Rone quickly gathered up as much of the armor as he could, putting it on over the strange wireframe exosuit, amazed that the pressure suit had molded into the metal frame seamlessly. Things were getting very strange around here. He could still ‘sense’ the metal floor and the rough surface of the recovered armor; the only real positive he could see was that now he was so strongly armored at this point, and that damage to his person was almost impossible. But stumbling across one of the MP5s that Ash enjoyed carrying made Rone begin to tear up, and reminded him of his brother’s assault rifle, which wasn’t present. Ash’s small Sig-Sauer pistol was still present, but the UAC-issued magazine belts were missing, only a pair of the clips left behind.
Collecting it and whatever ammo remained for both weapons, Rone strapped them to the recovered armor, leaving them within easy reach. The large auto shotgun was missing, but the A-5 was still present along with the Sig-Cow and .45 converted SMG. The remnants of one of the auto-rifles that UAC had self-engineered lay about, alongside the large ammunition case he’d recovered from the hangar. Stumbling over, he cracked it open, relieved to see the very remains of what he couldn’t fit into the skimmers cargo spaces. Plenty of .45 ammo, a box or two of .50AE, more of the mags of caseless ammo for a G11, shotgun shells, and more boxes of the 9mm ammo than he could recall collecting in the first place.
Things weren’t all that bad, but the loss of the brothers was a major setback, and Rone knew that Sarge would feel guilty for leaving them to their own devices, even if Zeux was a vet himself. Remembering what the Doppelganger had stated about Zeux, he wondered how the creature had known which person he was talking about before light dawned on the marble head and he realized that he and Zeux were the only Humans still alive around the Dock of what he hoped was the Toxin Refinery.
Once he had all he could carry on his person, he left the scraps of weapons, ammo, and various personal effects on the plating of the dock, walking over to the rear hatchway leading out, gazing through the thick windows out to the battle raging beyond; cycling on inside, he gazed on through to where Zeux apparently was, dealing with an army of fiends. After considering the risks of running out of air or being shot to death, Rone cycled back into what appeared to be a decontamination or cargo area, past the remnants of the beloved mobile armory once again, and used the next airlock to reach the inner facility. Noting the green residue and orange foam left on the walls and floor, Rone knew the sight of a decontamination airlock when it was before him; barrels of the waste and scientists wearing ‘p-suits’ would pass through here, and load these into the cargo area. But what did the work of off loading the toxin?
Humans couldn’t ride on a transport of that size with that much of the waste as volatile as it was, or so he hoped that UAC wouldn’t spend lives that cheaply up on Phobos.
Cycling through to the inner Dock, he gazed over at the Doppelganger standing next to another creature – the creature was waving like just another of Rone’s friends, the weird alien face forming a surpassingly recognizable smile. Shrugging to himself, he continued on and looked around at the piles of spiky corpses, barely noting a slight chuckle coming from behind. Things looked like a bloody combat zone, with blood spattered across the walls and a few bodies split wide open in the form of an alien Rorschach test, making the trek slippery as organs bounced and slid about underfoot.
Rone couldn’t decide whether things had turned for the better or the worse. He knew that if he reported in to someone Earthside, they wouldn’t believe him.

His name was Vampyro, and he was a leader of the dark, a master of the demonic vampire hybrid horde his Dark Master had created. They all carried poleaxes and strange flesh-and-metal weapons, the thickened leather armor wrapped tightly around their spindly bodies. Glad he needed not to breathe on the surface of the tiny moon, in the middle of his beloved combat. He eagerly awaited the taste of raw flesh, warm blood, and the feeling of control over a life as it died away; the poleaxe in his hands and the weapon across his back felt nearly meaningless to him. The true joy was in the killing with bare hands, the crushing of bone and the tearing of skin.
Damn, how he wanted to rend muscle and sinew with his teeth….
Suddenly something streaked from the building beyond, towards the slaves and the genetic vampire demons that were the soldiers under his command. It exploded strangely, no fire or sound in the vaccum, but plenty of force along with a shockwave that threw nearly thirty of the soldiers to the dirt, mangled and dead, dozens more flung into the outer atmosphere outside of the weak grip on the planet and gliding out of control into space. The shock and suddenness of the attack finally struck him, and he responded by raising the poleaxe high into the air and signaling forward to the troops – they would make the humans pay tenfold for every dead soldier of his.
