Sharrya’s confidence tapered into uncertainty, when she looked over the gate’s threshold and saw something standing behind it. First appeared a metal head as big as a house, attached to a robotic chest piece, its surface bristled with guns and missile hardpoints. It had a giant gun for one arm, and a fist that could clobber a cyberdemon for the other. Its towering bulk was considerable at this distance, but to the demons by the gate, it must have looked gigantic.

The giant robot didn’t wait for the gate to fully open, lunging one of its giant metal legs over the withdrawing obstruction when there was room. A cluster of gathered possessed stood in stupid wonder as the foot came down and crushed a dozen of them beneath its heel, Sharrya feeling the impact even from her vantage.

Seeing their brethren squashed spurred the rest of the legion into action, mancubus’ opening up with their arm cannons, hell knights galloping forward to close distance. The battlesuit bent at the waist, gears clicking as it presented its chest to the horde, the automatic guns on its stomach opening up on everything that moved. Missiles scribbled through the air as the pods on its neck and chest activated, the payloads screaming through the air. Dozens of explosions shook the Earth as the ranks were carpeted with ordinance. The mancubus’ high-powered energy guns didn’t so much as scratch its pain, and the hell knights were kicked away like pests before the machine.

“What are you two waiting for?!” Sharrya exclaimed at her bodyguards, who watched the destruction with fascination. “An invitation? Get your metal asses down there and destroy that thing, you useless imbeciles!”

The cyberdemons grunted, sliding down the slope on their steel legs, taking off into the fray at a run. Sharrya turned her attention back to the battlesuit, wondering how such a giant thing could have slipped her notice. Had it been delivered to them, or built on-site? This must be mankind’s answer to the titan’s of Hell, and by the way it chewed through her legion, it had the firepower to back it up. If only she had access to her own titan, none of this would be necessary, couldn’t the Dark Lord see that?

She put such thoughts aside, complaining now of all times would do less than nothing. The battlesuit was pushing her legion away from the wall, back into range of the anti-aircraft gun, which was still operational, even as her winged imps continued to swarm the emplacement.

She had to resist the urge to wring her hands as the towering cyberdemons closed in on the robot – if it even was a robot, and not manned by a small crew of some sort. The cyberdemons pushed aside the throngs of imps and knights, stepping through a firing line that a squad of mancubus’ had set up. The battlesuit turned to face this new threat, ignoring every other demon even as its hull was battered and clawed by a hundred smaller targets.

The cyberdemon’s brought their robotic arm launchers to bear, the battlesuit presenting its giant arm cannon in kind. Aside from the glowing, electric rings running down the exposed parts of the barrel, there was no telegraphed attack, and little to no windup.  The battlesuit levelled its cannon at one of the cyberdemons, and there was a flash of light so bright that Sharrya had to shield her eyes from the oncoming blindness.

A terrible, electric crack carried through the sky, so loud she would have heard it if she had been sitting in her cathedral at the time. When the flash cleared, Sharrya peered between her fingers, blinking her eyes back into vision as she observed the fortress grounds.

One of her cyberdemons was ravaged from the chest up, arms and head reduced to a pile of mush far behind it. Its counterpart watched in a rare expression of trepidation as the bodiless legs fell like two decapitated trees.

Her heart sank. One of her most cherished warriors, obliterated before it could even fire off a single rocket.

The battlesuit moved its arm cannon aside, wisps of smoke rising from the barrel. It was obvious that it couldn’t fire the devastating weapon in quick succession, but she dreaded the time it took to fire again. It could be five minutes, or one minute for all she knew.

At least the other cyberdemon wasn’t privy to being troubled by the display of power, the demon using its robotic leg to leap into a sprint. It charged towards the suit’s leg, the machine swiping down at the demon with its regular arm, but the intended swat missed, the cyberdemon shoving its synthetic arm into the suit’s leg.

It pulled a chunk of mechanics from the hull, sparks flying from the mechanical wound. The suit tried to stomp on it like a bug, but the demon easily moved aside in time, the movement telegraphed. The cyberdemon prepared its launcher, firing off a cluster of rockets that crashed into the battlesuit’s left thigh, explosions rippling along the limb.

