DOOM: The Novel (Episode 1, Chapter 1)

EPISODE 1
Chapter 1: The Fringe of Sanity (Hangar)

Twenty-five men waited in a holding cell for their flight to prepare.  Interplanetary travel was still just barely possible, but those in charge would be damned if they couldn't force history to be written.  The wait would be for twelve more hours to prepare the state-of-the-art fuel, and for that time the men would stew on high heat.  This was of course just after they were all shoved through a courtroom one by one.

William looked around the room with the other men, all oddly much like him.  Most of these soldiers were highly trained compared to their peers yet were all in some way damaged goods.  He wondered if he deserved this fate of handling literal boxes of goods at the edge of humans' reality.  The others didn't seem to find themselves in as much fault, some strolling by the bars caging them all together, other younger men sitting or squatting and anxiously scratching their freshly shaven heads.

A man older than William, peering out a window down a hall from his spot standing in the corner of the holding cell, grumbled.  His uniform was immaculate, but now meaningless as a newly demoted Space Marine.  "Only in medicine does it seem a miscarriage is taken seriously now," he muttered, "Those working within the UAC have forgotten what the due process of justice is."

One of the younger men chided, "Corporations make men into monsters.  I wouldn't be surprised if the devil himself was the CEO of the UAC."

William wished to break his silence.  "Money turns a man into a monster, but so does war.  ...I like to believe that--"

Another man wearing a sergeant's uniform interrupted in harshed whispers, "Why are you defending this?  Who was that 'superior officer' anyway, some bearucrat who pushed your buttons?"

"I can't deny that," William quieted back down.  He wished that he could avoid introversion like the psychologist suggested.

The neatly garbed higher officer at the corner of the cell cleared his throat.  The heavy humid air of the building armored against typhonic climate changes was getting to everyone; the A/C systems couldn't help it.  As he looked at poor souls working on the nuclear engines of the ship outside, standing like a monolith alongside a geometric pocket that once contained another ship containing a second twenty-five men half an hour ago, he rumbled in baritone like the thunder outside. "I believe Sergeant Blazcowicz may have a point.  This is not a world that fosters joy any longer."

The other sergeant began to clench his gun hand, tendons tightening, veins bulging.  "It could be a lot fucking different.  They could stop rounding us up like cattle!"

The Major in the corner stared at the overreacting Sergeant with a room-deadening single twitching eyelid.  One of the two guards of the cell standing like shadows rattled on the bars to break up a deeply silent confrontation.  All of them must conform, only then will they remain in the realm of sanity.  "All become calm," the two officers in the cell quietly chanted as they broke eye contact.  These were broken men.

A poorly synthesized squeal blared through an alarm system down the metallic halls, followed by garbled muttering.  One of the guards announced to the men they had eleven hours left until departure.

"Holy shit!" a younger Staff Sergeant loudly blurted out, subtly fidgeting his knee as if it were electrified.  It was as if floodgates were threatening to open among all the men as rain continued to pound on the entire building.

One guard halted the rattling of the other's baton on the bars.  His deep voice cleaved the air and brought everyone's attention together. He spoke, "Now guys, I get the boiling frustration you all have pumping through you.  It's like coming right off the chopping block and waiting in purgatory, I know.  I had to go through these same motions to get where I am now."

"Poetic," leered a sly of face aerospace mechanic, fingers and faded jumpsuit still oily.  "Though I think the technical term the UAC uses is 'railroaded.'"

The guard stepped closer to the cell bars as lightning clapped above the building and caused the fluorescent lights to dim for a scant moment.  He growled to the mechanic through grit teeth, enunciating too quickly to allow interruption, "You wanna hear something goddamn poetic?  You sorry shattered glasses of shit don't even know what the Union Aero is gonna do to you.  Nobody does!  Isn't that some fuckin' dramatic irony right there?  Now accept your damn fate like the rest of us, all of you."

The men all backed down slowly, together.  Whispers began listing from man to man.  "Predestination ended long ago," William commented to himself.  Standing at the corner opposite the once-Major, they exchanged a silent conversation.  It was short -- primarily confirmation the guard was fully one with the UAC.  William wished for this waiting to go by faster, and slid himself down the wall onto the floor to sleep.  The psychologist had told him adequate rest was good.

*  *  *

From the beating of rain and crashing of thunder, to the roaring of advanced engines, and to even the infrequent grumbling or short-lived crying of the twenty-five being taken the millions of miles through black empty space, there was no escaping noise.  Noise that would turn men like these insane.

