Doom Story Update

4k words, since I missed an update.

***

“Hey, you good in there, Eva?”

“Don’t hit me, my lattice is preoccupied trying to ascertain your sudden cognitive dissonance!” Eva barked. She used the following pause to collect herself, her tone levelling out, but still edged with anger. “How can you like her!? She tried to whisk you away to a cathedral and threatened to eat your soul! Didn’t your mother warn you about women like her?”

“I was being an ass,” Andreas pointed out. “I deserved a bit of a scolding. Besides, she’s cute when she’s pissed.”

“Of all of Earth’s soldiers, I had to be paired with a… a promiscuous heathen,” Eva lamented. “Please for love of all that is holy, don’t start thinking with your… thingy. Your penis.”

She said that last bit as though it caused her physical trauma, Andreas rolling his eyes.

“Look, all I said was I like her, it’s no big deal…”

“Oh, so you staring at her chest thirty percent of the time is no big deal, is it?”

“Thirty percent? It’s a good thing I had the visor on, huh?”

“Be serious for a second, Seargent. You are walking a very fine line. Sympathy is the first step to possession. Hell can and will take advantage of any weakness.”

“I thought you were my aid, Eva, not my critic.”

“I’m not doubting you!” Eva chided. Andreas couldn’t remember the last time she’d raised her voice at him, if she ever had.

 “I’m trying to help you because I’m concerned! I’ve seen so many humans be seduced by Hell, become monsters. I can’t let the same happen to you. You might not be afraid, but I’m afraid for you. That’s why I’m criticising your actions.”

Their exchange simmered in silence as Andreas followed the squad through the next intersection. Flights of winged demons screeched through the skies, too high to be of concern, but a troubling sight nonetheless.

“Listen, Eva,” Andreas began. “I know you’re just looking out for me and I appreciate it. How long have you and me been together?”

“Since the invasion started,” she answered. “Every step of the way.”

“And how many times have I let you down since?”

“Never…”

“That’s not changing, you hear me? Sharrya is a demon, through and through, and I’ll treat her as such until I’m dead.”

“I hope it will not come to that…”

-xXx-

After an hour of walking, the squad began to emerge from the ruins, unfiltered wind pushing against his chest as Andreas took in the view of a mostly unobstructed sky. Bits of wall and housing frameworks still littered around him, but the majority of the cluttered streets was now behind him, the territory in front taking on the look of a barren wasteland.

The sloped ground was pockmarked with craters tens of feet deep, the ground taking on an ashen quality. The ground was free from detail save for a few strewn pieces of metal and glass. It was as though the thumb of God had come through and wiped the Earth clean. The empty canvas ahead was a stark contrast to the winding streets Andreas had crossed the past two days.

“Our artillery pounds the crap out of the area around the Rallypoint every week,” Torres explained when Andreas quizzed him. “Helps thin their numbers, at least we think so. Thousands of them get caught in the blasts, but then they just replace them like it’s nothing. Some days you can’t even see the ground, that’s how many there are.”

“If there’s that many, how’d you get to me?” Andreas asked.

“We snuck out on our own two feet. Any vehicle or aircraft and we’d have too much company to deal with.”

“How’d you manage that?”

“I’ll show you, just a couple more ash dunes, and we’ll be there.”

Andreas could see lights permeating the sky before them, but their source was obstructed by the dunes, Andreas following the men as they manoeuvred through the craters. Their steps were careful, precise, as though they were following a route known only to them. He wondered how many time Torres had done this.

As the squad crested one more hump in the Earth, Andreas finally saw his destination. As the ground sloped away, a sheer slab of grey metal greeted his view, towering some two hundred feet into the air. Buttressed projected from the very tip of the wall, giving it a very castle-like appearance. The metal seemed to be overlaid with segmented plates, perhaps as an extra layer of reinforcement. Its closest point was a corner, the wall turning away and continuing on for hundreds of meters before ending at another turn, Andreas assuming the wall was shaped like a square.

At each corner of the walls was an impressive mounted gun, their twin barrels turned at various angles towards the sky. They looked bigger than houses, no doubt responsible for the scarred ground surrounding the Rallypoint on all sides. These weren’t the only defences in place. Nearly the whole length of the wall was bristling with smaller weaponry, autocannon barrels and machine gun mounts turned towards the ground, protected by improvised sandbags and draped in camo netting.

Andreas could see the tops of buildings beyond the wall, a glass dome taking up the most space, with a few flat tops spaced around its flanks. If Andreas had to guess how much land the fortress covered, he’d compare it to the size of a city block, maybe more. It was massive, and its numerous defences reflected that. No wonder they had held the line for so long.

“I’ve read the reports, seen photo’s,” Andreas remarked, hunkering alongside the squad. “but that’s a fucking huge base you’ve got there.”

“Samuel Hayden liked to dream big,” Torres replied, adjusting from one knee to the other. “You’re looking at all that’s left of Spain, Sarge. It’s people, everything.”

“What’s the headcount?”

“Two fifty k. All the civs are packed in like canned fish in the underground section – UEC thought ahead, thank God. Only soldiers are allowed topside, since the demons like to drop napalm in the courtyard.”

“How do we get in?” Andreas asked. “I don’t see a front door.”