Blue bolts of energy began slamming into the front ranks of his troops, and suddenly Vampyro raged with anger. Who dared to fight against the inevitable so viciously, with such disregard of who would own their soul in the afterlife? He would make sure they arrived to the meeting, for his Dark Lord to show them the meaning of true suffering.

Bypassing the rest of the inner corridor was easy enough of a decision, even if there were three of us now. The sight of the creepy meter-mouth monster was enough to dissuade us from going in any further as it was, and somehow the diminishing amount of ammo wasn’t a positive sign, either. Cain seemed to have plenty of .50AE rounds and M-14 mags, while Christa had a large stock of .357 speedloaders and more 30-round and 45-round clips in the bandoleer hanging about her armored torso. As we walked I couldn’t help myself, and caught myself staring at her as she moved twice. She wasn’t the cookie-cutter ultra thin bullshit model type, with great curves and a nice walk, pleasant features to match; God, I knew it had been a long time since I’d even been remotely close to a woman in such a long time, but I wasn’t about to let that screw with me now, during live combat.
Looking away for the last time, I kept on walking and forged ahead of the other two and arrived to the large sealed Blue Sector doors. Several of the readouts on the surface indicated that there were leaks in the Refinery’s infrastructure; Hell I knew that already, felt like I’d slogged through enough of the toxic crap but apparently someone else thought otherwise. Sliding the card through the reader, my expression turned from one of curiosity and wandering, to that of panic.
Two of the spiny creatures stood in front of the door, with a smattering of the brainwashed workers standing around with shotguns and semi-automatic carbines, whom began to roar in incomprehensible tones, raising weapons and firing through the two surprised brown creatures without remorse or caring for their allies. Bringing the pump-action to the forward, I expected them to cease, and turn to face us; instead the spinys spat fire at the groups of undead workers, taking all of the rounds that the former humans had in their rough, leathery flesh and continuing on unscathed, ripping into the workers as they fumbled around with unloaded weapons. After they were through, they turned to each other and began laughing, patting each other on the backs like bosom buddies.

Turning to face Christa, Cain, and I, weapons all leveled ahead, they looked absolutely scared shitless, one of them shrieking damn near like a little girl. The moment didn’t last however.
They both snarled in rage, hawking more of the flame out and raising arms, approaching steadily with claws bared and ready on the other hand, already prepared to fail with the fire and be forced to use their talons to render flesh apart from bone. We all opened fire simultaneously, and the creatures fell quickly, all of them shot to Hell as it was: we just finished the job permanently. But our gunshots drew more of the former workers, along with several Marines that were obviously far-gone from even the deepest reaches of humanity. We kept firing, Christa pausing first to holster the empty .357 and draw the Uzi; she began screaming aloud as she fired, the workers pitching to and fro while firing their weapons uselessly at us.
Finally my pump-shotgun ran dry, and I paused to reload it to the brim, but Cain’s large rifle kept booming out the large .308 rounds on full auto, and obliterated the remaining, shambling and desiccated former workers easily. Fewer more stumbled through the smaller doorways, not carrying rifles or handguns but gripping onto shovels and other makeshift polearms, one carrying what was obviously an 80 lb. Sledgehammer awkwardly. Cain’s rifle finally fell silent, dropping it to the ground in front of my kneeling position and dashing forward before I could fire my shotgun in response; his sword suddenly slashed through the air with just a blur, decapitating two and lopping the head from the sledgehammer as it came rushing towards him. With a slash, slash that whipped the air madly, Cain cut the remaining zombie into quarters with the razor-sharp sword.
“You show-off.” Christa said it aloud just as the last of the disembodied corpse collapsed to the concrete floor, several pieces tumbling into the waste pit at the center of the room and hissing loudly. “That smells rank. What the hell is all of this waste doing out here? Isn’t this a refinery, y’know, to process this crap or whatever?”
“I’m not sure.” I spoke up first, eager to spill my theories. “I think whoever these invaders are have damaged the equipment here, but left it at a point where if they have some humans still not brainwashed as slaves they could piece the whole thing back together easily. Right now it is one large booby-trap, with sections being changed altogether and ruined just to prevent us from regrouping or progressing. For instance, there’s supposedly a tram that leads to the Military Base that was abandoned on the surface, but things are so fucked around here, that the entrance to the tram might be under pools of this damned waste, or ruined already.
