FHD Remix Chapter 24
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Chapter 24: Gates of Hell
[Features Inside The Fire, second track of Disturbed's 2008 album Indestructible, 2008 Reprise/WMG, for which Tatakai was named. The author noticed that an ornament very similar to the cage you ride in Doom 3's twentieth stage appears in the official video on 5 March 2010]
Official Inside The Fire video: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=c7ZUIeujgDA (c) 2008 Reprise/WMG (warning: graphic imagery) Inside The Fire lyrics only: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gkhwK6Wlod8 (c) 2008 Reprise/WMG
[Doom 3 eighteenth stage]
Tatakai has just penetrated to Sector 3 of the Delta Complex. Deployed, she is very quiet, always able to hear her enemies before they notice her. Waiting by the door at the security checkpoint, she has precisely ranged the two rifle-armed zombies and one shotgunner waiting to ambush her as she opens it. She extends her wing across the corridor, triggering the door's auto-sensor and drawing fire just as it opens. Before they see anything but feathers, and impact fused grenade hits the floor in their midst.
Betruger, on the level below, senses the action and panics, "Destroy the bridge!" he orders as he and his two dodgy bodyguards run towards it.
Tatakai rushes to the window to see this happen, turning her back on the shattered ambuscade. Betruger and his entourage turn right at the bridge to the Delta 4 sector transfer chamber, just before it explodes.
She puts her hand on the window, it glows with the Saviour's light, a bright outline around her palm and fingers.
"Betruger," she says softly.
Dr. Malcolm Betruger, the man who telekinetically haunted her for the last six hours, suddenly turns about, terrified. He looks up to see the glow: Tatakai and her wings spread.
"Surrender the Soul Cube and enjoy the new home you have chosen, Malcolm," she quietly orders, her soft voice reverberating through the structure as Betruger's has done so far.
Betruger plants his feet defiantly and thunders, "You will never defeat me!"
"Not I," she sighs softly, "But the one I serve."
"Kurato is nothing!" He yells in reply.
"We both know who I'm talking about," whispers Tatakai.
Betruger flees, and Tatakai also breaks off her end of the conversation to battle reinforcements who have just teleported in. Malcom Betruger can't stand to hear the title Saviour uttered by his children. The only thing he finds worse is hearing his name, Jesus.
"Destroy her!" Malcolm's order reverberates through the structure.
Minutes later as her pursuit quickens, she is becoming more and more comfortable with her job. As she secures a teleporter she must use to advance her progress, the second of the three in the sector, she mutters, "God, I can't believe I'm getting used to this already."
God smiles, she feels His warmth.
Tatakai, grumpy as ever, raises a captured chaingun to clear the mother of all jams in its feed, a jam which probably saved her from having to take another transfusion. She gruffly plops it on the teleporter's console and disengages the feed motor, irreverently tossing it over her shoulder as she pulls out the ammo belt with her other hand. Then she casually knocks the chaingun onto the floor.
God seems proud of her.
Once scratch is sprayed onto the bullets, she tucks it into a box on her backpack, the rounds now ready for use in her own weapon. She activates the teleporter and heads for the pad, stepping into the beam and beginning the brief journey to a storage room. She sees a tunnel of blood and hears the cries of those forever lost.
God is gone.
Tatakai materializes in the sector's armory and jumps off the pad, alert and ready, but truly, profoundly frightened for the first time since she got to Mars. She breathes a sigh of relief as she realizes:
God is back.
"Oh, my God!" she gasps.
<Fear not,> the Saviour whispers, < I cannot be heard in hell, but I can still hear you ... I will be with you, even if I can't make you sense it.>
"I can't get used to that," she sobs.
<And neither can the Praeleanthor,> he explains, <They cry for me. They're desperate to hear my voice again and feel my warmth.>
<What are you talking about?> she pleads pensively.
<The Saviour-spawn of this planet, as you will learn. I will let them explain it to you. They inhabit the Soul Cube.>
Tatakai quickens her pace without any further explanation. She moves very rapidly through Delta Sector 3. It is agonizing for her enemies, they would teleport in and usually die one of two ways the moment they materialize: a blast from Tatakai's shotgun from inches away, or a grenade waiting on the floor for them.
Malcolm Betruger races to power up the third prototype teleportal, < I've stopped Swann and Campbell, but she can fly across that gap,> he realizes.
"Where is Greenborough?" Swann asks as he enters the elevator, near Delta Administration in Sector 1, "It is too darn quiet around here."
"I only barely got this down from the satellite before I lost the signal," Jack Campbell explains. "It shows massive infrared rediation coming from Sector 3 ... that's my guess as to where she is."
"She took the long way and now she's ahead of us," Swann mutters. Then they hear the screeching of metal as the elevator starts down.
"Not for long," Campbell swallows.
The elevator car breaks from its rail and plummets down the shaft. While floating inside it, Campbell places his suit's auxilliary respirator over the panic-stricken Counselor's face.
The elevator hits bottom, and Campbell starts immediately to break out of the impact foam that encases the two of them.
Elliot Swann's muffled voice eminates angrily from the midst of the foam, "I can't wait to fire the maintenance department!"
"I can't wait to shoot them!" Campbell, yells as he gets his muzzle clear of the broken doors and aims his BFG 9000 into the corridor the elevator overlooks.
The revenant's vacuous grin is only inches away from his face. The time it takes Jack to reach for his shotgun is suddenly much longer than his life expectancy, and at this range, the super-cannon will make even shorter work of its firer than its target. As the revenant winds up to swat him into oblivion, lightning strikes him square in the back twice, no, three times. He screams and falls on Jack's shoulders.