“The main gate’s on the far side, but we’re not going that way. Here,” he added, sliding off his rifle’s scope and passing it over. “Take a look at the far side of the wall, where it meets the coast.”

Andreas took the detached scope, opening up his vosr and peering through the lens. The view of the wall panned right as he moved to where the Corporal was pointing. From their vantage point, he was able to see a straight view towards the see, the land terminating in a series of rock pools and steep drops, the waves throwing up clouds of froth as they crashed into the cliffs.

The corner of the Rallypoint sat a short distance away from the beach, the fortifications built into a nearby incline. Andreas spotted what Torres was pointing out. Nestled in the pools was a jutting length of pipe, three meters wide and just as tall, its angle protruding from the direction of the wall. Its lid was covered over in two pieces of blast shield, connected to the pipe by what loked to be hydraulic clamps.

“That pipe’s our ticket in?” Andreas asked, Torres nodding as he passed back the scope.

“It’s how me and the boys got out. Demon patrols are light on this side, and they’re not a fan of the water. It’s about as safe as anything.”

“I have a question,” Eva said, her voice covering the local channel. “It does not seem very concealed. How has this secret entrance not been detected?”

“You see that tide pool it’s in? It’s actually man-made. There’s a control booth inside that can flood it or drain it at a moment’s notice, like our own little aquarium. They’ve probably had eyes on us for a while now, that’s why it’s drained right now.”

They began to move down the slope, Andreas struggling to keep his footing on the silt. The way the chain of craters was formed made it seem like a great moat surrounded the wall. The squad didn’t move down it, however, turning off just before the drop and walking parallel to the Rallypoint.

“You said something about demon patrols?” Andreas asked. “How big?”

“Couple dozen each, I’d say. Imps, arch-villes, couple revenants too. They like to stay close to the wall, set up shop where the guns can’t get an angle. You can see a camp just over there.”

Torres pointed down the length of the wall, the opposite direction they were going. Clustered around its footprint were a handful of stone walls, sunken into the ground at odd angles. Lanky figures moved between the gaps, mostly imps, but Andreas could also spot the tall profile of a hell knight and even a paunchy mancubus, two of the heavier casts employed by Hell.

The lingering demons were sheltered from the sky by what looked like suspended stretches of tarp, but when Andreas took a closer look, his face contorted in disgust. The stretching fabric was pink, streaked with veins and bearing an uncanny resemblance to taut skin, its corners hooked into the concrete via ivory claws and teeth.

There were other, similar encampments stretching all the way along the moat, demons o all shapes and sizes scattered in and around the abhorrent structures. Laying between these camps were appendages dozens of feet tall, their undersides brimming with suckers and thorns, their tips ending in wicked points. They looked like disembodied tentacles from some giant squid monster. Some of the tentacles were propped up against the wall, severed from whatever monstrosity had birthed them. Perhaps the demons had tried using them to climb over the defences at some point.

The whole scene looked like some perverted version of a medieval siege camp, the demons taking on the strangely passive role of waiting out the defenders. Maybe that was the reason Sharrya was after him so much – the Rallypoint hardly made a good outlet if they stayed behind their two-hundred-foot wall and never came out.

Enjoy it while it lasts, Andreas thought, touching the pocket where he kept the Shards.

A bestial cry permeated the air, Andreas and the squad turning around, spotting a figure about a hundred meters across the grim, blighted land. It was a Baron, Andreas locking eyes with Sharrya as she brandished a claw and jabbed it in his direction. Spittle flicked from her chops as she repeated the call, the noise sending a chill down Andreas’ spine.

He chanced a glance back towards the encampments. The demons were no longer lingering, they were moving, emerging from their fleshy camps and charging across the ash.

“This Baron’s really out for your ass!” Torres called, waving his men on. “Come on, boys, double time!”

They started to run, racing towards the shore. Andreas could feel the impact of Sharrya’s hooves as she gave chase to the squad, her long legs carrying her swiftly over the silt. A glance over his shoulder told him they’d never outrun her out in the open like this.

Andreas turned about, dropping to a knee as he raised his rifle, Sharrya baring her long tusks at him as he opened up on her. Plasma bolts singed into her arms as she used her limbs like a shield, protecting her face and chest. Torres’ squad immediately knew what he was doing, the clatter of their ballistic guns joining his bolts as they laid down suppressive fire on the Baron.

She grunted something under her breath that sounded suspiciously like miscreants, Sharrya throwing herself behind a dune and out of sight, flicks of ash thrown up as some of the soldiers kept her pinned. Swinging ninety degress to the left, Andreas prepared to fire on the oncoming swarm, but a glove on his shoulder stopped him.

“You need to go, Sarge!” Torres shouted. “Get to the pipe, we’ll cover you!”

“Now’s not the time to play the hero, Corporal,” Andreas replied.

“Sir, we’re just the expeditionary force. You’re the ranking officer, and you’ve got precious cargo. You’re the priority.”

“Fuck your priorities, nobody’s getting left behind. We’ll leapfrog,” he said. “Three at a time, you and two others go first. That’s an order. Go!”

Torres hesitated, but a strong shove on Andreas’ part spurred him into action. He called for two of the men, and they joined him as he raced towards the sea. By the time Andreas had returned his attention to the demons, the swarm had already crossed half the distance, dozens of imps interspersed with heavy-class demons baring down on him.