It didn't help that out the window was a great vista of nothing at all; mere pinpricks of white along a dead canvas soaked in the ink of an indescribable expanse of absolutely nothing.  Travel from one planet to another made one realize just how empty it all is.  Doing something as simple as going from point A to point B took millions of dollars of fuel with disastrously toxic byproducts, and there were no such things as aliens to steal fantastical things like warp drives from.

Living on Earth wasn't such an easy feat anymore either.  Half a hundred years of unchecked climate change led to global rainy and dry seasons of epic proportions.  Humans have little purpose left on this planet, it was time to branch out.  Ironically, aeronautics wasn't on the agenda of the Union Aerospace Corporation when it first filled the void of a defaulting federal government with a deficit of biblical proportions.

Life was honestly a little better at first... by comparison.  As it stood those fifty years ago, some multinational union seemed necessary when all other alliances failed like the UN, NATO, or even the especially short-lived EDF.  Once again in Earth's long history, it took businessmen and merchants to devise and finance a system by which most could get along under a true Big Brother.  Or else, behind opposing borders, under the cloak of the darkest hours of the night.

During the spaceflight -- more stressful than the wait in the holding cell because of the constant enforcement of silence in cramped spaces with zero gravity -- William remembered Jakarta.  It was a hot place, naturally claustrophobic and filled with parasites and bugs one could almost call alien.  One could also almost call Jakarta a Hell on Earth with the constant death and killing there, fighting guerrilla wars.

William vigorously shook his head to quell the rising of more memories.  He shook harder in the straps of the bus-like seats within the ship, alongside comrades who were trained to ignore such outbursts.  Cosmic debris pelting the hull of the ship reminded him of sleepless nights of bombardment.  To his left, the stars became the sparks of distant rifle fire.  To his right, the other sergeant couldn't ignore it any longer.

"Will," he called out quietly.  He fit his fingers into William's shaking hand, and grit his teeth as the hand suddenly gripped tight and still.  They made vacuous eye contact before William uttered the name of the man next to him: "Taylor..."

"Will," once-sergeant Taylor continued, "We were all there.  We simply have to live with it, it's over now.  Those are just stars out there; big friendly giants of flaming gas.  These are just rocks banging on graphene steel..."

"Bullets are just metal passing through flesh," William murmured.  His grip loosened.

"Whatever calms you down man," Taylor whispered, "I don't want to see you go completely crazy.  I'd rather go first."

At that moment William leaned his head towards the window to see as forward as possible in relation to the ship.  After another excruciating twenty-five hours, the men were brought within sight of a rusty planet.  The ship began slowing from its careening sublight speeds and started in on a loose orbit.  Communications crackled from close by the pilots in this cramped metal canister lined with tight airfoils and engines.  Noise cannot escape, especially not with a total vacuum outside their confines.

A voice from a far away transceiver growled in, "Reroute.  Deimos is unable to receive further shipments, technical difficulties have caused a temporary lockdown."  A sleepless pilot sighed, "Another one..."

The voice on the other side barged back in on the ship.  "Ship to Phobos.  Deimos, out."

Twenty-five men all quietly sighed together, as the severity of their fate was suddenly lessened.  There would be no fourteen days of hauling cargo.  Training would begin immediately.  The moon of Phobos orbiting Mars was a small, deformed one -- much like the weathered and diminutive Marines itching (some literally) to be released there.

Jolts were felt along the entire framework of the ship as retrorockets guided it on a finely-tuned path.  Like a terrifying roller coaster grudgingly coming to an end, the men, guards, and pilots glided closer through space to the surface of Phobos itself.  It was much bigger up close, and some semblance of gravity began to return.

Continuing to slow down from transit speeds, the ship spun two of its engines backwards while chalky mountains silently roared by farther away.  They were coming closer to what appeared to be a hollow geodesic dome, vast in breadth and containing a bare-bones atmosphere within its paneless bounds.  Even closer, small twinkling sparks could be seen stretching across the immaterial fields of electromagnetic force, keeping statically charged atmospheric particles inside the dome.

Straps dug into the flesh of the soldiers' chests while their vehicle decelerated more aggressively.  As the ship's hull creeped closer to the surface of the moon, the screech of gravel kicked up in its wake built up a primal feeling of tension, almost to the point of exploding.  But there were no enemies at their destination, merely a vast airlock like a hangar.

Their small world shuddered as the aerospace craft locked into place in the hangar resting at the edge of the geodesic dome, while the solid metal bulkhead leading out to the cold space of the solar system screamed and screeched to a close.  Everybody enjoyed their first moments of peace and quiet in an eternity as the engines powered down, waiting for the hangar to repressurize.  Some fell back asleep but were snapped back awake by the sudden opening of the ship's sides.

