A.N. Hellgate London, and Doom 3 with a touch of W40k in the mix. That's the kind of pleasant scenery that you'll be seeing. Thanks a lot for the reviews guys, hope you all didn't get too attached to some of the members of Exodus…
Hell
Imagine if you can, a world without light, a sky of such a putrid color that merely looking at the roiling tempest makes you retch. Imagine the smell of decaying bodies, blood, grime, filth, and toxins where simply breathing the air can strip your throat and turn your lungs into a bloody mass of useless tissue. Imagine burnt out buildings, wreckage, fires, cities in ruin, imagine piles of blood caked bones pilled high in the worship of some despicable god. Imagine buildings smeared with gore and riddled with holes, skulls and bodies staked upon jagged pieces of metal, some decomposed, others still with maggots crawling through them. If you can imagine that then you have caught a mere glimpse, the tiniest fraction, of Hell itself.
Exodus appeared unspectacularly in the middle of a crater, small bits of debris raining down upon them, covering their black armored forms in a fine layer of grime. The suits filtration systems kicked in immediately as the air was recognized as unsafe to breath. Snipe steadied his breathing as the sight before him made him sick to the stomach, the very atmosphere seemed to pulse with an overpowering sense of death. It was a sight, a feeling, that he could never have possibly imagined, that non of them could have imagined. Swearing a stream of Russian he took a moment to compose himself as they all did.
"The fuck happened here…" Pyro said more to himself then to anyone else.
"Don't know, but if you ask me we fit in pretty well here." Bulldog observed. And it was true, the eight of them looked like they belonged here, it was is if they were daemons brought up in heaven and now they had finally found home. One could easily have mistaken their giant armored forms, red glowing visors and rifles with chainsaws on the ends and other exotic weaponry to have all come from such a place as this.
"Stalker, scout things out. We've got a long way to go and I don't want to be bogged down in a fire fight, take a longer route if you need to."
Nodding Stalker sprinted towards the edge of the crater, climbing up the steep slop he took a quick look out from the cover before disappearing over its lip. The others slowly followed after him, letting Stalker build up a sufficient lead as they took a good look out into the world around them.
"This looks pretty modern." Snipe observed as he looked out at a demolished city no more then a few miles ahead of them. "The cars, the skyscrapers, I'd say that whatever happened here didn't happen too long ago. Say fifty to a hundred years tops."
"Which begs the question what the fuck happened?" Bulldog commented.
"The virus?" JJ proposed. "Alos had said that scans indicated a near zero percent in human life, and the other half percent could easily have been a glitch."
"Couldn't have been the virus or else why didn't it take out both worlds? Even if they had worked separately they would have communicated and so the virus would have ended up on both worlds and would have taken both of them out." Said Sarge.
"Well viruses can lay dormant for years you know." JJ informed them. "What's to say that it didn't simply go dormant for thousands of years, on both planets and it simply happened to hit this one first. And besides it wouldn't even have to be the original Virus that pretty much wiped out the galaxy, when you're working with genetics and forces on this kind of level and scale pretty much anything can happen. I doubt the original humans to be rookies or not know what they're doing, but still as Alos himself said this is all experimental. Rebooting a species isn't exactly textbook kind of material you know."
"Might not have been a mistake made by Alos and his team either, could have easily been muggles and wizards working together on something and then bam, wrong potion and you're done." Said Sarge, he had learned the hard way how easily potions and spells could go wrong. "Either way, this planet's days are numbered." Sarge lifted himself out of the crater and followed after Stalker who had signaled the okay.
The bomb had really done its job well, there was literally nothing but dirt in a three mile radius around the blast, a fact that was booth good and bad. The good was that nothing was alive and so couldn't surprise them. The bad was that if anything was nearby it would head on over and since Exodus had nowhere to take cover until they hit the city could easily take them out. The map showed that they were to head north and slightly to the east, around a small mountain range, and then through a valley. Straight ahead was a giant looming city, and potentially a way through the mountains too, a way that could potentially save them days of travel.
"Incoming, one thirty. Airborne." Stalker warned.
As one Exodus got down on one knee, weapons poised and ready. Flying high from the city were what appeared to be a half dozen gargoylish creatures flying on crimson leathery wings. They had talons, barbs, and what looked like bionic weapons fused to their arms, and their screech like a thousand rusty nails grating against a chalkboard.