Andreas squared his sights up with a hell knight spearing the pack, easily the fastest of the lot. The beast had a bulkier build compared to the imps lagging behind it, nearly rivalling Sharrya in its overall height. It stomped on a pair of digitigrade legs tipped with fat, clawed toes, the pink flesh on its thighs and arms bulging with each stride. The top half of its head looked like an exposed skull, vacuum-packed in a thin layer of skin, while its lower half was more or less human, albeit with a lack of eyes or a nose.

Andreas put a burst of plasma bolts into its chest, the last of which melting a chunk out of its pectoral. The demon tried to continue to charge them down, but a round from one of the squad members put it down for good.

“We’re covering!” Torres called into the channel. “Vamos, vamos!”

Andreas and his two cohorts leapt to their feet, following in the footsteps of the Corporal and his team. Leapfrogging was a common tactic in most units, where two teams took turns to move positions while one covered the other. It was a coordinated move, but everything around Andreas was pure chaos. Bullets flew one way, fireballs went the other, the loose ground causing him to stagger more than once, making him feel like he was trying to sprint through ankle-deep tar.  

He passed the Corporal’s group, continuing on another thirty meters before the ash gave way to uneven shards of rock. The rocky shore spread out and below him, the formations of the stone taking on the appearance of angled stalagmites, clusters of algae and moss growing between the cracks adding a splash of colour that was striking in this hellscape.

His two counterparts turned to lay down covering fire, picking off the imps and arch-villes that were closing in on the Corporal’s team, Andreas raising his rifle to join them. He fired between Torres and one of the soldiers, the plasma stream cutting a swath through the demonic ranks, but they must have drawn the attention of the entire siege, more demons moving down the Rallypoint wall towards the commotion. Torres had said there was enough of them that he couldn’t see the ground, and Andreas was starting to believe him.

“Smoke out!” one of the soldiers called, pulling a canister from his rigging and unlocking the pin. He tossed it over the head of Torres, where it rolled to a stop before exploding in a puff of grey gas. Another soldier chucked another canister, a low wall of thick, obscuring smoke coalescing at the Corporal’s flank.

“Down here, come on!” Torres exclaimed, hopping down into the closest pool, his boots splashing in the water. The rest of the team followed him down, Andreas moving down last. The smoke would help conceal them, but they only had precious seconds before the demons would simply walk through.

Pure adrenaline fuelled the team as they crossed from one pool to the next, the pockets of rock recessing deeper into the ground. When they arrived at the pipe, it was bigger than Andreas first thought, about as large as a vault door and just as heavy, steel plates inches thick forming a cap over the entrance.

There was a whir of electronics, and the cap began to part down the middle, the two halves sliding away to reveal a gaping darkness. The lower rim was suspended a few feet off the ground, one of the soldiers throwing himself onto the ledge, slinging his rifle as he turned to help the next man up.

Andreas, Torres, and the third soldier kept watch as they filed into the pipe one at a time, barrels scanning the cliffside for targets. They didn’t have to wait long, Sharrya’s hooves kicking loose stones as she appeared on the cliff, smoke ribboning over her emerging form.

“You’re not getting in that fort, Andreas,” she purred, as if this was all a game to her. Andreas replied with an eye roll, exaggerating his head movement for emphasis. Torres titled his head at their exchange, then fired his rifle at her.

“You on a first-name basis with that thing?” the Corporal asked, pulling the loading bolt back.

“It’s complicated,” Andreas replied.

The bullet ripped through Sharry’s bicep, blood misting behind her arm, but the demoness didn’t even flinch. She leapt from her perch, the ground quaking as she landed on a knee amongst the rocks a stone’s throw away.

Her lips peeled back in a grin as her underlings leapt to join her. Two, three, four arch-villes landed at her feet, along with another hell knight, more pouring in by the second as the swarm breached the smoke cloud.

As the sound of plasma bolts and high-calibre bullets rose into the air, the clatter pervaded here and there by a warbling cry from a felled demon, a new sound rose above the tumult. The reinforced mechanisms securing the pipe’s cap were shifting back into position, closing off their escape one slow inch at a time.

“Come on, sirs!” one of the soldiers yelled. “We’re out of time!”

The rest of the squad had clambered up, leaving just him and the Corporal out in the open. Two men stood in the pipe’s mouth and covered, Andreas and Torres breaking cover and moving for their exit.

Andreas hoisted himself up first, his kneepads soaking as he crouched over a small dribble of water running along the cusp of the ceramic pipe. As he turned to help the Corporal, his eyes tracked a yellow fireball coming straight for them. He tried to yell out, but too late, the inferno slamming into the small of Torres’ back.

He'd been in the middle hoisting a leg into the pipe, and the impact threw off his balance, the man loosing a pained grunt as he was sent falling back. He would have been crushed by the doors, or worse, if Andreas hadn’t reached out and seized his arm and pulled him back.

One of the soldiers knelt down to help him, the two dragging Torres out of the closing doors’ path. Another fireball was sent their way, but it splashed harmlessly against the pipe’s lip.

“Get back,” Andreas ordered, passing Torres off to the soldiers, the men dragging the groaning Corporal further down the pipe, the three other squad members making room. Andreas turned and unloaded his plasma cell into the closing gap, knocking down two of the demons trying to close in on the pipe.