A heavy-set, almost portly man with a shining bald head and slate grey goatee stood in the center of the poorly lit steel docking bay as several other officers armored with fluorescent green plated vests entered the ship in double file.  They sequentially unclipped the twenty-five tired men and brought them before their new superior.  "Let's brief them somewhere nicer," he announced while turning by the heel of his foot, with every sound echoing through the pressurized chamber.

They shuffled across the bare metal to a wide airtight bulkhead door, emblazoned across the face with the deep blue logo of the UAC.  At this point it was almost like being flipped off whenever one of the men saw it. A lesser officer flicked a control switch on a small panel beside the door and the aluminum rectangle climbed upwards within its tracks into the wall, emitting a heavy hydraulic whirring noise during its entire ascent.

A sense of wonder creeped into the men as they were led into the clean, white, and pleasantly lit foyer of the 'hangar' making up the full entry building to Phobos.  The door loudly slid shut behind them while the superior ahead of everyone stopped in the middle of the entryway hall.  The truly white lights gave his eyes a youthful softness that he lacked moments ago, raising his hands to his sides to greet the new recruits.

"Good evening, men," he informally announced, "Welcome to Phobos."

The twenty-five stood silently still.  Some of their eyes darted around at the unfamiliar surroundings, others deadlocked ahead or at the superior.  The man simply continued, "I know that none of you are privates or rookies of any sort, so I'll skip all those formalities.  First I'd like to apologize to you for the travel over here.  I am a serious man yet also a kind one.  You may refer to me as Dacote while we're lounging, but for eight hours of the day you will call me Major or Sir.  Your training here will begin tomorrow, tonight I'll give you all a tour before your deserved rest."

The Major began to forge ahead, bringing them all chugging through the admittedly Earth-like multiplex facility, "We differ from Deimos here with our extensive research into extraterrestrial biotechnology, being home where humans never were.  A heaven, maybe."  They entered through a faster-opening sideways sliding door at one wall into a larger indoor greenhouse, lined across the ceiling with warm sun-like lighting, swarming with men in white coats and deep blue insignias tending to plant and small animal subjects.  Dacote commented during their trek towards the back, "Here on Phobos, I'll make sure you all get to eat your veggies.  Life won't be like it would on Deimos; during recreational hours any of you may browse through this place or the mess halls to relax and be calm."

At the end by a table Dacote stopped.  He gently snapped his fingers and kissed the air to wake a small rabbit from within its kennel, who flashed out and to the edge of the table.  She sat up for the Major to stroke her ears and then pick her up and carry her for all to see her deep brown coat, tinged with a sort of grey reminiscent of Dacote's own facial hair.

Smiling down at the little mammal, he rebutted, "Don't worry, we won't feed Daisy or any of her friends to you.  They're just around for therapy aside from helping us make sure Phobos has a truly livable environment."  Dacote looked up at a distanced recruit at the very back of the group.  William looked back for a moment, then looked away again.  "Let's get some food in your bellies," the major finished, "How long have you all been cooped up in that metal box on the way here?"

The place was arranged with rooms attached around the foyer, while the cafeteria was like an entire other hall on the way inwards to the Phobos compound.  It was a bit dark, but roomy and unobtrusive with flat metallic hexagonal plate floor and lines of soft white lights in the low ceiling connecting the tables and booths.  The one thing keeping it from being any amount depressing was the long window along the wall facing the compound, letting in a soft overcast light from the misty faux atmosphere carpeting the land in between the grey mountains of Phobos itself.

Exhausted men took turns acquiring shiny trays of food, stacked high with food of a grade definitely higher than what they were used to being forced to eat by the UAC on the move.  The point of tonight would be to refill on nutrients and then on sleep, and William was intent on being the last to get his food and the first to finish.  Dacote was making his rounds introducing himself to every man at every table, scattered as much as antisocially possible in the cafe.  But… it's been so long, and the cornucopia before him at his corner seat invited a rare disregard for the time and space around.

Before he knew it the Major was already speaking from across the table.  He warmly -- and most important innocuously began, “Blazcowicz?  I've read about that name before.”

William stopped eating mid-chew.  He roughly swallowed and replied while looking down at his food as he stirred it with his fork, “Maybe.  It's a common Polish surname as far as I know.”  Before he could think, he suddenly shot up straight and ended more loudly, “Sir.”