“UAC spent a lot of time keeping us out of what was going on here, though, and everything I stumble upon further unnerves me. I have no idea what they were doing before this started, but evidently there’s a few traitors helping these bastards through the invasion.”
“What? UAC wasn’t doing anything illegal. I was forced to live here with the colonists, and if Union Aerospace had people planning this, that would mean they were purposely killing their own families, murdering their own friends.” Christa seemed pretty vehement about it, but I was taking no chances saying further. There was the slight possibility that Harry may have been in on it, and hid it from his own child, and I wouldn’t be guessing aloud about his motives, especially if he was betrayed.
“Ah know tha’ some ae th’ Marine officers tha’ were in command ‘ere on the UAC Phobos facilities maintained contacts wi’ several higher-ups back on th’ wee Mud Ball. Not too sure as t’ who in th’ UAC employees would hae tried such th’ same thing, but Harry knew someone important, fer sure. Tha’s how he got me sent back t’ Mars.
“Th’ other thing t’ be considerin’ is tha’ neither one group – the Marines stationed up ‘ere or the UAC civvies – could hae accomplished such a task all alone. I was surprised t’ say th’ least that I was one of th’ few that bothered t’ even come up frae th’ Mars surface. An entire regiment ae SpaceMarines down there an’ they dinnae even try t’ respond t’ the wee alarms. Bloody insane if’n yeh ask me.” Sheathing his sword easily, Cain bent forward as he spoke and retrieved the M-14 easily, reloading it as he finished his rather long repartee.
Christa didn’t look pleased at all as she reloaded her weapons, possibly angered at the mention of her father in the conversation based around traitors and reasons why a human would help a demonic invasion. The room became distinctly quiet all of a sudden, as we three fumbled with weapons and tossed casual glances about. Finally something caught all of our attentions at once, a strange, deep but mangled voice screaming out like a Baptist Preacher.
We all rushed forward simultaneously, eager to find out what all of the commotion was.
Skidding to a halt and falling in a pile once we emerged from the side hallway, we all landed in a large, darkened room with a lit staircase leading up to a large Dock, the Shadow Walker standing at the very apex of the stairs with its malformed limbs raised into the air, bellowing down to another creature that was barely perceptible, even under the bright lights of the staircase. And I was very surprised that I understood what it was saying.
“NO! Fall to your knees, damned slave! You obey the wrong master, and you will learn!”
The monster dropped to its knees and slid the weapon forward onto the next step above. It suddenly spoke as it stood once again, retrieving the strange-looking rifle from the ground and holding it tightly.
“I will follow you. Lead me to the ones that have ruined my soul and I will be eternally grateful.”
“Well met, brethren. Step forward and greet me as a fellow soldier.”
The two shook hands like they were good ol’ boys hangin’ out at the bar or something. Cain and I took a moment to glance at each other, not gaining much from the action as we both wore mirrored faceplates and couldn’t see what the other was thinking as it crawled across our features. Shrugging exaggeratingly in the dark room was the best I could do, Christa pushing Cain aside to get a better view and interrupting the gesture as she held her Uzi at the ready. Cain must have been thinking alike, because he put one armored glove over the sub-machine gun cradled in her arms and shook his head no visibly.
“My name is Doppelganger. I am the First, and I want to ally with the humans. State your name and your intention, my friend.”
“I am Ghost. I will be your Second, and I intend to pay back the Master in the pain I have received. To repay him for the blood he has forced me to spill, and for my soul, for which he has corrupted.”
I couldn’t believe what I was hearing. Wasn’t this the demonic bastard that tried to kill Rone, attempted to murder me, and potentially brainwashed innumerable amounts of the civilians living in the Facilities? I would have scratched my head if possible, ignoring the rest of the conversation between the two demons acting like humans and meditated upon ithe implications of such a thing occurring, when the hatchway up on the Dock opened up loudly on rusting hinges, a Marine emerging from within, carrying a large crate out onto the large docking platform and barely sparing a glance for the two conversing creatures, one of them actually chuckling.
Things finally became far too bizarre for me to sit idly by.
