"Well...I sure don't like the look of that," Jack muttered as he stared up the flickering stairwell at the wreath of interdimensional skulls (because they sure as shit weren't human) hanging on the big slab of wood at the top. It was a door, he knew that much, but it seemed oddly large. Like it was heralding 'something big and wicked lays beyond here'.
"Same," Diaz grunted.
They'd been wandering through a maze of dark, flickering corridors and rooms that all looked irritatingly the same, shooting it out with a random assortment of zombie, Imps, and the occasional Chaingunner. Nothing exactly newsworthy. So far, they'd managed to shave another hundred and fifty or so meters off their trip.
And there was still nothing coming from the radio.
But they had to be getting close now. If he had to guess, (because he was having to guess with all this strange, new architecture), he'd say they were down to within a quarter mile of the portal, possibly even an eighth of a mile.
Jack looked at the steps, wary of tricks and traps. Besides the bizarre texture of the walls, and the oddly symmetrical grid cut of the smooth gray stone of the stairs, he didn't really see anything. The flickering was getting to him. Their flashlights weren't quite as bright as they once were, but he couldn't tell if that was just his imagination or not.
"Everyone good?" he asked finally, glancing back briefly over his armored shoulder. The rest of the Marines he was leading into this wretched breach were in a strung out line behind him. They all reported back that they were good.
Which really just meant they were combat ready.
Fucking nobody was good in this nightmare.
Jack headed up the stairs. He reached the top without running into anything, and even managed to get the big wooden door open without a problem. It opened up into, surprise surprise, something strange. The room beyond was tall and cavernous, but not as big as it immediately seemed. It was much taller than it was wide or long. There was a space to step beyond the door, a platform that continued along to the left like a walkway.
Studying it all carefully, Jack looked over the edge of the platform and saw a good forty or fifty foot drop down into what had to be more acid. Up above, it disappeared into the darkness, even with the help of the lights. The pathway terminated immediately to his right, but to his left, it continued, wrapping around the oval-shaped room, raising as it went, until it got about three-quarters of the way shy of making a complete circuit. He saw another door all the way over there. In the center of the room was a big, broad pillar of some kind.
Right now, all he could see of it was one wooden side.
He waited and listened. Up above, out of reach, were shallow segments cut into the walls, which were made of bumpy green-tan stone, and each segment contained flickering metal torch-holders. It cast an eerie, gloomy red-orange light across the area.
"Looks clear," Jack said after a moment of hearing nothing.
It was as silent as a tomb in there.
"Nice and easy," he said as he began making his way around the curved path, looking out for things hiding in the shadows or unknown niches, or whatever that central pillar was, "gonna make our way around and up."
He made it maybe a quarter of the way before he got a better look at the pillar. It was hollow, broad, maybe six feet wide, and this side of it was made of rusted old iron bars.
Almost like a prison cell.
Almost like it was holding something inside of its shadowy depths-
A pair of terrifyingly familiar, glowing red eyes snapped into being within those shadows and suddenly Jack realized he could see the figure of a-
"Shit!" he screamed as he raised the gun presently in his hand, the assault rifle, and opened fire. A loud, piercing shriek split the air as a few other guns joined his own, and then suddenly there was an explosion right beneath his feet.
A few seconds of crazy, stomach-churning, head-bursting, terrifying chaos raced by as he sailed through the air, and Jack was convinced he'd gone over the edge. He heard people yelling, gunfire, the fire-summoning demon (had he named that fucker?!), and then he landed with a shattering jolt that sent several warning alarms flaring up in his HUD.
Jack groaned as he struggled to get to his feet, pain wracking his body even with the suit of armor, and then a new voice cut through everything like a thunderclap.
"I told all you motherfuckers I was too pissed to die!"
Flashes of blue-white plasma began lighting up the room from the opposite side, and the bulbous-headed demon with the long limbs let out a new shriek of pain. The gunfire kept up until the shrieking finally cut off.
Jack immediately recognized that voice. "Hollenshead, that you!?" he called as he got to his feet.
"Aw shit, I know that voice, who is that?!" Hollenshead called back.
"It's Ward!"