When the sliver closed to the point he could no longer shoot safely through, Andreas held his fire, smoke wisping from the end of his weapon. Barely a sliver remained between the doors, and Andreas made to release a sigh of relief, when two red hands slipped through the gap.

Andreas watched in startlement as fingers as long as his hand curled, gripping the steel edges and pulling outwards. Complaining metal groaned down the length of the pipe, Andreas blinking as the familiar features of Sharrya appeared through the gap. Her face was scrunched with effort, the muscles in her streamlined shoulders flexing as she fought against several tonnes of pneumatic pressure. Surely even she wasn’t strong enough to fight against pistons… was she?

“You think this changes anything?” she growled, meeting his eyes through the crack, the Baron chuckling as he pulled up his rifle threateningly. “You’ve cornered yourself, like the rest of the rats in there. You can’t run anymore, and now you can’t hide either. When I break down these walls, nothing will stop me from claiming you.”

“I think you’ll find these walls are for your benefit,” Andreas replied, putting a light pressure on the trigger. “Earth’s our home, Sharrya, and I think you’ve outstayed your welcome.”

“Even with your back to the wall, you still possess so much fire,” she mused. “Being my prisoner isn’t as bad as it sounds, I believe I made that quite clear by showing you much leniency. If only you hadn’t been so foolish as to try and escape,” she sighed, her eyes glazing as she chewed her lip. “I never got to show you the true extent of my hospitality. I can be oh so generous to mortals I find… intoxicating.”

“I like you too, crazy-horns,” he laughed, not sure if her ‘hospitality’ involved torture or something… more than that. “You’re right about one thing, though. This is the last time you’ll see me running from you. If I could shit on your parade all by myself,” he added, pointing a finger at her face, his glove barely an inch from her snout. “Imagine what I can do with an army at my back.”

He had intended that as a threat, but instead, Sharrya responded with a gleaming smile, a sparkle of anticipation in her emerald eyes.

“If it’s your intention to meet me on the battlefield… I welcome the challenge.”

“I know you do.”

“Until then, Seargent,” she cooed. With a wink, her hand fell away, the theory of whether she could overpower the doors left unanswered as she let the doors close the rest of the way. Her curled lips was the last thing Andreas saw before the lid closed and he was plunged into darkness.

A tumbling mechanism nearby sounded off, the doors locking with an audible clunk of metal on metal. With that, the treacherous streets of Spain were sealed away, Andreas fighting the urge to collapse right then and there. Never before had he spent so much time exposed to the elements, every moment promising an attack from above, below, behind, anywhere, with Sharrya on his case since the moment he’d crash-landed. He felt like he’d gone through Hell and back, and in a way, he had.

Andreas was filled with a sense of elation, like he’d just spent an extended period of time underwater, and finally breached the surface to breathe, all the adrenaline bleeding out of his muscles to leave them sore.

“Corporal,” he started, using his rifle like a crutch to prop himself up. “You good?”

“Armour took the most of it, I’ll live,” Torres replied. Deeper into the pipe, the rest of the squad lingered around their officer, one of them supporting him by the arm.

One of the men offered a hand, pulling Andreas to his feet. With the pipe shut and the demons safely behind it, he took a moment to take in his new surroundings. The walls of the pipe were worn, lines where the water level would usually sit suspended at around chest height. While it was dark, a solitary fluorescent cast a deep shade of red at the rear of the pipe, which terminated at a wall with a sloped bottom a short distance away.

Torres’ team began to move that way, Andreas following. There was a step ladder just beyond the wall-mounted light, Andreas craning his neck to see it led to a hatch. Once Torres was able, he climbed up first, a box of white light shining down as he opened the hatch.

They moved up one at a time, and when it was Andreas’ turn, eh found himself emerging into a metal corridor, bulbs suspended from the ceiling bathing it in artificial light. The hatch leading from the pipe was by a junction, the path splitting at a right angle. Doors numbered in incremental order lined the walls every couple meters, more intersections splitting off in the distance leading deeper into the compound.

“This is one of the wards,” Torres explained, noting his stare. “One of three, they make up the first few underground levels of the base.”

“The civvies live here?” Andreas asked.

“Not these ones, no. People don’t like sleeping this close to the pipe. As if all the guns, the flooding mechanism, and the patrols aren’t enough to keep peace of mind. The Commander said to bring you to her once you were inside, shall we go?”

Andreas replied by removing his helmet, and passing it off to the Corporal, Torres flashing him a skeptical look.

Before Torres could speak, Andreas stepped up to the closest door, finding it unlocked. Inside was a small bedroom with a walk-in bathroom, and after a quick check to make sure it was empty, he walked over to the bed, and collapsed onto the mattress face down without a word.

A bewildered Corporal and his team stood just outside the door, looking to one another, unsure of what to do now that their mission of complete.

“So,” Torres said. “Should I get the Commander, or…?”

One of the men shrugged, his pauldrons creaking with the movement.

“I wouldn’t,” Eva said, using the helmet’s speakers to address them. “He’s not slept in over forty hours, leave him be. Now, if you would bring me to Valeria, I’ll debrief her.”

“Oh, sure. You got it, robot lady,” Torres said, giving the helmet an affirmative tap.

“It’s AI,” Eva corrected. “And don’t hit the lattice. Didn’t you hear what the Seargent just said?”