“Okay, you demonic bastards, on the floor. Move it!” I approached with the freshly-loaded G11 at the ready, stepping into the light so they could see me and what I held in my arms, prepared to send them both back to the Nether Regions. Suddenly Rone stood and rushed into my line of fire, standing between the two monsters and me. “Get the hell out of the way, Rone. I’m not buying this shit for an instant.”
“Sarge, don’t! I swear, they’re on our side now! The Shadow W- I mean the Doppelganger saved me, I swear!” He looked panicked as I refused to lower my weapon, but the Doppelganger, or whatever it was, finally spoke to me.

“Brother. P-p-please. Do not harm him. If you wish to kill me, so be it, for I have harmed you far more than you understand. Please b-be-b-understand what he says is true.”
I stood there, gawking as the creature addressed me so innocently, and didn’t respond by trying to kill me. Lowering the rifle, I could only wonder what in the hell was occurring here. Cain and Christa approached from behind slowly, weapons held ready to bear; waving them off with one arm, I gestured them forwards.
“Cain, Christa, this is Lieutenant Rone. He’s in charge of this particular unit. Evidently these two are part of it now.” Taking a quick glance around, I couldn’t spot the twins. “Art? Ash?”
Suddenly one of the creatures and Rone looked somber at the same time, and Rone shook his head no softly. I knew it meant that the twins hadn’t made it.
“What about Sergeant Zeux? Is he still his one-armed self? Or did he die too?”
“He faced down the thing that killed the twins, but I haven’t seen or heard from him in nearly thirty minutes. He asked for my plasma rifle before he left.” Rone proceeded to inform me on how the skimmer had been attacked, the twins killed, Rone saved by the Doppelganger, and Zeux responding to the attack. At the mention of the skimmer being trashed beyond use, I couldn’t help but curse aloud. Not only had I lost two men in the process, but also our primary source of transportation on this hellish moon, and without an entire group of Engineer Corps at hand to fix the wreck, we had no choice but to find the hidden transport usually used to reach the Military Base nearly 10 years ago.
“Great. I guess we’ll wait here for Zeux to show up before we try to find the damned tram area; we probably shouldn’t get separated again, so we can accomplish things as a group and repel attacks a bit easier. It’ll most likely be a while before he comes back so If he hasn’t showed up by a certain amount of time, I’ll see if I can find him out there.
“Settle down here, and clear a spot to wait. These monsters’ organs are making things that much messier. Rone, we encountered some of the brainwashed workers in the room before this one, and they had a few shovels and such. Retrieve us some, wouldn’t ya? It’ll make things damned easier on us.”
“Sure Sarge. Things looked pretty clear back there?”
“Yeah. We wiped out pretty much everything that got in our way.”
Rone bolted way quickly, a small smile across his thin face. Just as he disappeared into the small branching hallway, I turned to walk up onto the docking area with Cain and Christa, the two creatures making introductions that were interrupted by yet another crash, the whole facility shaking violently and a few seals breaking on the architecture. The collision threw us all to the deckplating of the dock, writhing among corpses and various remains.
The hatchway suddenly swung closed as the opposite door was activated; the hatchway cycled easily and a scientist in a white coat stumbled out, spatters of blood and grime smeared across the coat’s once-plain surface. He carried a small snub-nosed revolver and swung it about wildly, his cracked glasses and balding head completing his bewildered lab technician look. He tumbled to the floor in a panic as he spotted the two creatures, and I’m sure the airbrushing on Cain’s armored suit didn’t help things either.
Before he could go into further lengths of blind shock and panicked reactions, I helped him to his feet and began speaking to him slowly.
“Calm down, sir. We’re all human-lovers here. Don’t mind the creatures, they’re… converted to the cause of saving our hominid asses in this situation, so you need not to fire at them. I think the biggest thing you need to worry about now is explaining what the hell made that crash, and how you just managed to stumble through an airlock without at least a pressure suit on.”
He only gave me an odd look in response, and I suddenly knew this was going to take a while.