"Fuck, I knew you weren't dead! Where the hell are you!? Where's everyone else?"
"We're here, Hollenshead," Diaz called.
"Some of us," Abrash said.
"Fucking finally!"
His voice was getting closer, and as Jack finished grabbing his rifle and reloading, he saw the immense man come walking down from the opposite side of the pathway. As Jack approached him and met him in the middle, he got a better look at him.
Hollenshead looked like he'd been through hell, and back, and then had gone to hell once more.
His armor was covered in blood and ashes, cracked in several places, including his faceplate, and he was loaded down with guns, ammo, and gear.
"I see you've got your bomb...what happened?" Jack asked.
Hollenshead lost his smile, shifting and reaching back over his shoulder, laying a hand on the backpack bomb as if to reassure himself it was there. "Long story short: whole squad got wiped out. I took the bomb and the ammo and pushed on. Kept on keeping on until I heard you guys in here..." He frowned more deeply as he looked behind Jack and no doubt did a headcount.
"We lost Wells, Holtz, and Rhodes," Jack said grimly.
"Fuck," Hollenshead whispered.
"You heard from the other teams? Last we'd heard, they thought you were dead."
"Yeah, lost contact there for awhile. But I got a partial transmission off Anderson. From the little I heard, it wasn't nothing good. Been looking for him or anyone ever since. Damn motherfucking glad I found you guys. This shit is spooky. Fucking hate being underground and alone. Got lost in a cave one time when I was a kid..." He muttered, looking up and around.
"You didn't hear from Jennifer?" Jack asked, dropping any pretense as he felt his anxiety welling up within him.
Hollenshead returned his attention to Jack. "No, sorry man."
"Shit...well, let's find a way out of this nightmare."
"Found a way up at least, come on," Hollenshead replied, turning around and heading back up the pathway. "Had just found it when I heard you all start tearing it up in here."
Jack did another headcount of his own, making sure everyone was upright and alive, then followed Hollenshead up the path and through the door at the end. They came into a narrow passageway of somewhat more refined rock, with those strange, diamond lights overhead, the ones that always reminded Jack of old movie theater lights. They at least provided better lighting. He followed Hollenshead with the others moving in a single file behind him, (not that they had any other choice, it was barely wide enough to walk in this place), taking a few turns until finally they found a stairwell that led up.
They kept going until finally the stairs ran out, and led them into...
A simple, square room.
"The fuck is this shit?" Hollenshead muttered as he looked around.
Jack studied it, making room for the others. They all came up, and Abrash hung back, watching their six to make sure nothing came up the stairs after them.
The floor and ceiling were made of simple brown wooden planks, and more planks made up the walls, but they framed...something. It was tan-yellow and had a strange pattern to it that reminded him vaguely of sand dunes in the desert.
The only way out seemed to be one section of green marble dead ahead of them, with what looked to be a roaring, deformed lion's head done in burnished silver mounted in the center of it. There was no button, though. No switch, no control, no obvious way to open it.
Outside, he thought he could hear the sound of creatures.
"We gotta be close," Cortez said.
"Yeah but how do we open this butt-ugly thing?" Hollenshead replied, staring at it, coming to the same conclusion as Jack.
They spent a few minutes puzzling over it, and then finally Jack aimed his rifle at it. "Fuck it, get ready," he replied, and shot the stupid thing.
It worked.
The face lit up green and the panel lifted into the ceiling, revealing...
The outside. And a few Imps wandering around. He and Hollenshead were out first, putting down the roaring Imps like they were nothing.
"Too easy," Hollenshead said, laughing and then stomping on one of the dead Imp's head, caving it in in a gory display.
"Maybe we'll get lucky and that'll be too easy," Jack muttered, staring up at and to the left at the huge shaft of pulsing blood red light shooting into the skies overhead.
They were just outside the portal, or so it felt.
Definitely within a few hundred meters of it, at least.
They stood on a dark gray, stonework ground. To the right was a sharp drop off into a moat of acid that continued on ahead and curved around to the left, disappearing behind the thing that took up most of their field of vision in that direction: a huge wall of giant white stone bricks, covered in green vines. There were several doors and windows cut into it.