"Arrggh!" he cries as he pushes this awkward creature from his body, its glowing blue welts erupt into volcanic pustules of putrid orange fire. He throws what's left of the revenant onto its back. The victor raises her plasma rifle, wings deployed at the end of the corridor.
The look on Tatakai's face, a "Sorry, I wish I could chat" as she waits for the transfer chamber door to open. With a solemn nod, the angel disappears to his left.
"Devon!" he cries.
He picks his friend Swann out of the wreck of the elevator.
Betruger's voice reverberates through the structure, "So Devon is her name," he laughs, a throaty, evil laugh. "She is on her way to hell as we speak, and she will never escape ... the portal will be closed, leaving only one way you'll ever see her again!"
Campbell's faith in the Saviour is not as strong, and he is truly afraid that he may be right.
"I have the perfect song for this event ... feeling a little Disturbed, yet?" he taunts.
David Draimian's voice joins his from a recording that is 137 years old. Relentless drums and guitar strings can also be heard:
"Oooooh, Devon won't go to heaven
She's just another lost soul about to be mine again
Leave her, we will receive her
It is beyond your control, will you ever meet again?
"Devon, one of eleven
Who had been rendered unwhole as a little child
She was taken, and then forsaken
You will remember it all, let it blow your mind again"
Jack remembers the size of the group who was drafted from her district, eleven. She never wanted to be a soldier. All her life since she could barely walk, she was fascinated by radios. She wanted to go to college to become a radio engineer and struggled through part time employment to raise the funds. The draft ended her aspirations, and her spectacular performance in early training landed her in the Marine Corps, where she had hoped to make an early exit.
Tatakai makes very quick work of the two Hell Knights who emerged from the large portal in Delta Sector 4. A blast of wind carries her towards it, wings and all. The Saviour orders, "Do not furl!"
Betruger is unable to separate her weapons from her as she goes through. Her feathers protect her.
"Devon lies beyond this portal
Take the word of one immortal
"Give your soul to me for eternity
Release your life to begin another time with her
End your grief with me, there's another way
Release your life, take your place inside the fire with her"
The song is inescapable as the two climb the service ladder back up to the administration lobby, Jack in the lead. "You hold onto that ladder, Campbell!" Swann orders from behind.
"Sever, now and forever
You're just another lost soul about to be mine again
See her, you'll never free her
You must surrender it all if you'd like to meet again
Fire for your desire
As she begins to turn cold for the final time
You will shiver, till you deliver
You will remember it all, let it blow your mind again"
Even as the music grates at his soul, Jack continues to climb, hand over hand, one foot in front of the other. "Whatever you say, Counselor," he acknowledges.
"Devon lies beyond this portal
Take the word of one immortal
"Give your soul to me for eternity
Release your life to begin another time with her
End your grief with me, there's another way
Release your life, take your place inside the fire with her
...
"Take it away, yeah
...
"Give your soul to me for eternity
Release your life to begin another time with her
End your grief with me, there's another way
Release your life, take your place inside the fire with her
"Oooooh, Devon, one of eleven
Who had been rendered unwhole as a little child
She was taken, and then forsaken
You will remember it all, let it blow your mind again, man"
Jack Campbell and Elliot Swann emerge at the top of another ladder into a service passageway, panting and exhausted, but still able to fight. They encounter an imp. Jack lowers his shotgun and blasts her from about five feet away. Chunks fly off from where the shots hit her, and she recoils, taking a step back, readying one of her trademark fireballs. Jack works the pump rapidly sending the smoking plastic casing bouncing off the wall to his left. Scratched or not, no imp can survive the blast from a shotgun whose muzzle is pressed against her chest. She does a dramatic backflip as the blast rings through the small corridor.
His target dispatched, Jack drops to his knees and tops up his shotgun, "I wish I had whatever she has."
Elliot asks, "What do you mean?"
Jack, shotgun reloaded, turns to his charge and says, "Remember that Monorail Skybridge?"
"Nope," Swann says, "Enlighten me."
"Just after it collapsed, but before the transfer bay doors closed, I saw her in action, on her back against two ... she called them Chompers, with those piddly Enforcer rifles," Jack picks up an Enforcer clip that happened to be lying on the floor next to him, pops four of the tiny rounds out of it, "I counted four flashes for each one, and they fell out of the sky. It takes me two shotgun blasts at close range."
"I’m not a Marine," the lawyer pants as Jack pulls two of the meaty twelve-guage shotgun rounds from his belt.
In his right hand, Jack shows him the two shotgun rounds, "It takes me this to kill a Chomper at point blank range." Each of the rounds is as big around as his thumb and three inches long [18.5 * 76mm]
Opening his right hand, with the four tiny Enforcer rounds, "From twenty metres away, this is what she uses." The rounds are diminutive in his hand, each of the shotgun rounds is about eleven times as large and almost ten times as heavy.
[Author's note: Both types of ammunition exist today as the 12 gauge 3" shotshell and the SS192, or 5.7 * 28mm ammunition for the FN Herstal Five-seveN handgun and P90 rifle, upon which the Enforcer apparently draws its inspiration.]
"And she can fly!" Swann gasps.
Jack Campbell recalls the conversation they had just after they landed on Mars, "Right now, we're pretty useless ... she's running damage control now."
"I'm glad she's on our side," Swann sighs.
Next: FHD Remix Chapter 25: Sortie To Hell