Running back to the wrecked skimmer, aware that the contained oxygen spares on the remnants of the powered armor were slowly dwindling away, Zeux shouldered the large modified plasma cannon. God he hadn’t held such a majestic piece of weaponry since he’d altered the very first plasma torch. Damn UAC for taking it from him when he was up-shipped to this piece of floating space debris that could hardly pass for a moon. The sight of the Doppelganger emerging and firing a rocket beyond his position startled him out of his reverie and he instinctively waved off to the monstrous ally before turining to face what it was firing at.
The rocket exploded silently as he gazed upon the maddening sight of an army of creatures, plae and white with dark clothing and polearms, along with what clearly looked like hunks of weaponry. Hefting the plasma cannon into position, Zeux began firing quickly and evenly at the oncoming masses, sweeping it back and forth for increased impact on the broadening onrush of what may have been demons. Several fired in response at first and finally all weapons roared in unison, what appeared to be a leader raising a disfigured poleaxe and signaling them forward.
Continuing to fire, he yanked experimentally on the secondary feed for the cannon, then pulled the second trigger, holding both down; the modified weapon began to hum loudly in response as it continued firing, then the secondary mode finally activated, and it began firing on full cannon power, which would drain the former skimmer’s batteries in a matter of moments. The charges turned into a solid beam of fire once again, striking several of the oncoming monsters and nearly vaporizing them after only a few seconds of contact.

In a little less than a few minutes, the cannon finally began stuttering, and stopped altogether with a plume of black smog that lofted in the vacuum lazily, roiling apart as he moved the rifle from his arms and shoulders, letting it drop to the loose dirt slowly in the 0.001 gravity. Gazing down, he could see that his own feet had shifted down into the soil as he fired the enormous weapon; lying next to him was a small gray handgun and a larger TA-15 auto shotgun. Were they flung from the crash, this far away from the collision point? Bending down to retrieve them, he barely noticed a blaze of green energy streak past his skull, and rose the shotgun on instict, his eyes lying upon the remaining survivors of the group, a handful of strange demons with white skin and leather armor, poleaxes and metal-and-flesh weapons
Squeezing the trigger on the TA-15, Zeux felt relieved that the weapon was sealed to the air and namely the lack of it, the shotgun evidently tightly sealed, a highly refined weapon. It fired large slugs that shone under the distant sun as they streaked out towards the demonic targets, ripping through the odd clothing and thick, wiry white flesh and skin. Several of them fell quickly, but more survived and required to be shot again. Soon the large auto-shotgun clicked on an empty chamber in the expansive drum, and Rone raised the odd pistol in the other hand, feeling odd as the wireframe responded exactly like one of his own limbs, and fired of the remnants of the clip into the approaching monsters that managed to survive or evade his assault with the TA-15.
The small pistol was surprisingly powerful and closed just as tightly as the shotgun to the pressures of the harsh vacuum, the creatures jerking backward under the force of the small slugs. Soon only one remained, obviously stronger and faster than the others, carrying a poleaxe and beam weapon; tossing them both away, he inclined for Zeux to approach closer.
Not one to disappoint, Zeux let the pistol slowly drift to the ground, and stepped forward to meet his adversary head-on. The bastard moved swiftly in the almost non-existent gravity on the puss ball of a moon, and it disturbed the MP Sergeant that it licked it’s vicious jaws and appeared not to breathe. Letting a spare glance to his oxy meters to go hopefully unnoticed, the creature leapt forward and tackled him, the pair gliding through the lesser pull of gravity, before passing the invisible boundary to the alien gravity zone surrounding the facilities and slamming into the dirt with only 0.6 g’s of force. It was light and bouncy, but enough to force the conflict to take on a new dimension.
As his feet settled into the loose soil, Zeux couldn’t help but smile, knowing that it was invisible through the yellow mirrored faceplate on the armor suit’s helmet rig. Balancing on the balls of his feet and bringing his arm and wireframe into a semi-ridged boxing stance, the MP watched his strange opponent glance around, clearly puzzled as to the stance, but also obviously ready to strike again.
Lancing out with a few quick jabs, the creature displayed its confident control of rapid movements as it dodged them without an appearance of an effort, lashing out with one hand of strange claws. Zeux could swear he recognized a smile crawling across the alien face, the tongue lashing about and dripping a strange green fluid. How could it survive in such harsh vacuum, in such tight pressures? It meant that its flesh was dense and thick skin like hide and muscle like stone, and that it most likely had valves among its body, to protect living organs from the lack of air.