That was the way they had to go.
"Okay, come on out everyone. We're getting close," Jack said, approaching the nearest doorway that was cut into the white-stone wall.
Within, he saw a vast, open space. Almost like an arena or a courtyard.
He paused, looking back once, at the city that surrounded them. Skyscrapers burned like massive torches, bleeding smoke into the black-red sky. Not even a hint of blue was left. How many tens of thousands, hundreds of thousands were out there, dead or dying? For a second he felt the titanic weight of responsibility and even the likely impossibility of the task that lay before him. Not just closing the portal, but pushing back this apocalypse.
It felt absolutely hopeless.
Despair began to creep in, but Jack crushed it ruthlessly and returned his attention to the courtyard that lay beyond.
"We ready?" he asked.
"We're ready to serve these motherfuckers up charbroiled," Hollenshead replied.
"Ready to kick ass," Diaz said, and the others gave their own responses of affirmation.
One more step. One more push.
For now.
Just focus on the little picture. And right now the little picture was this huge courtyard ahead of them. At first glance, it appeared to be empty. He saw that the walls were a strange amalgamation of textures and materials.
The area to his immediate right was a collection of pillars, each sporting a grinning goat-face with big, curling ram horns and as he was looking at it, a parade of big pink Demons started stomping out from between the pillars.
"Fuck! Incoming!" Jack cried as immediately two dozen of the huge-mawed motherfuckers poured out, and more were coming.
Everyone opened fire on the wall of pink, chomping death as it rushed towards them. Jack flipped to full auto and unloaded the magazine into the Demons, kicking up gushes of demon blood as the others opened fire with him as well. For a few seconds, just a few, they actually held the line. The wave of pink murder was stopped in its tracks as it was met by a wave of lead and plasma. A dozen Demons fell, and others began to fall.
And then Jack just caught sight of more movement, and a ball of green energy incoming from the left, deeper in the courtyard.
"Incoming!" he screamed again.
But it was too late.
The ball of energy connected with the side of Spencer's helmet and took his head clean off. He didn't even get a chance to make a sound as he fell.
"Fuck! Protect the bomb!" Jack shouted, turning his attention to the new threat.
His stomach dropped out as he actually saw it.
From across the courtyard, a dozen Barons of Hell were stamping their way forward, all of them winding up to hurl more green balls of death. As Jack automatically swapped from his assault rifle to his plasma rifle, preparing himself for the worst...
Something worse happened.
A flotilla of Cacodemons began hovering over another section of wall and started to rain down death from above.
"OH COME ON!" Jack cried.
For a few horrifying seconds he was stuck in his indecision between who to fight first. And then two things happened at once. The first was that he selected the Barons, and the second was that a trio of blue-armored figures burst into the courtyard from a nearby entryway and opened fire immediately on the Cacodemons.
Relief flooded Jack. "Diaz! Need some help! Everyone else, kill those fucking Demons!" he shouted as he dodged a few incoming balls of green energy. She stepped to his side with her big Chaingun and the pair doled out lead-and-plasma-infused death on the wave of incoming Barons of Hell, moving away from the others so they didn't have to dodge the balls of bright green plasma. The Barons roared and screamed in rage and agony as their hellish bodies were pelted with energy and metal at supersonic speeds, spraying their deep red blood across each other and the desecrated ground they walked upon.
One fell. Then another.
Then a trio went down under the concentrated fire. Jack kept going until his plasma rifle was drained, then hastily slapped in a fresh cell and resumed fire to give Diaz some time to reload her bulky Chaingun. He cried out as a ball of energy came way too close to ending his life, sizzling as it cut through a few centimeters of his armor and hitting his right bicep with an uncomfortable amount of heat. Another roar cut across the smoky air as yet another Baron was toppled. Just as the two Marines were beginning to worry that they were going to run out of distance as the huge demons stamped closer, Abrash joined them and added his own gunfire to the mix. Together, the three of them managed to mow down the last of the Barons.
Reloading quickly, not sparing a second, they turned their attention to the Cacodemons. About half a dozen of them were left and they were swarming the trio of Marines who had arrived to provide some much-needed backup. Only now there were just two of them, as one of them had collapsed under the fireballs.