Dacote waved his hand to the side.  “Ah, relax.  I'm not here to order you, I'm fully aware of what bravery you and the rest of your peers here are capable of.  I've read all you guys’ files over a pot of coffee; it's my purpose to teach you already trained men how to fulfill your new role of outer rim security.”

“Now what does that really mean?” William raised an eyebrow. “Why are you also complimenting me when you know the reason I’m here?”

“Will,” the major gently hushed, “I'm not going to push you like the usual Union Aerostiff -- I'm not going to do that to any of the men here -- but you also have to make the effort to stay rational like the sergeant even I know you still really are.”

William looked down at his tray again.  It was empty, but he didn't look away from it.  Dacote asked, “Would it make you feel better if I told you we have all the meds you’ve been needing?”

“It'd help make up for the hell I've been put through to get here.”

The major and William exchanged nightly farewells in the muted daylight of Phobos’ artificial atmosphere.  Spaceflight was most definitely jet lag on steroids.  When they were done eating and returned their trays, the twenty five new recruits were led out of the cafeteria, across the hangar foyer, and to a smaller hall lined with silvery metallic doors.  These were the little boxes that each soldier would be put in during their time to sleep.  They felt safe enough to change uniform in, being lit with warm lights and comfortably locked with heavy steel internal mechanisms.  The walls were strong and kept the noise from outside or the A/C’s hum to a barely discernible whisper -- satisfyingly quiet compared to the vast majority of screaming loud abodes on Earth.

A smooth and reassuringly electronic speaker broke the wall of anonymity between William and the staff member outside.  Her voice alone almost cured his current anxiety, but the medications she handed through the vertically opening man-sized door were much more appreciated.  He sat on his bed in the darkened lighting mode in his small unit and counted the pills in his cup.  They did care here… perhaps he actually could make up for his loss of control with his past superiors.  Dacote was almost like a father, or at least a kind uncle.  It shouldn't be hard to get along with him.

The pills began to work their modern magic faster and harder than usual, what with him having had to do without for an extended time during the cheap space cruise over.  Nothingness overcame his vision as he laid splayed out on the mattress.  Nothingness and dark shapes dancing about, begging to be seen yet fading into the ether when looked at.  He was dreaming.

*  *  *

The next day was spent much more normally.  Each of the men had an expectable schedule they could look forward to of breakfast, field training, lunch, weight training, dinner, and free time until nightly meds.  When the filling breakfast of local foods was finished, the men’s major introduced them to their new uniform in the store room at the second floor.  With thick windows spanning the three of the walls facing into the compound, it was bright almost like a true morning without the need for false lighting.

Dacote began to announce instructions for the men as each of them procedurally donned their dark green plated vests, with a near unbreakable spacecraft-like matte surface clearly visible in the natural light.  Underneath the armor laid a slate grey perforation-resistant shirt, along with similarly fibered greenishly hued cargo pants coordinated to their vest.  As Space Marines of the UAC, all the other men were given Impact Reduction Boots like William and the few other of his original squad mates that were still around were already familiar with.

For practice, Dacote had each of the twenty-five hop out the opened window down feet first onto the lunar dirt -- lightly browned by the moisture of the Phobos compound.  Pneumatic pistons affixed to the reinforced and spring-cushioned heels of their boots absorbed the shock of such otherwise damaging leaps.  Of course William was the first to break the ice for the rest of the men new to such hardware.

Once all of them including Dacote, wearing only the boots as their instructor, touched foot on the ground they began jogging.  The Major led them along the irregular, anciently cratered ground past a stacked cylindrical greenish metal building in the center of the compound that spat out a column of breathable, steaming air from a series of tubes on the roof.  Towards the other end of the large circular area were just a set of smaller and grungier rusting bunkers -- a sort of miniature military complex.  Here the ground was flat like an actual field.

The heavy-set instructor announced as they all caught their breath, “Each of you are issued a 10-mil automatic pistol; you may find it at the holsters on your hips.  Thirty meters away at the other end of this range are your targets.  Five of you at a time, unload one mag firing one shot at a time.”

Dacote made sure to randomize the men after the first five eager to begin practice.  William was part of the fifth rotation, and stood at the line etched in the dirt with the Major to his left and a certain wiry aerospace mechanic to his right.  The wind swirling in the terraformation dome whipped his rusty blond crew cut, his right hand hovering near his new pistol, his feet set slightly apart.