-“Hey, you good in there, Eva?”

“Don’t hit me, my lattice is preoccupied trying to ascertain your sudden cognitive dissonance!” Eva barked. She used the following pause to collect herself, her tone levelling out, but still edged with anger. “How can you like her!? She tried to whisk you away to a cathedral and threatened to eat your soul! Didn’t your mother warn you about women like her?”

“I was being an ass,” Andreas pointed out. “I deserved a bit of a scolding. Besides, she’s cute when she’s pissed.”

“Of all of Earth’s soldiers, I had to be paired with a… a promiscuous heathen,” Eva lamented. “Please for love of all that is holy, don’t start thinking with your… thingy. Your penis.”

She said that last bit as though it caused her physical trauma, Andreas rolling his eyes.

“Look, all I said was I like her, it’s no big deal…”

“Oh, so you staring at her chest thirty percent of the time is no big deal, is it?”

“Thirty percent? It’s a good thing I had the visor on, huh?”

“Be serious for a second, Seargent. You are walking a very fine line. Sympathy is the first step to possession. Hell can and will take advantage of any weakness.”

“I thought you were my aid, Eva, not my critic.”

“I’m not doubting you!” Eva chided. Andreas couldn’t remember the last time she’d raised her voice at him, if she ever had.

 “I’m trying to help you because I’m concerned! I’ve seen so many humans be seduced by Hell, become monsters. I can’t let the same happen to you. You might not be afraid, but I’m afraid for you. That’s why I’m criticising your actions.”

Their exchange simmered in silence as Andreas followed the squad through the next intersection. Flights of winged demons screeched through the skies, too high to be of concern, but a troubling sight nonetheless.

“Listen, Eva,” Andreas began. “I know you’re just looking out for me and I appreciate it. How long have you and me been together?”

“Since the invasion started,” she answered. “Every step of the way.”

“And how many times have I let you down since?”

“Never…”

“That’s not changing, you hear me? Sharrya is a demon, through and through, and I’ll treat her as such until I’m dead.”

“I hope it will not come to that…”

-xXx-

After an hour of walking, the squad began to emerge from the ruins, unfiltered wind pushing against his chest as Andreas took in the view of a mostly unobstructed sky. Bits of wall and housing frameworks still littered around him, but the majority of the cluttered streets was now behind him, the territory in front taking on the look of a barren wasteland.

The sloped ground was pockmarked with craters tens of feet deep, the ground taking on an ashen quality. The ground was free from detail save for a few strewn pieces of metal and glass. It was as though the thumb of God had come through and wiped the Earth clean. The empty canvas ahead was a stark contrast to the winding streets Andreas had crossed the past two days.

“Our artillery pounds the crap out of the area around the Rallypoint every week,” Torres explained when Andreas quizzed him. “Helps thin their numbers, at least we think so. Thousands of them get caught in the blasts, but then they just replace them like it’s nothing. Some days you can’t even see the ground, that’s how many there are.”

“If there’s that many, how’d you get to me?” Andreas asked.

“We snuck out on our own two feet. Any vehicle or aircraft and we’d have too much company to deal with.”

“How’d you manage that?”

“I’ll show you, just a couple more ash dunes, and we’ll be there.”

Andreas could see lights permeating the sky before them, but their source was obstructed by the dunes, Andreas following the men as they manoeuvred through the craters. Their steps were careful, precise, as though they were following a route known only to them. He wondered how many time Torres had done this.

As the squad crested one more hump in the Earth, Andreas finally saw his destination. As the ground sloped away, a sheer slab of grey metal greeted his view, towering some two hundred feet into the air. Buttressed projected from the very tip of the wall, giving it a very castle-like appearance. The metal seemed to be overlaid with segmented plates, perhaps as an extra layer of reinforcement. Its closest point was a corner, the wall turning away and continuing on for hundreds of meters before ending at another turn, Andreas assuming the wall was shaped like a square.

At each corner of the walls was an impressive mounted gun, their twin barrels turned at various angles towards the sky. They looked bigger than houses, no doubt responsible for the scarred ground surrounding the Rallypoint on all sides. These weren’t the only defences in place. Nearly the whole length of the wall was bristling with smaller weaponry, autocannon barrels and machine gun mounts turned towards the ground, protected by improvised sandbags and draped in camo netting.

Andreas could see the tops of buildings beyond the wall, a glass dome taking up the most space, with a few flat tops spaced around its flanks. If Andreas had to guess how much land the fortress covered, he’d compare it to the size of a city block, maybe more. It was massive, and its numerous defences reflected that. No wonder they had held the line for so long.

“I’ve read the reports, seen photo’s,” Andreas remarked, hunkering alongside the squad. “but that’s a fucking huge base you’ve got there.”

“Samuel Hayden liked to dream big,” Torres replied, adjusting from one knee to the other. “You’re looking at all that’s left of Spain, Sarge. It’s people, everything.”

“What’s the headcount?”

“Two fifty k. All the civs are packed in like canned fish in the underground section – UEC thought ahead, thank God. Only soldiers are allowed topside, since the demons like to drop napalm in the courtyard.”

“How do we get in?” Andreas asked. “I don’t see a front door.”

“The main gate’s on the far side, but we’re not going that way. Here,” he added, sliding off his rifle’s scope and passing it over. “Take a look at the far side of the wall, where it meets the coast.”