"Let's-" Jack began, but then was cut off as he heard someone shout out a warning.
"TEN O'CLOCK!"
He jerked in that direction and his jaw dropped in pure terrified disbelief as he saw a pair of Arachnotrons backed up by a small army of Revenants.
"Shit! Diaz, help them! Everyone else, on me!" Jack screamed as he finished reloading his plasma rifle and charged towards the latest infusion of demonic horror.
There were some pillars of stone scattered about and he raced towards the nearest one, using it for cover. A rain of plasma balls and rockets washed across the area as everyone scrambled for cover. He was down to his last power cell for the plasma rifle. Jack realized he still had three grenades. Well, if there was ever a time to use them, why not now? He primed and tossed all three of them in rapid succession, managing to land two of them at the feet of one of the Arachnotrons and tossing the third into the cluster of Revenants.
A trio of eruptions sounded, and several things shrieked and moaned and screamed.
When he leaned back around the pillar, plasma rifle in hand, he saw that one of the Arachnotrons seemed to have simply detonated, and one of the Revenants wasn't getting back up, but unfortunately the rest were. And they looked pissed. He opened fire, everyone did. The Revenants launched their rockets and the surviving Arachnotron blasted away at them with unrelenting streams of yellow and green plasma. As Jack finished off his plasma rifle and was forced back to his assault rifle, he glanced over at Diaz and the others.
It wasn't going well. More Cacodemons had shown up, as had a swarm of Imps.
Fuck!
Diaz and the other two were at least retreating back this way so they could regroup, but the rain of incoming hellfire was making it difficult to make any real progress. Jack returned his attention to his own troubles.
This was looking pretty bad.
As he took aim at the Arachnotron, he suddenly saw a lone figure standing atop a section of the wall behind the spidery monster and the Revenants.
It looked human.
Suddenly, a flash emanated from the figure and a pair of rockets shrieked out and connected with the back of the Arachnotron.
It roared as it was engulfed in flames.
The Revenants stopped in their tracks, some turning around, confused by this latest development. The lone figure was reloading their rocket launcher.
"Who the hell is that?!" Hollenshead demanded.
"Your goddamned savior!" Anderson replied over the radio. "Now let's mop these sons of bitches up!"
"Yes, el-tee!" every last one of them shouted in response, a swelling of adrenaline and joy and blood-rage cocktail infusing them with a burst of energy. As Anderson loosed another pair of rockets, blowing two Revenants to bony bits, Jack and the others resumed fire.
After that, it was a relatively simple matter to take the demons off the board one by one. It took some time, but they managed to mop up all of them.
As Jack finished reloading again, he saw that the initial trio of Marines who had come in to take on the Cacodemons was now down to one.
They were approaching with Diaz, looking exhausted.
And...
"Jennifer!" he cried, relief not just pouring into him but slamming into him like a tsunami. He rushed over to her and she rushed over to him and they almost knocked each other over in the process. "You made it, holy fucking shit, you made it," he said as they embraced awkwardly in their armor.
"I knew you'd make it," she replied, grinning from behind a stained and cracked faceplate. She looked probably about as exhausted and miserable as he did.
"Are you okay?" he asked.
"More or less, you?" she replied.
"More or less."
"All right, Marines, focus up. We're not done yet," Anderson said. "Regroup on me."
A string of affirmative replies came back and they all started moving forward. Jack saw that Abrash had gone back and grabbed their bomb.
"What happened?" he asked.
She sighed. "Nothing good. Lost our APCs. Lost our bomb. Lost the whole squad. Those two that were with me were survivors we picked up, but they weren't in the best of shape as it was." She sighed heavily. "Looks like you picked up Hollenshead, and he still has his bomb, and so do you."
"Yeah, we got lucky...relatively speaking," Jack replied.
They found some stairs and joined Anderson atop the wall.
"Good to see you, Lieutenant," Jack said.
"Nowhere near as good as it is to see you all. I can't tell you the damned relief I'm feeling seeing that we managed to at least get two of them here," Anderson replied. He shook his head. "Lost my whole damned squad. Almost died more times than I can count..." He turned, facing back the way he'd initially come.