"Got em." Destroyer stood up hefting his Shark rocket launcher. `Burst' A mechanism in the weapon swiveled to load up the desired ammunition type, setting a lock onto each of the incoming flyers he pulled the trigger. A cluster of six rockets linked together was fired as one, streaking through the putrid sky before coming apart mid flight. As they came apart they each locked onto their own designated targets. Homing in each of the rockets made slight adjustments before impacting in a small series of bright red explosions. All that was left was small burning pieces of the gargoyles fell down harmlessly to the ground.
As soon as the threat was eliminated Exodus got up and sprinted towards the cover of the looming skyscrapers before them. The light from the grotesque sky above seemed to give everything a red goreish ting, it was as if it was a permanent sunset night, there was enough light to see, but not enough to see well. Shadows seemed to creep everywhere, a hanging light bulb from a pole sparked above them, somehow there was still some sort of power leaking throughout the city.
Exodus crept along the walls, moving as quickly as they could through the shadows, censors and weapons trained and ready as they came to an intersection. As Sarge scanned the intersection he heard a sort of ripping noise, like the tearing of flesh and bone above him. Looking up, a piece rotting flesh hit his shoulder. There above them was a four legged beast not much bigger then an averaged sized dog, it had a large razor filled maw and feet with talons on the end that sunk into the concrete as it brutally devoured a human body, its mouth and eyes open in a look of horror, its head hanging by thin tendrils from the rest of its body. As he looked at it, it saw him and without a thought sent its scared form sailing towards him, gapping maw wide open with bits of the corpse still in it. The creature disappeared in a blue ball of plasma.
"Stalker hold position, we're going to check something out." Sarge ordered looking up at the demolished third story.
"Cover me." He walked back a few meters and ran at the wall, with the help of protruding pieces of pipe and blasted out chunks of wall he climbed up to the third story to inspect the corpse.
"What is it Sarge?" Pyro asked.
"Check this out." He transmitted what he was seeing through his HUD. "This dude is fresh."
"I'm coming up." JJ said when he spotted what looked like a rifle at the edge of Sarge's video feed.
Curiosity getting the better of him Sarge inspected the revolting body. Although there wasn't much to it the body told them a lot of things. "Looks like militia, nothing serious, some light body armor, maybe some rations. Been dead a couple weeks or so."
"Looks a normal assault rifle." JJ inspected an unimpressive rifle that lay a few feet away. Taking a look around the blasted out room he noticed that the door was locked and that there were parts of other bodies lying around. "Looks like something hit this building and took em all out, a grenade, mortal shell perhaps, nothing too big." He walked towards the door and kicked it in, the wood shattering under the impact.
A tiny, barely audible beep sounded a split second before a small explosion hurtled JJ backwards and out of the room, his legs hitting a part of the none blown out wall sent him head first into the pavement below. Thankfully all parts of the armor had a levitation charm on them and so JJ didn't hit the ground full force, the charm saved his life.
Grunting he lifted himself up off the ground, swearing in German. "I'm okay." He grunted as his brothers helped him up. Running a diagnostic of his armor he made a mental note to personally thank the engineers and wizards who had built it, modified it and ultimately saved his life. Other then some scratches and a burn mark the armor was all right.
"You know that half percent of human life doesn't seem like such a glitch anymore." JJ re-evaluated their position. "What do you think Sarge?"
"I say that doing some exploration could be worthwhile. Lets take a look at what we know shall we?" He suggested. "Alos told us that whatever it was that was here was trying to get through the Doorway and it was close to succeeding. We know that there is a half percent human population, seemed like a glitch at first but I seriously doubt that now. The bomb that we sent through wiped out whatever was trying to get through the Door, and now we find a squad of humans here. Which begs the question; did we just annihilate a group of daemons or humans?"
"The bomb made sure that we ain't going to find out through physical evidence that's for damn sure." Bulldog put in.
"Then there was the light, it was sparking. Means that power has to be coming from somewhere; could be an autonomous generator or manned power unit with something operating it." Said JJ.
"There any way you could find out where the power is coming from?" Sarge asked him. "Could be our chance to make contact."
"There is one way, we'll only get one shot and then it will melt the lines and possibly take down the entire network if the power source isn't protected very well."
"How?"