Despite the battlesuit’s attention now focused on the robotic demon, the weapons on its chest and shoulders continued to fire independently, its guns and missile pods cutting down swathes of the demons trying to support their heavier counterpart. None of them survived long enough to help. What was worse, the opened gate had revealed a barricaded entryway lined with sandbags and machine-gun nests, dozens of barrels poking through little murder holes lining the fortifications.

Plasma and bullets alike fired off from this new avenue of attack, felling any demon trying to circumvent the battling titan’s and get inside the fortress. No portals were opening up either, which meant her winged legion was also facing setbacks.

“Maykyr’s curse it all,” Sharrya muttered, adjusting her shoulder pad as she jumped from her vantage point. “Must I do everything myself?”

The ground level rose up to meet her, Sharrya outstretching her armoured legs as she slid down the incline.  She was moving into range of the anti-air gun, but her cybernetic armour should prove invaluable should it decide to make her its next target.

She ran around the craters, stretches of cadavers lining the paths, some of them two or three bodies deep. Yet more were joining the charge, both behind and in front of her, the sight of their leader reinvigorating the troops, not that morale was ever a matter of doubt. Such charges like these were common for her kind.

She stepped nimbly through the legions, the battlesuit drawing closer. The autocannons on its front were harrying the cyberdemon with endless streams of rounds, yet they did little to the demon’s reinforced exoskeleton. She was almost there, just a few moments more…

In the next instant, she was flying off to the left, arcing clear over a crater ten meters across. Ash and dirt splashed against her visor as she landed in a heap, the pain in her side swimming up into her skull. She shook her head, and looked up to see she had been flung straight towards the Rallypoint wall, coming short by a few meters.

On her hands and knees, she turned towards where she had been running at full tilt, blinking when a second battlesuit was striding down the crater after her. It was far smaller than the one fighting the cyberdemon, taller than Sharrya but not by very much. Its chest was riddled with guns like its bigger cousin, and the right arm transformed into a weapon at the elbow.

Gears and engines rumbled as the suit stomped over the crater lip, holding its arms at the ready as Sharrya pulled herself to her feet.

It planted its clawed feet in the ash not ten meters away, her eyes drawn to the glass canopy situated on its upper torso. A crackled of static produced from some unseen radio transmitter, and although the voice that followed was synthetic, garbled with a tinny quality, Sharrya recognised the accent anywhere.

“Baroness Sharrya,” Andreas greeted.

-xXx-

He had expected the gates to be flooded with the demonic once it was opened, but the gen one was giving Hell a run for its money. One of its weapons was always in use, be that the missile pods, or the chainguns, or the shoulder turrets, it was always dealing with a threat at any given time, and that disappointment he’d felt when Valeria told him he wouldn’t be using it swelled up inside him again.

The feeling was quickly nulled when Eva gave the order he was clear to advance. He cleared the sandbags stacked against the gate’s inner side, bullets streaking all around him as the soldiers behind him put down cover fire.

“Remember what I told you,” Eva warned into his helmet. She still had her drone, though it was safely floating somewhere back inside the base. “Mind your foot spacing, and don’t forget your right hand is not a hand.”

“I got it,” Andreas replied, and then promptly forgot as he backhanded an oncoming revenant with the particle cannon. Being inside the mech was like stepping into an exoskeleton. He still had to move his hands and feet to manoeuvre the suit, but the motors supporting the hand and foot grips made such efforts use up barely any strength. The contrast between such easy movements and the heaviness of the mech made it almost feel like he was floating.

He was on support duty for the gen one, their crew’s channel linked up to his mech’s speakers. He could hear about six voices calling out targets and adjusting parameters, their voices cool despite the onslaught their battlesuit was taking part of. They didn’t look like they needed support to Andreas, although the cyberdemon was becoming a pain in their prosthetic rear as it continued to eat up all the bullets they sent their way.

Andreas prepared his particle cannon, but as he took aim, a far greater target presented itself. There was a flash of reflective blue on the far side of the skirmish, and Andreas spotted an armoured Baron sprinting into the fray. Sharrya was wearing some sort of combat suit he’d never seen on a Baron before. She must have taken his challenge more literally than he thought.

He retracted his cannon, stepping round the larger mech and making a beeline for her, timing his interception like a quarterback making for the ball. He thought she might notice him, but her gaze was fixed squarely on the duelling mech, and he crashed into her like a freight train.