“Unload!” Dacote hollered, with the last syllable cut off by the start of the former high sergeant's barrage.  The first two shots came a bit slowly as William familiarized himself with the odd recoil of the weapon and the next ten blasted deep blue sprays of paint from the spongy innards of the target, showing them all to have landed within the definite range of a point-blank bullseye.  The other four Marines were still finishing their magazines when everyone noticed the sound of a spent clip already hitting the ground.

Everyone watched in tense silence as Dacote quietly asked William to reload.  The major instructed him (and by extension everyone else) how to set the pistol to fire fully automatically, and said once more, “Blazcowicz, unload.”

William set his wrist and held down the trigger.  Twelve shots blasted apart the silence with twelve more splats of paint soaking the face of the target. The mechanism in the gun was slowed just enough for him to reorient between each shot like usual.  “Hot shit!” Dacote exclaimed while slamming his palm on his student's shoulderpad, “Just as fast!  You have quite a steel wrist, the world lacks the finesse I'm seeing coming from you guys.”

After several more rotations of all the men later, swapping firing modes and learning the ins and outs of this specialized model of handgun, they all jogged back through the rough terrain to the Hangar.  Lunch welcomed them, which was eaten quickly and with little supervision required.  However, at least one odd man wearing a formal button down shirt incessantly tucked in always stood by.  An earpiece was enough to give away his position as UAC supervisor, regardless of if their logo was embroidered into the face of his breast pocket or not.

Needless to say, this made William and plenty of others uncomfortable.  There was always at least one pair of eyes on the official during the entire period.  When it was over, the men went to the adjacent gym hall in a similar style to the cafeteria, lined with iron-plated columns of cables and lights like a parthenon.  William tried his hand at a punching bag.  He became bored of it once he dug a roughly fist-shaped depression in its face and had enough of its exaggerated swinging.

Not long later, that too was over.  It was free time, and everyone returned to the foyer.  Dacote spent much of his time talking with the other over twenty new troops.  He was getting to know them, gaining their trust -- aided at this time by his gentle rabbit.  William felt odd here… but at the same time he fought his gut to reassure himself that logically, there was nothing inherently wrong with this place.  Just the life he was forced to lead.

In the middle of the foyer the former high sergeant leaned back in a deep set of leather-like chairs.  The major sat down across from him, a few meters away.  Daisy fidgeted in his arms, which firmly held her back and calmly stroked her until she too was still.  Dacote continued to wordlessly look at William with the red glint of a nearby neon exit sign reflecting off of his bright eyes.

Will broke the silence.  “Evening, Major.”

“Evening, Sergeant Blazcowicz,” Dacote replied with the same inflection, but in his deeper voice.

The Major was almost staring.  Was that just paranoia?  Space paranoia?  William shook that from his thoughts, something else was going on.  He asked, “Are you alright, major?”

“Yes.  A ty? ”

Will stared back in confusion.  The glint from the exit sign was almost glaring.  “Pardon me?”

“Polish for ‘And you?’  I thought you might know some of the language is all.”

William shrugged.  “I'm sorry.”

Dacote returned to an older subject.  “I can't get your last name off my mind, especially after seeing you at today's lead.  Who was your father?”

“I don't remember much about him, to be honest.  I was mostly raised by a guy who worked for the UAC.  Surrogate father.”

The major nodded.  Daisy suddenly fidgeted more forcefully for a moment, causing Dacote to nudge from his seat to keep her from jumping out of his lap.  When the two men returned their gaze to each other, the red glint was no longer visible in the major’s eyes.  He seemed to sit more naturally.

William decided to skip over this bump in the conversation.  “I remember my grandfather was a spy in World War II,” he continued, “Somebody once told me.”

Dacote tilted his head a bit and interjected, “I know that, I read your file.  He disappeared; MIA, right?”

The former sergeant felt very strange.  “Oh,” he muttered before picking his voice back up, “That must be.  I never knew what ended up of him.”

The major cracked a smile, then soured a bit in retrospect.  “We don't know either.  The governments involved at the time had blacked out the end of the records on that Blazcowicz asap.”

“At least I kept his name,” William grunted while stepping up, “Yours sounds a bit Navajo yourself.”

It was again time for the men to rest for the ‘night.’  Really there was almost nothing in the way of day/night patterns on Phobos, aside from Mars itself sometimes eclipsing the sun.  Funny, that was about to happen soon according to an electronic bulletin board in the foyer.  An orderly gave William his pills and soon after his day was over.

Next morning there were a heavier number of officials around during breakfast.  Some attempts were made to speak to them, which were met by silence or movement to a different area.  Dacote was nowhere to be found until it was time to head to the second floor again.  They each took a visored, dark beige helmet from a cart handled by an official on the way to the stairs, and upon meeting the major they were told to put them on.