Andreas took the detached scope, opening up his vosr and peering through the lens. The view of the wall panned right as he moved to where the Corporal was pointing. From their vantage point, he was able to see a straight view towards the see, the land terminating in a series of rock pools and steep drops, the waves throwing up clouds of froth as they crashed into the cliffs.

The corner of the Rallypoint sat a short distance away from the beach, the fortifications built into a nearby incline. Andreas spotted what Torres was pointing out. Nestled in the pools was a jutting length of pipe, three meters wide and just as tall, its angle protruding from the direction of the wall. Its lid was covered over in two pieces of blast shield, connected to the pipe by what loked to be hydraulic clamps.

“That pipe’s our ticket in?” Andreas asked, Torres nodding as he passed back the scope.

“It’s how me and the boys got out. Demon patrols are light on this side, and they’re not a fan of the water. It’s about as safe as anything.”

“I have a question,” Eva said, her voice covering the local channel. “It does not seem very concealed. How has this secret entrance not been detected?”

“You see that tide pool it’s in? It’s actually man-made. There’s a control booth inside that can flood it or drain it at a moment’s notice, like our own little aquarium. They’ve probably had eyes on us for a while now, that’s why it’s drained right now.”

They began to move down the slope, Andreas struggling to keep his footing on the silt. The way the chain of craters was formed made it seem like a great moat surrounded the wall. The squad didn’t move down it, however, turning off just before the drop and walking parallel to the Rallypoint.

“You said something about demon patrols?” Andreas asked. “How big?”

“Couple dozen each, I’d say. Imps, arch-villes, couple revenants too. They like to stay close to the wall, set up shop where the guns can’t get an angle. You can see a camp just over there.”

Torres pointed down the length of the wall, the opposite direction they were going. Clustered around its footprint were a handful of stone walls, sunken into the ground at odd angles. Lanky figures moved between the gaps, mostly imps, but Andreas could also spot the tall profile of a hell knight and even a paunchy mancubus, two of the heavier casts employed by Hell.

The lingering demons were sheltered from the sky by what looked like suspended stretches of tarp, but when Andreas took a closer look, his face contorted in disgust. The stretching fabric was pink, streaked with veins and bearing an uncanny resemblance to taut skin, its corners hooked into the concrete via ivory claws and teeth.

There were other, similar encampments stretching all the way along the moat, demons o all shapes and sizes scattered in and around the abhorrent structures. Laying between these camps were appendages dozens of feet tall, their undersides brimming with suckers and thorns, their tips ending in wicked points. They looked like disembodied tentacles from some giant squid monster. Some of the tentacles were propped up against the wall, severed from whatever monstrosity had birthed them. Perhaps the demons had tried using them to climb over the defences at some point.

The whole scene looked like some perverted version of a medieval siege camp, the demons taking on the strangely passive role of waiting out the defenders. Maybe that was the reason Sharrya was after him so much – the Rallypoint hardly made a good outlet if they stayed behind their two-hundred-foot wall and never came out.

Enjoy it while it lasts, Andreas thought, touching the pocket where he kept the Shards.

A bestial cry permeated the air, Andreas and the squad turning around, spotting a figure about a hundred meters across the grim, blighted land. It was a Baron, Andreas locking eyes with Sharrya as she brandished a claw and jabbed it in his direction. Spittle flicked from her chops as she repeated the call, the noise sending a chill down Andreas’ spine.

He chanced a glance back towards the encampments. The demons were no longer lingering, they were moving, emerging from their fleshy camps and charging across the ash.

“This Baron’s really out for your ass!” Torres called, waving his men on. “Come on, boys, double time!”

They started to run, racing towards the shore. Andreas could feel the impact of Sharrya’s hooves as she gave chase to the squad, her long legs carrying her swiftly over the silt. A glance over his shoulder told him they’d never outrun her out in the open like this.

Andreas turned about, dropping to a knee as he raised his rifle, Sharrya baring her long tusks at him as he opened up on her. Plasma bolts singed into her arms as she used her limbs like a shield, protecting her face and chest. Torres’ squad immediately knew what he was doing, the clatter of their ballistic guns joining his bolts as they laid down suppressive fire on the Baron.

She grunted something under her breath that sounded suspiciously like miscreants, Sharrya throwing herself behind a dune and out of sight, flicks of ash thrown up as some of the soldiers kept her pinned. Swinging ninety degress to the left, Andreas prepared to fire on the oncoming swarm, but a glove on his shoulder stopped him.

“You need to go, Sarge!” Torres shouted. “Get to the pipe, we’ll cover you!”

“Now’s not the time to play the hero, Corporal,” Andreas replied.

“Sir, we’re just the expeditionary force. You’re the ranking officer, and you’ve got precious cargo. You’re the priority.”

“Fuck your priorities, nobody’s getting left behind. We’ll leapfrog,” he said. “Three at a time, you and two others go first. That’s an order. Go!”

Torres hesitated, but a strong shove on Andreas’ part spurred him into action. He called for two of the men, and they joined him as he raced towards the sea. By the time Andreas had returned his attention to the demons, the swarm had already crossed half the distance, dozens of imps interspersed with heavy-class demons baring down on him.

