The DOOM Chronicles

Chapter 19: Opposing the Decomposition

"Are we ready?" Jack asked, looking over his team.

Jennifer looked about as solid as he expected her to, pretty much raring to go. She had a chaingun now, which he'd gotten very close to asking her for, because his plasma gun was just a quarter full now. And he could see in her eyes that she could tell he wanted to ask for that chaingun, and the look she'd given him almost said: Try it, motherfucker.

So he hadn't.

Wells looked...morose, but ready. The simple fact that she'd made it through the invasion up to this point meant that she had to be at least a pretty good shot with a decent set of survival skills. Luck was a factor, but that only got you so far. She had a pistol on her hip, an assault rifle slung over her shoulder, and a shotgun in hand, ready for action.

Harper...didn't look great. He was on his feet, assault rifle in hand, and his gaze was pretty steady, but he was pale and obviously in pain.

They all reported back to him that they were ready. They were in the same area they'd taken a break in. He and Jennifer had gotten up after five minutes to help Wells police up some ammo. They were about as ready as they were going to get.

"Jennifer, stay on Harper. We need him alive for this part," Jack said.

"Yep," she replied, glancing at the technician. "Stick close, got it?"

"Yeah, I can do that," he said.

"Good, just worry about keeping your ass alive for right now. You're the package, we're the deliverers. Everyone, keep it simple, keep it tight." Jack took a moment to study the data packet Anderson had sent him. It had a map to the junction they had to repair. It didn't seem that far away, but he knew how quickly that could change in a place like this. They had to get through an industrial area up ahead, the one he'd noticed when first entering the Refueling Base, which led to a storage section, and that led down.

Down would give them a shortcut, ideally.

He sighed softly. Time to roll the dice again.

Jack set off through the door to the right of the stairway he'd taken to enter the Refueling Base. It felt shitty to leave so many Marines, so many other humans behind, but he knew it was necessary, and that he'd been lucky to get even the short time that he'd gotten. Plus, he had Jennifer back, and two other Marines to back him up.

And that was worth a hell of a lot.

The first area seemed clear. A squad of a half-dozen local security guards led by a pair of Marines had gone in earlier and cleared it out before hurrying back to rejoin Anderson as he led another assault on another Refueling Base. Jack was extremely glad he was in charge. There were some people who were born to take command in combat, and some who weren't, and, in his experience, too many of those who weren't found their ways into command positions. He didn't necessarily wish them dead, but...fuck, how many people had they gotten killed because they didn't know what the fuck they were doing during this invasion?

Jack shook his head. Time to get back in the game.

He studied his environment closely. The place was shot to hell and back. Steam leaked from ruptured pipes in the walls and ceiling, sparks bled from circuitry panels and shattered monitors. He figured this might have been some sort of heat exchange, or maybe a routing room for power...or fuel. No, probably not fuel. The pipes would be bigger and this room wouldn't be here anymore. A lot of advances had been made in fuel tech, but the latest innovation was some unfortunately very volatile shit that was easily blown up.

Of course, that was how he'd managed to fry that Arachnotron.

"Jennifer, you see that spider thing?" he asked.