The helmets were similarly plated like their vests, with heavy amounts of padding and small mechanisms inside.  They appeared to have a particle mask on the front.

Once the twenty-six were on the ground, the major began to explain during the usual trek, “These helmets you wear have fiber optic layers laminated within the visors.  Feel free to switch them on via the button below your left ear inside the rim; they will show you the current air content.”

William and the others did just so, and within the glass pale numbers were displayed arranged within a heads up display.  They described the composition of the oxygen-rich manufactured atmosphere within the Phobos compound, and the current power and integrity levels of the helmet’s functions.  Dacote continued as they neared the other side with the firing range and rusting bunkers, “Behind that power button is the switch control for the Rebreather Unit, and behind that controls the LED floodlights.  ...Let's try out some heavier weaponry today.”

During this training exercise the men were familiarized with shotguns and a type of handheld six-barreled 10mm gatling gun, operated by a small motor and chain.  The gun itself was fairly light for a multibarreled contraption -- it was the amount of ammo it was able to eat through that was the problem to carry, relegated to 120-round drums attached like magazines.  Within the span of several seconds it was capable of tearing a dummy into shreds, assisted with a second pistol grip to fight the recoil.

The shotguns were standard fare.  Their design was as timeless as their reliability: pump-action, wood stocks, 12-gauge.  The barrels were shortened compared to what the men have seen on Earth, just longer than the eight-shell tube, just long enough to pull out of the rifle holster on the backs of their vests.

Before the men knew it, their fun was over.  Dacote was gone again for lunch.  As a result, the men and William’s questions went unanswered.  They had no definitive idea why they were being taught a crash course on new weapons and equipment… so instead they began whispering to each other ideas of their own.

At this point the UAC officials vulturing around the halls had a sudden radio squeal emanate from their walkie-talkies.  This was followed by their immediate exit from the hangar itself, prompting such confusion from the men they returned to silence.

When lunch was over it was easy enough for them all to go to the gymnasium on their own.  William set himself up at a blue-carpeted pedestal-like half-a-room near the exit to the lower maintenance halls.  He sat at a machine where he could exercise his pectorals, pressing his arms inwards.  The weight was staggering.  A bald-shaven former lower sergeant took up bench pressing next to him where they could speak together.

He started first, pushing weights up and down, “Will, you find it funny there's no buggards around?  It's like when we had the academy to ourselves.”

William glanced over.  “Usually someone had to suddenly die for that to happen, right?”

The lower sergeant kept up his bench pressing.  Will paused and whispered, “Taylor, you have to be logical.”

He paused as well.  “You mean rationalize everything?”

“I can't believe I have to be the substitute sergeant again.”  William set the weight to his machine higher.  Taylor noticed and commented, “Damn man, I've always thought people saying you could crush a skull was an exaggeration.”

William later ended his period’s routine by holding the weight of his last machine for five seconds, then let it slam down.  The loud metal bang reverberated through the adjacent halls and was interrupted by his hollering that it was dinner time -- now.  Everyone else only began to shuffle out half a minute after he was long gone, already into the cafeteria.

Odd, the sky outside was dark.  The heavy mist of the false atmosphere condensing in the dropping temperatures blocked out the starlight.  Time was creeping by, slowly passing for the encroaching black outside.  Soon floodlights at each of the major buildings turned on.

An aerospace mechanic asked the food server what was going on while he was in line.  “Mars passing over us,” he gruffly replied, “Another eclipse.”

The extra fluorescent lights inside the cafeteria were all on to make up for the lapsing brightness outside.  They made a returning Dacote look especially haggard in the face.  He shuffled his heavy, tired feet to sit across from William as he ate.  The higher-ranking man roughly set his elbows onto the table.

“Major,” Blazcowicz greeted calmly, “We've been worried about you.”

“I can guess,” Dacote replied while rubbing his eyes, “I apologize.  Did they do well under you?”

“Who?”

“The other recruits.  Were you able to keep things quiet during my absence?”

William raised a finger as he swallowed a bite.  “It's all the silence and absences that worry us.”

The major softly set his hands down.  “I wanna go thank all of you personally for taking all this…” he sighed, “Let's be honest -- bullshit, all so well so far.”

William interjected, “I'll be honest too: none of us’ll be so cooperative for much longer when we have no clue why we're here aside from an advanced form of punishment devised by the UAC.”

“Heh, thanks for being so brutally honest.  I can tell why you can lead a squad.  The question is, do you have what it takes to be a Space Marine?”