They all did.
"There it is," he muttered.
There it was, indeed. Jack marveled at what he was seeing. A huge, square, stone building stood in a burned out field. The ground looked volcanic, black rock shot through with glowering red. The stone of the structure was dark, like a black fortress of death. A huge opening lay in the center of it, and pulsating red light poured from it.
The beam that shot up into the sky.
The portal.
This was it. This was ground zero.
"Goddamn, that's intimidating," Abrash muttered.
"Yeah, and it gets worse. There's a CyberDemon and one of those giant spider fuckers in there," Anderson replied.
"Wait, in there? In the building?" Hollenshead asked.
"Yeah, I did a little scouting before I heard your battle and came over," Anderson replied.
"So? Let's just set the bombs outside the building and get the fuck outta here."
"I had considered that, but then I considered the possibility that that building may be somehow protecting the portal," Anderson replied. "These aren't conventional bombs, for the most part. They're closer to EMP bombs, attuned to the portal's energy...somehow. I don't fucking know. But I do know that we've come too far to half-ass it now. We're dropping these motherfuckers right at that thing, to make absolutely sure that we did our duty as much as we possibly could. Understand?"
"Yes, Lieutenant," they replied.
"Good...Ward, what's that look on your face mean?" Anderson asked.
They all looked at Jack. He was grinning. "I might have a plan...we need to do some more recon first."
"All right. You and I will do some recon. Everyone else, I've got a job for you."
They came down the other side and gathered around something that was leaned against the outer wall of the courtyard, a familiar piece of tech.
"Managed to salvage it from the wreckage of my APC," Anderson said, patting the comms booster. "Never got a chance to put it up, figured it might be useful. I want you all to get it set up and see if you can get in touch with anyone higher up the chain of command. Higher the better. This is top priority. We need to let them know we made it."
"On it," Abrash replied. "Everyone else, watch my six."
"Let's go, Ward," Anderson said.
"Yep." He tossed one quick, longing glance at Jennifer, who just smiled and nodded to him, and then he was off.
The two of them kept ducked low, hurrying across the volcanic surface. Jack could feel his heart pounding in his chest like a wardrum. Another CyberDemon and another Spider Mastermind. A nightmare he hadn't been looking forward to ever facing down again. But as big as that building ahead of them looked, Jack thought that maybe, if there was something watching out for them, maybe he might be able to pull this off.
They broke right and got up against the huge opening in the side of the building.
"I managed to get a look at them without them noticing. I'm not actually sure they're...awake? Do they even sleep?" Anderson whispered.
"I have no idea," Jack replied. "Doing recon now."
"Got your six," Anderson said, looking around.
It was strange, there didn't seem to be any other demons around. But hey, sometimes you got lucky. And they'd probably all been in that attack. He got up to the edge slowly, as quickly as he could, until he was right up to it. He waited, listened. He could hear heavy breathing, a strange pulsing sound, not quite like anything he'd heard before, and something mechanical shifting every now and then. Could be either one of them.
Slowly, very slowly, Jack leaned around the corner.
He expected to get blown away immediately, either by a rocket or a chaingun, but nothing happened. Instead, he was treated to a strange sight. The building was all one giant room, empty save for a stone walkway that rose up a story and wrapped around the inside, accessible via stairs to either side of the main entrance, and in the big, open area in the center, a pair of large platforms that also rose up about a story.
Between the platforms was the portal: a large pulsating mass of crimson light.
It didn't look like any of the other portals or teleports he'd seen before.
The two gigantic hostiles were on the platforms. The Mastermind to the left, the CyberDemon to the right.
Both were nearly immobile. In fact, the Spider Mastermind was as still as a statue, its strange eyes closed. It almost looked like it was...meditating, or something. Focusing intensely, whatever it was doing. No, he knew what it was doing: controlling. Focusing the demons. Back on Mars, Fielding had sent him and the others into Hell to assassinate the mastermind, and they'd done it. Only apparently it had only been the mastermind of the invasion of Mars, Phobos, and Deimos. Now, it was small peanuts compared to this whole invasion.