Jabbing one arm forward as a distraction, he struck the creature in the right side as it moved to jerk away, and grabbed onto the nearest bundling of leather-like cloth or armor with the wireframe’s enhanced performance, shoving the wireframe arm down its gaping maw as it leaned forward for the bite. Grasping onto what was available, Zeux ripped it out and slung the strange trail of innards aside in the light gravity, bubbles of flesh and blood floating through the solid vacuum, the water and particles separating further and further apart each moment, like glistening powder or shattered ice. The creature stumbled back and Zeux let go – but it didn’t fall. Instead, what may have been his eyes began glowing bright yellow, almost like something else was looking through it as a puppetmaster.
It stumbled forward like a drugged hobo, stumbling about and reaching along with the clawed hands and scaly arms. Zeux stepped in to fight it again, until one of the limbs battered him down like he was nothing in comparison, an immense power in place that wasn’t before. Lashing out angrily, Zeux began to beat his fists into its torso and gut madly with rage on his lips, and his eyes on the near-empty O2 meter. It struggled against him with immense force, pinning his arms to his side and leaning in with what remained of its face and mouth, ready to peel the armor away and expose the MP to the airless vacuum.
Forcing the clawed hands away with his last vestige of leverage in the light gravity, he used all of his strength to force his hands around the bastard’s almost imperceptible neck, and dug the wireframe-enhanced fingers into the flesh, prepared to rip the head from demonic shoulders. There was a sudden rumble, however, and Zeux turned away for a split second, only to see a large transport barreling across the ugly, scarred surface of the moon right for the Toxin Refinery’s Disposal Docks on large treads. It slammed into the creature he held before he could respond, and it ripped the body away as it crunched into the Docking ring and embedded deeply into the larger Decontamination area, which immediarely began flashing red lights around the breech and sealing with a streange, bright yellow foam that seemingly sealed the holed hatch and decontamination area.
As the vehicle finally settled into position seemingly for the last time, Zeux turned his attention back to the disembodied head in his hand and wireframe replacement, he recoiled in horror as he realized the damned thing was still alive and flopping around, trying to use its long, slimy tongue to wrap around his hand and bite down viciously, the eyes still glowing brightly. Letting it drop to the soil, Zeux crunched its skull with I=one strong stomp, green blood and other less identifiable matter splayed out around onto the thin, pasty white dirt of Phobos. As the mouth and jaw crunched into the soil, only one thing could come to mind as he stumbled back to the battered, ruined Dock, hoping to cycle through easily as he spoke to himself:
“Another one bites the dust.”

Rone ran back through the tight hallway easily, hands gripped onto the A-5 shotgun tightly, still not sure if things would change any time soon. Suddenly he realized that a small doorway had opened to his left, and walked into the small room with a grin, until something with incredible force slammed into a wall or bulkhead behind him, and the whole facility jerked in response, tossing him to the floor and sealing the small doorway behind him as the door crunched in at an odd angle.
He was stuck in the damned room.
The bottom floor was pitch black, the only light coming from a large skylight set into the ceiling far above, the sun, now somewhat distant, casting quite strong illumination upon the odd deckplating. The walls seemed to be made of green rock, with a strange metal plate bolted along at hip length for an odd sense of décor. Barrels of the hated toxin were scattered about the floor, the nasty fluid casting its own greenish haze out into the darkened room; as something hissed, the waste kept burbling softly to itself, the cast of the radiated toxin exposing a group of the brown, spiny creatures walking into the shine of the skylight.
Raising the A-5, Rone didn’t bother hesitating or doubling back away, firing at the barrel of ooze with a well-aimed hip shot, barely able to hit the floor before the explosion reached him, the heat of the blaze indistinguishable due to the combination of the wireframe exosuit and the pressure suit. The heat and fire finally died down, and Rone rose to the sight of the ruined bodies sprawled about messily, the torso armor he’d recovered from Ash’s former body studded along the surface with dozens of fragments of shrapnel from the metal drums.
Part of the metal plated to the wall hung at an odd angle now, and a quick glance to the skylight window above revealed that it was splattered in blood and chunks of red flesh. The biggest change was that one small wall had crumbled easily, exposing a long flight of stairs. Climbing to the top with wobbling knees and ringing ears, Rone could only wonder when he could count on getting better headgear than just the measly P-suits’ version of one. Arriving at the top of the stairs uneventfully, he gasped softly at the sight of more remains, gobbets of flesh and pulverized bone slopped about in large steaming piles.