Will leaned forward.  “Well, what does being a Space Marine really take?”

Dacote lifted himself from the table, grinning sarcastically, “I really don't know what it takes either, William.  They told me to just teach you guys how to use the equipment.  It was my silly idea to try to fuse old-fashioned care with modern-day generalization.”

As the major shuffled off into the foyer with William getting up from his tray, UAC officials returned to the building.  One approached the major and quickly muttered, “Another d--” and was harshly interrupted by Dacote shoving him.  His voice became sterner and more growling than William had ever heard it, “Go.  You will speak when I allow it.”

With the snap of a wrist the men were alone yet again.  William was frustrated again.  Frustrated at the stone wall everyone working for the UAC represented.  When his friends finishing up their dinner asked him what was going on, he told them it was ‘the usual.’

Rec time was mostly tense and quiet.  Everyone was coming to the same conclusions as William, and were similarly becoming ‘frustrated.’  That was the technical term used by psychologists.  Taylor corrected it to “fucking pissed,” but the mechanic who finally introduced himself as Shawn said “dull murderous rage” captured the desire that the men had.

An embarrassed-looking orderly approached the scattered crowd in the foyer and sheepishly announced, “I-I’m sorry, everyone…”

“For what?!”

The orderly started stepping backwards to avoid any impending madness.  “We ran out of meds.”

Met with staring from an assembly of statues, the orderly summarily left.  Shawn muttered to the loose group of himself, Will and Taylor while anxiously flapping his hand on his knee, “Now I'm fucking pissed, too.”

Taylor leaned near Shawn.  “Are you thinking what I'm thinking?”

William had to interject.  “Don't think.  Not right as your meds have been cut off; not you.”

Taylor set his brow and mocked surprise with his arms.  “Why do you gotta be so aggro?  You say I'm a cock but you, man…”

“It’s what you understand.  I care about how I deal with you.”

Shawn jumped in more calmly, “Listen to how you describe that: ‘how I deal with you.’  Try to be more like Dacote and understanding of other people as… well, more than just problems.”

William turned his head to the younger man.  He heavily breathed through his nose as he couldn't think of what to reply with, and resorted to standing.  “I'm going to try to sleep before I go crazy,” he stated, then more loudly announced to the room, “I'd suggest everyone else get their asses to sleep with me!”

He stood, looking at all the others stare back at him.  He was unintimidated.  He more feared for their own safety, being locked in a building together again.  “Nobody?  Are you all that paranoid?”  Still, silence.  He began irritatedly strutting to his assigned room, grunting one last goodnight.  He wasn't going to be the substitute for the UAC any longer.

His door was locked.  He was in his nightly slacks, sitting on the side of his bed.  William could only imagine what kind of plans may be tossing back and forth between the certifiably unstable men out there.  He hoped it wouldn't actually culminate in violence.  He prayed Dacote or somebody would come back to convince them all to go to bed.  William no longer had any persuasion over them.

The former sergeant laid himself down on the soft white mattress.  Counting through mathematical sequences he was forced to learn as a pasty white child, he quickly began to bring himself to a place where he was sleepy.  Time and space blurred to nothing, to slumber.

Breaking the firmament within the realm of his subconscious was a faint orange light.  It grew in both size and intensity, approaching him.  He attempted to move away from it -- within the dream -- but his motions were nearly paralyzed.  The furious light roared towards him until it engulfed his being, stopping once he was standing within a vast plain of fire.

Burning, smoking, whipping flames stretched across his vision.  He felt no heat, but was rather getting colder.  The cold in his body concentrated into his chest as he noticed that within the flames stood six wicked figures surrounding him in a ring.  They just stood there, unmoving yet undeniably alive with surreally wisping eyes like the flames all around.

Once he locked eyes with the tallest of the beings, its deathly glow became the only thing he could see.  The cold in his chest began to feel like a blade sticking into it.  His heartbeat started becoming audible, echoing into his mind louder and louder until it sounded like someone was breaking into his skull.

The fires disappeared, being replaced by a grey room.  The slow, nearly rhythmic pounding failed to skip a beat.  William sat and stared ahead, noticing in the previously featureless grey wall was a grey door.  It was actually just a rectangular shape on the wall, but he knew it was a door.  The pounding was making dreaming thought more difficult than it had to be.

William moved forward.  The banging was louder here.  He laid his hands upon the wall, seeing if it was making the nightmarish noise.  He had to rest his head on the wall to glean more detail.  The pounding was screaming into his mind over and over, nearly deafening him.