Andreas squared his sights up with a hell knight spearing the pack, easily the fastest of the lot. The beast had a bulkier build compared to the imps lagging behind it, nearly rivalling Sharrya in its overall height. It stomped on a pair of digitigrade legs tipped with fat, clawed toes, the pink flesh on its thighs and arms bulging with each stride. The top half of its head looked like an exposed skull, vacuum-packed in a thin layer of skin, while its lower half was more or less human, albeit with a lack of eyes or a nose.

Andreas put a burst of plasma bolts into its chest, the last of which melting a chunk out of its pectoral. The demon tried to continue to charge them down, but a round from one of the squad members put it down for good.

“We’re covering!” Torres called into the channel. “Vamos, vamos!”

Andreas and his two cohorts leapt to their feet, following in the footsteps of the Corporal and his team. Leapfrogging was a common tactic in most units, where two teams took turns to move positions while one covered the other. It was a coordinated move, but everything around Andreas was pure chaos. Bullets flew one way, fireballs went the other, the loose ground causing him to stagger more than once, making him feel like he was trying to sprint through ankle-deep tar.  

He passed the Corporal’s group, continuing on another thirty meters before the ash gave way to uneven shards of rock. The rocky shore spread out and below him, the formations of the stone taking on the appearance of angled stalagmites, clusters of algae and moss growing between the cracks adding a splash of colour that was striking in this hellscape.

His two counterparts turned to lay down covering fire, picking off the imps and arch-villes that were closing in on the Corporal’s team, Andreas raising his rifle to join them. He fired between Torres and one of the soldiers, the plasma stream cutting a swath through the demonic ranks, but they must have drawn the attention of the entire siege, more demons moving down the Rallypoint wall towards the commotion. Torres had said there was enough of them that he couldn’t see the ground, and Andreas was starting to believe him.

“Smoke out!” one of the soldiers called, pulling a canister from his rigging and unlocking the pin. He tossed it over the head of Torres, where it rolled to a stop before exploding in a puff of grey gas. Another soldier chucked another canister, a low wall of thick, obscuring smoke coalescing at the Corporal’s flank.

“Down here, come on!” Torres exclaimed, hopping down into the closest pool, his boots splashing in the water. The rest of the team followed him down, Andreas moving down last. The smoke would help conceal them, but they only had precious seconds before the demons would simply walk through.

Pure adrenaline fuelled the team as they crossed from one pool to the next, the pockets of rock recessing deeper into the ground. When they arrived at the pipe, it was bigger than Andreas first thought, about as large as a vault door and just as heavy, steel plates inches thick forming a cap over the entrance.

There was a whir of electronics, and the cap began to part down the middle, the two halves sliding away to reveal a gaping darkness. The lower rim was suspended a few feet off the ground, one of the soldiers throwing himself onto the ledge, slinging his rifle as he turned to help the next man up.

Andreas, Torres, and the third soldier kept watch as they filed into the pipe one at a time, barrels scanning the cliffside for targets. They didn’t have to wait long, Sharrya’s hooves kicking loose stones as she appeared on the cliff, smoke ribboning over her emerging form.

“You’re not getting in that fort, Andreas,” she purred, as if this was all a game to her. Andreas replied with an eye roll, exaggerating his head movement for emphasis. Torres titled his head at their exchange, then fired his rifle at her.

“You on a first-name basis with that thing?” the Corporal asked, pulling the loading bolt back.

“It’s complicated,” Andreas replied.

The bullet ripped through Sharry’s bicep, blood misting behind her arm, but the demoness didn’t even flinch. She leapt from her perch, the ground quaking as she landed on a knee amongst the rocks a stone’s throw away.

Her lips peeled back in a grin as her underlings leapt to join her. Two, three, four arch-villes landed at her feet, along with another hell knight, more pouring in by the second as the swarm breached the smoke cloud.

As the sound of plasma bolts and high-calibre bullets rose into the air, the clatter pervaded here and there by a warbling cry from a felled demon, a new sound rose above the tumult. The reinforced mechanisms securing the pipe’s cap were shifting back into position, closing off their escape one slow inch at a time.

“Come on, sirs!” one of the soldiers yelled. “We’re out of time!”

The rest of the squad had clambered up, leaving just him and the Corporal out in the open. Two men stood in the pipe’s mouth and covered, Andreas and Torres breaking cover and moving for their exit.

Andreas hoisted himself up first, his kneepads soaking as he crouched over a small dribble of water running along the cusp of the ceramic pipe. As he turned to help the Corporal, his eyes tracked a yellow fireball coming straight for them. He tried to yell out, but too late, the inferno slamming into the small of Torres’ back.

He'd been in the middle hoisting a leg into the pipe, and the impact threw off his balance, the man loosing a pained grunt as he was sent falling back. He would have been crushed by the doors, or worse, if Andreas hadn’t reached out and seized his arm and pulled him back.

One of the soldiers knelt down to help him, the two dragging Torres out of the closing doors’ path. Another fireball was sent their way, but it splashed harmlessly against the pipe’s lip.

“Get back,” Andreas ordered, passing Torres off to the soldiers, the men dragging the groaning Corporal further down the pipe, the three other squad members making room. Andreas turned and unloaded his plasma cell into the closing gap, knocking down two of the demons trying to close in on the pipe.