"One of your BFG power cells could keep a city the size of London running for a week. The way that your BFG works is that it takes clumps of that power and sends it out in one bolt of energy, but when you hook it up to anything else all that power goes in one quick stream frying any sort of normal circuit. Unless they're already using plasma technology we could end up frying the whole system. And even then the odds of a city this size having its own power source is unlikely, it probably coming from some other source that could be anywhere." JJ explained to them. "So what we do is hook up one of your cells to a power line." He pointed to a fallen power line across the street. "And see which way the bolt goes. Most of the power will only go through the main lines and since most lines are spread out like a web we can get a good guess of where the regulating station is. Upon overload the systems are designed to have the power go towards a central station so as it doesn't blow the crap out of the surrounding area."
"We'll actually be able to see a bolt of electricity?"
"Yes, and we'll be able to follow the slag that's left of the power lines."
Sarge threw him a cell. "Go for it."
"Would the power station turn to slag too?" Snipe asked still a bit unsure about this whole idea. If there were humans depending on the power he didn't want to destroy it all, but then again if there were daemons or what not, then what the hell?
"Maybe, but then it again it might just assimilate the energy. Who knows, its not like we ever tried, its all hypothetical." He answered, fiddling around with the power line and plasma cell as the rest of Exodus stood well back.
"Twenty bucks says it back fires on him." Joker wagered.
"No deal." Bulldog declined.
JJ had barely scrambled back a few feet when a white blast of energy rocketed along the power lines towards an unknown destination.
"It's zigzagging north west." Stalker informed them. While they were talking he had climbed up on a room to see where it would go.
"Well then, north west it is." Sarge said.
"So we're just going to the power station to see if anyone is alive there?" Stalker asked Sarge through the comm. as he climbed down and started scouting out another path.
"No, power stations have logs, computers, networks we can hack into. If there are innocent people here I'm not going to just blow them all to hell without at least trying to help them." Sarge answered. Funny, they were already in hell.
Splitting up into two groups they moved along the walls through the city, one group going on side of the street, the other on the other side. As they ran through and inspected their surroundings more and more they realized that this had been one hell of a battle zone. Buildings were burnt down, obliterated, bodies lay like rag dolls, vehicles lay strewn about, rusted and filth covered. Pieces of paper and various random debris was scattered all around, they couldn't read anything, most of it was burnt or destroyed beyond the basic recognition of a sign or poster.
At one point they even came upon a barricade, cars were laid end to end with sandbags and random bits of tables and miscellaneous cover hastily scrambled together. The twisted wreckage of a tank lay on its side a bit off from the middle, various bits of evidence of bodies strewn about it. Two melted chainguns sat at the sides of the barricade, a charred hand gripped one of the handles, its thumb laying on what would have been the trigger. The barricade itself was torn to pieces; whatever had attacked it had attacked dead center and plowed right through, taking the beleaguered defenders in the onslaught.
The sky above them erupted in lightning, raining down black greasy drops of viscous liquid.
"Can anyone tell what kind of tank that was?" Sarge asked looking upon the pitiful remains of the tank. "My best guess is APC, or something light, way too small to be packing anything powerful."
"Want to know something scary?" Joker examined the tank more carefully.
"Amuse us." His Joker replied.
"Whatever took this tank out was not an explosion or a shell." He continued looking, his voice getting worried.
"What?" Joker had known his older brother all his life, they were best friends and he had never heard his voice sound like this.
"Something ripped this thing apart, with claws or something. These are tear marks, like stabs, there is no charring or burns, or anything to indicate a fire or explosion, or even energy based weapons like the BFG." His voice quavered slightly.
"What the fuck rips apart a tank, how the fuck do you rip apart a fucking tank?" Destroyer came up to examine it himself. When he noticed some of the bodies were literally flattened, as if something had stepped on them.
"Must be real cute and cuddly." Joker tried to lighten the situation but really couldn't.
"Turbo Penetrator" Snipe's weapon cycled through to his most powerful anti armor bullet, it was so powerful that when fired it actually produced recoil on a weapon that wasn't supposed to produce any. "It has to get to us first."
"Lets keep our heads clear guys, no sense in worrying about it until we actually get to it. Just be prepared for anything. Back on earth we were at the top of the food chain, now we've fallen down a few notches, but together we're still the biggest, baddest, motherfuckers in the galaxy. We had species that were scared of us, entire armies would flee if they even caught whisper that we, Exodus, were there. Remember that." Sarge rallied them, they weren't used to this sort of thing, being at the bottom with everything trying to kill you. They had trained knowing that they were the best; they had used that knowledge, that confidence and proved it. But now there was doubt, and doubt clouded judgment, and clouded judgment meant death.
A.N. Going to end this chapter right here to give you all a taste of what things are like, hope you enjoyed it. Read, review, and stay cool guys.
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