He saw another rectangular shape on the wall.  Despite the terror of the noise, he could tell it was outside of this world.  This world of the grey room.  That other shape on the wall could open the door, Will knew it.  But… what was it out there making the noise?  He stepped back from the wall, yet the pounding wasn't any softer.  He stepped backwards to the seat on which he came to the grey room.

Upon contact, he left the room just as quickly as he entered.  The pounding was at last gone.  Just a dream… just a dream.  The rest was spent in the solitude of nothingness until William finally awoke in the morning, feeling thoroughly unrested.  That was to be expected, he was suddenly put back on his meds and then just as suddenly taken off of them.  It didn't change the fact he hated the nightmares, especially ones inspired by this unfamiliar territory.

But he wasn't allowed to hate his place in life.  He was just supposed to live it.  So, he changed into his unarmored uniform to start the next day.  William groggily fumbled his fingers on the control panel for his metal door and wiped his eyes clean.  When the funk cleared, red consumed his vision in the hallway and foyer.  What was once white and steel is now smeared and splattered everywhere, somberly lit by the returned light of Phobos.

William returned to his seat, wide-eyed.  He forced himself to blink as he tried to think of what he was taught to do -- and he came up blank at every turn.  It took him a moment to reengage his normal train of thought.  There must have been some kind of unspeakable evil that tore through here in the night; a clear and present danger.

He shakily stood from his bed and donned his equipment and armor that he luckily took with him last night, sans helmet.  He pulled the handgun from its holster and stepped into the blood.  Across the hall he saw the body of a scientist crumpled up backwards and resting against the wall, skull caved in.  That would explain the pounding dream.  He appeared to be running to one of the armored bedrooms, away from whatever it was that did… this.  This horror.

William held his pistol up in a defensive posture as he slowly, carefully stepped one foot at a time around differing masses of slippery blood, strewn bodies, and hanging broken lights.  The hallway into the biological area was dark and illuminated by only an intermittently flashing light.  Within the room itself there were various shattering and clanging sounds, and then silence as he approached the pitch-black room.

A cluster of flames gathered in the hand of an ugly thing, illuminating the side of its hissing face, mouth full of sharp and moving roach-leg appendages with eyes glowing red.  Faced with the creature's alert, he immediately shot his hands towards its head and held down the trigger.  He let go at the second shot in his burst.  A body toppled to the floor, with that damn rabbit suddenly running out of the shadows and between William’s legs.

As he turned around, three of the bodies he swore were dead earlier were standing in the middle of the foyer.  Daisy shot around them as they moved towards William, who shot four bullets into the head of the closest until it gave out and fell to its knees.  The other two stumbled ahead unfazed, forcing the former sergeant to fire at the knees of each of them.  The specialized 10mm rounds were enough to wreck their legs and make the reanimated bodies start to crawl.  They would not stop.

He unloaded the last two rounds of his clip to stop one crawling zombie, then was forced to lay a heavy boot-assisted stomp on the head of the last that grabbed one of his ankles.  That didn't quite work, he'd have to stomp harder.

The guttural vocalizations coming from the monster’s destroyed vocal chords were stopped with a room-deadening metallic splat.  William exchanged magazines in his gun, with the clacking gun and bouncing clip breaking the ambience of crackling lights.  He observed the bodies he just dispatched, finally recognizing familiar faces within the soaking of red and gouged flesh and bone.  These were his mates.  They were all part of the team shoved onto the ship to Mars, and he was for some ungodly reason the only one chosen to be left alive.

This was all kinds of fucked up.  William walked into the cafeteria to get a window out on the compound, and the misty grey mountains were footed with a nasty shade of irradiated dark green.  The cratered surface of Phobos was now filled with seas of nuclear waste, backed up from some sort of refinery failure.  Now it was somehow even more fucked up.

He had no answer to this.  What even was the question?  Hell, it was hard to get a single thought straight with his heart pounding and breath cycling from this kind of stress no man should ever undergo.

“What the fuck even was that thing in there?!” he yelled, looking down at the floor with his hands on the sides of his head.  The iron smell of blood and rotting death prevented any clear thought from coming through.  The best William could think was that if he couldn't go over the ground, he would go under it.

He went toward the maintenance exit past the gym, hurriedly stomping his way to the hydraulic doors and giving their control panel a commanding slap.  They separated into three segments with chemical and ozone-smelling air spewing from the cracks in the bulkhead.  More sudden hissing, and it was time to act again.

William barged straight into the darkness, towards the flames.