So that begged the question: what was the mastermind behind the mastermind?
The CyberDemon didn't have its eyes closed, and he nearly flipped his shit when he realized that, but the thing didn't seem to be noticing him. It was just...standing there. Maybe it was conserving power or something. It was obviously muscle for the Mastermind.
And, actually, this was perfect.
Hopefully.
Jack pulled back and rejoined Anderson.
"Okay, I've got a plan. I wanna get these two big fuckers to fight each other," he said.
Anderson looked at him for a long moment, then laughed softly. "That's...nuts. But I honestly can't think of a better idea. How do you want to do it?"
"Jennifer and I will sneak inside. We split up, go up the walkway, get behind them, start blasting. Piss them off. Get them to shoot each other. Whoever survives is going to be pretty shredded. Once the victor wins, everyone blasts him to hell."
"Okay, good. Get ready, I'll get the others over."
Jack listened to him gather up the others and get a report on the situation as he checked over his weapons. Abrash had finished setting up the comms booster, but had yet to actually reach anyone. As Jack finished up, the rest of them joined them by the entrance.
He ran over the plan with them.
"Oh and you just volunteered me for this, did you?" Jennifer asked.
"I mean unless you aren't up for it," Jack replied.
"Oh you motherfucker," she said, grinning fiercely at him. "Don't you even."
"Then let's do this. Make sure you're topped off. And everyone else make sure of that to. Whoever survives, I wanted you to unload on the fucker," Jack said.
"I got fifty credits that the big demon fucker survives," Cortez said.
"No way, you see the gattling gun on those spider bastards? Thing's the size of a goddamn house, man," Hollenshead replied. "I say spider-brain makes it."
"Just be ready," Jack said.
"Oh we'll be ready," Hollenshead replied.
"We've got your back, Sergeant," Abrash said. The others nodded tightly.
Jack and Jennifer got up to the door. They reconed it once more, and then just dove in. Because that was the only way to do this stuff. Jack broke right, Jennifer left. The walkway was mostly in shadows, though he wasn't sure how much that would help them. He got up the stairs nice and easy, then started walking along the path, keeping his eyes on the CyberDemon. It was still unmoving, and if it had noticed him, it was sure as hell biding its time. He kept going, foot by foot, step by step. As pressed on, his focus honed down to a singular thing.
Just get behind that CyberDemon.
He was most of the way there when it shifted suddenly. Jack froze, preparing to run and jump over the edge of the walkway. He could probably run up to the platform the thing stood on and hide from it. Probably. But the CyberDemon didn't come screaming awake or aim its rocket launcher arm at him. He breathed a sigh of relief and kept going.
Finally, Jack got into position.
"Ready," he whispered over his radio.
"Check," Jennifer replied.
"We're good when you are, Ward," Anderson said.
Jack took a deep breath and let it out. "Okay, on my mark, babe. Three...two...one...mark!"
They each opened fire. Jack had gotten another power cell from Hollenshead and so that was what he used, spraying the Spider Mastermind's side with a burst of plasma. Jennifer did the same thing and hit the CyberDemon.
Both creatures came awake with a roar. Jack kept firing on the giant spider demon and saw it look right at him. He ran behind the CyberDemon as it opened fire, and the CyberDemon roared again in fury. Jack did drop down this time, landing with a heavy grunt as he heard the telltale sound of the CyberDemon's rocket firing.
And then the other telltale sound of a rocket exploding. The Spider Mastermind screamed and the gattling gun kicked up again.
All hell broke loose.
The plan worked.
Jack just hunkered down and waited, checking to make sure Jennifer had made it to safety. He listened to the two huge demons duke it out for several minutes before finally the gattling gun fire abruptly cut off and a huge explosion sounded.
"HA!" Cortez cried over the radio.
"Ice this fucker!" Jack roared as he looked up at the CyberDemon. It was in shit shape, absolutely riddled with bullet holes, leaking blood and oil from most of its body. Its normal arm had been blown off at the elbow and one leg was severely damaged, so much so that it was leaning haphazardly to one side.
Over half a dozen lines of gunfire converged on it, including a few rockets, and it went down without much of a fight after that.