When the sliver closed to the point he could no longer shoot safely through, Andreas held his fire, smoke wisping from the end of his weapon. Barely a sliver remained between the doors, and Andreas made to release a sigh of relief, when two red hands slipped through the gap.

Andreas watched in startlement as fingers as long as his hand curled, gripping the steel edges and pulling outwards. Complaining metal groaned down the length of the pipe, Andreas blinking as the familiar features of Sharrya appeared through the gap. Her face was scrunched with effort, the muscles in her streamlined shoulders flexing as she fought against several tonnes of pneumatic pressure. Surely even she wasn’t strong enough to fight against pistons… was she?

“You think this changes anything?” she growled, meeting his eyes through the crack, the Baron chuckling as he pulled up his rifle threateningly. “You’ve cornered yourself, like the rest of the rats in there. You can’t run anymore, and now you can’t hide either. When I break down these walls, nothing will stop me from claiming you.”

“I think you’ll find these walls are for your benefit,” Andreas replied, putting a light pressure on the trigger. “Earth’s our home, Sharrya, and I think you’ve outstayed your welcome.”

“Even with your back to the wall, you still possess so much fire,” she mused. “Being my prisoner isn’t as bad as it sounds, I believe I made that quite clear by showing you much leniency. If only you hadn’t been so foolish as to try and escape,” she sighed, her eyes glazing as she chewed her lip. “I never got to show you the true extent of my hospitality. I can be oh so generous to mortals I find… intoxicating.”

“I like you too, crazy-horns,” he laughed, not sure if her ‘hospitality’ involved torture or something… more than that. “You’re right about one thing, though. This is the last time you’ll see me running from you. If I could shit on your parade all by myself,” he added, pointing a finger at her face, his glove barely an inch from her snout. “Imagine what I can do with an army at my back.”

He had intended that as a threat, but instead, Sharrya responded with a gleaming smile, a sparkle of anticipation in her emerald eyes.

“If it’s your intention to meet me on the battlefield… I welcome the challenge.”

“I know you do.”

“Until then, Seargent,” she cooed. With a wink, her hand fell away, the theory of whether she could overpower the doors left unanswered as she let the doors close the rest of the way. Her curled lips was the last thing Andreas saw before the lid closed and he was plunged into darkness.

A tumbling mechanism nearby sounded off, the doors locking with an audible clunk of metal on metal. With that, the treacherous streets of Spain were sealed away, Andreas fighting the urge to collapse right then and there. Never before had he spent so much time exposed to the elements, every moment promising an attack from above, below, behind, anywhere, with Sharrya on his case since the moment he’d crash-landed. He felt like he’d gone through Hell and back, and in a way, he had.

Andreas was filled with a sense of elation, like he’d just spent an extended period of time underwater, and finally breached the surface to breathe, all the adrenaline bleeding out of his muscles to leave them sore.

“Corporal,” he started, using his rifle like a crutch to prop himself up. “You good?”

“Armour took the most of it, I’ll live,” Torres replied. Deeper into the pipe, the rest of the squad lingered around their officer, one of them supporting him by the arm.

One of the men offered a hand, pulling Andreas to his feet. With the pipe shut and the demons safely behind it, he took a moment to take in his new surroundings. The walls of the pipe were worn, lines where the water level would usually sit suspended at around chest height. While it was dark, a solitary fluorescent cast a deep shade of red at the rear of the pipe, which terminated at a wall with a sloped bottom a short distance away.

Torres’ team began to move that way, Andreas following. There was a step ladder just beyond the wall-mounted light, Andreas craning his neck to see it led to a hatch. Once Torres was able, he climbed up first, a box of white light shining down as he opened the hatch.

They moved up one at a time, and when it was Andreas’ turn, eh found himself emerging into a metal corridor, bulbs suspended from the ceiling bathing it in artificial light. The hatch leading from the pipe was by a junction, the path splitting at a right angle. Doors numbered in incremental order lined the walls every couple meters, more intersections splitting off in the distance leading deeper into the compound.

“This is one of the wards,” Torres explained, noting his stare. “One of three, they make up the first few underground levels of the base.”

“The civvies live here?” Andreas asked.

“Not these ones, no. People don’t like sleeping this close to the pipe. As if all the guns, the flooding mechanism, and the patrols aren’t enough to keep peace of mind. The Commander said to bring you to her once you were inside, shall we go?”

Andreas replied by removing his helmet, and passing it off to the Corporal, Torres flashing him a skeptical look.

Before Torres could speak, Andreas stepped up to the closest door, finding it unlocked. Inside was a small bedroom with a walk-in bathroom, and after a quick check to make sure it was empty, he walked over to the bed, and collapsed onto the mattress face down without a word.

A bewildered Corporal and his team stood just outside the door, looking to one another, unsure of what to do now that their mission of complete.

“So,” Torres said. “Should I get the Commander, or…?”

One of the men shrugged, his pauldrons creaking with the movement.

“I wouldn’t,” Eva said, using the helmet’s speakers to address them. “He’s not slept in over forty hours, leave him be. Now, if you would bring me to Valeria, I’ll debrief her.”

“Oh, sure. You got it, robot lady,” Torres said, giving the helmet an affirmative tap.

“It’s AI,” Eva corrected. “And don’t hit the lattice. Didn’t you hear what the Seargent just said?”

-xXx-