Everyone regrouped in between the two pillars, looking up at the huge portal.
"Well, let's light these bombs and close this fucking thing before more things come through," Jack said.
"Sounds like a plan to me," Jennifer replied.
Anderson nodded. "Yep. Abrash, Hollenshead, get them set up and we'll-"
A familiar voice suddenly came over their radios. "This is General Taggart to anyone still alive from War, Famine, Plague, or Death Squads. Is anyone reading me!?"
"This is Lieutenant Anderson, General. I hear you. Over."
"Thank fucking Christ! Where are you? Things are confused, but they seem to think you're at ground zero for the portal?"
"Yes, General. Some of us made it here and we've got two bombs ready to go."
"Hot damn did you ever come through! I take it Ward and Taylor are there?"
"We're here, General," Jack answered.
"Double hot damn! All right, listen up, because time is short and things have changed. I'm about to ask you to do the absolute last thing you want to do."
"You want us to go through that portal and back into Hell, don't you?" Jack asked.
"I'm sorry, son. Yes. We managed to get a transmission from Staff Sergeant Morgan's squad. She was tasked with a special assignment in Antarctica to retrieve some crucial intel that the UAC had discovered. Apparently, she found it. The intel is the location of the big bad son of a bitch leading this goddamned invasion. In Hell. That's the good news. The bad news is, she never actually transmitted the data. We managed to get a team there and I just got the report from them. As far as they can tell, she and several others must have been teleported into Hell during an overload of a portal they had down there. They couldn't find the data she was talking about, so she or someone else must have it on them."
"And you want us to go into Hell, track her and or the data down, and then track down the big bad demon and assassinate it, right?" Jennifer asked.
"That's exactly correct. I'd like to send an army in there with you, but...unfortunately, right now, that portal you're at is the only other way we have immediate access to. I know I'm asking way, way too much, and if I was there, I'd go with you myself, but the human race is counting on you."
"I'll do it," Jack said with a heavy sigh, "I'll go."
"So will I," Jennifer said.
"I'll go!" Hollenshead chimed in. "Can't keep me from this."
"I volunteer," Abrash said grimly.
"Shit, I guess I'll go too, if you're all going," Cortez said.
"No way I'm staying behind," Diaz said.
"Uh...I'm gonna be honest, I am not up for this," Vekovious said.
"That's fine. I need someone to watch my back anyway," Anderson said. "Because someone has to stay behind and make sure these bombs go off."
"Okay, but how are we even supposed to track her down?" Jack asked.
"I'm uploading a tracking program to your suits right now. I managed to get it ripped and sent to me from the UAC research station. Apparently, those bastards built outposts and supply stations all over the other dimension. This will help you track their beacons. You can, ideally, use some of these outposts to get logistics on the area and track down Staff Sergeant Morgan, and any other survivors," Taggart replied.
"We got any idea what this big bastard even looks like?" Jennifer asked.
"No. No idea, unfortunately. Whatever it is...it's going to be significantly more powerful than the Spider Mastermind you reported facing down last time around. And if I had to guess, I'd say it's gonna be a lot bigger, too. So grab whatever big fuckings guns you can find."
"Understood, General. Also...I want a fucking vacation if I somehow manage to survive this godforsaken nightmare shit storm," Jack said as he started walking towards the portal.
"I will personally see to it, for all of you. Marines, good luck and Godspeed. All the luck in the goddamned universe to you."
"See you when we get back from the other side, General," Jack said.
The six of them lined up at the flickering hellfire portal. They checked over their weapons, their armor. It would've been great to take the time to restock, but there was nowhere around they knew of, no big cache of weapons, ammo, and fresh armor laying around.
They were just going to have to make do.
Which was the story of Jack's life, as far as he was concerned.
He looked back briefly at Anderson and Vekovious. "Just make sure this thing gets sealed up behind us, okay?"
"We will," Anderson said. "Good luck. Whatever happens, it has truly been an honor serving with all of you."
"And you, el-tee," Jack replied as the others gave similar responses. He looked around at the others and grinned grimly. "See you on the other side."
Jack jumped into the portal.