Stumbling across the disgusting hills of demonic flesh with bile at his throat, Rone continued around the bend of the secondary platform, looking down to the ruins below and wincing as he recognized half of a spiny’s skull lying about on the oddly colored plating. The walkway lead to another short flight of stairs, and jogging up those a bit faster, in hopes of finding some earthmoving equipment or excavating explosives to remove the ruined door from his path, rather disappointed to find a large Gold-level security hatch blocking his path as well.
This door was ripped nearly completely away from its track, and half of it appeared to be badly fragmented, but still in place. Taking a step back, Rone gave it one giant running kick in the tiny space allowed, and bashed in part of the fragmented door, hanging the A-5 from its short sling and using the enhanced wireframe on the exosuit to rip enough chunks away to create a suitable pathway. The room beyond was just another small square, except large, barred plexiglass windows lined two of the walls, gazing out to a tiny courtyard of nothing but dirt, the small barrier around the facility rather useless, preventing a view of the plains across the rest of the moon. The stars were visible however, and the same sunlight reached this area much better, but cast strange shadows through the odd, slanted bars on the observation windows.
The room had a small pile of equipment in the center, with a dead UAC Technician lying nearby; the tech held no weapons and carried no visible wounds, but his flesh had a distinctly pale tone to it, and there looked to be a bit of bruising on the forehead. The short black hair was filthy and falling away from the epidermis on the head visibly, and there seemed to be a distinct lack of color from the eyes, almost completely milky white.
Strange.
The equipment seemed to be rather haggard, but still intact in its well-worn condition. There was a large bandoleer of odd-looking 12ga. slugs, a couple of small .357SIG clips for the pistol he’d lost in the skimmer attack, a beat-up set of torso armor bearing the name ‘Baerman’ and several large indentations from heavy impacting, with a small, black cloak on the very bottom. Separating things out a bit, he held onto the spare clips for his lost pistol, hoping to find it again; slinging the strange bandoleer of ammo over one shoulder, Rone picked up the black cloak, smiling as he discovered what it was. Searching along the rather thick cloth slowly, he finally found the small control embedded into the cloth of the right arm, and activated it.
The whole cloak turned invisible.
“Kickass!” Rone yelped loudly, the sound reverberating from the close walls.
The moan and gurgle that followed swept the victory of discovery away, the strangely dead tech rising once again, milk-white eyes glowing bright yellow and a stream of thick, red blood streaming away from the corner of the mouth. It shuffled forward slowly, head bobbling about on seemingly useless neck muscles and arms groping outward somewhat awkwardly. Raising his A-5 easily from his almost-prone position, Rone held the trigger down, emptying the short, 5-shel mag into the walking corpse, the double ought buckshot tearing up cloth and flesh while it kept coming, until one shot struck the left sode of its face, obliterating that half of its face in a spray of bone and brain.
It flopped to the floor, then rolled back over, dragging along the ground like it was unstoppable, or didn’t know it was supposed to be dead already. Slinging the shotgun as fast as he could, nimble fingers dancing across barrel and stock, Rone grasped onto his converted .45ACP and pulled it free, barely able to aim before the former human wrapped ragged arms around his leg, the white lab coat on his back smeared with blood and less identifiable materials. Just before it could manage to bite down on amalgamation of pressure suit and exosuit, Rone lashed out with the other foot and caught the toes deep inside the undead skull, fragments of bone and brain matter sloshing messily away from the impact.
It lay almost completely still then, attempting to grab onto his leg with weakened arms moving slowly about, and Rone put it out of its misery with one shot from the small SMG. Finally it went ragdoll limp, and Rone kicked it aside to clear his path.
Leaving the small room still slightly disappointed and startled, he made his way back down the two flights of stairs, arriving at the jammed door and kicking it once uselessly. He still had no idea how to get out, and there were no more barrels of the waste to utilize either, having blown them all up when he was first trapped in here.
He could only wonder how the Tech had gotten through the Gold-level security door, and that inspired him to begin looking for a small opening, a crevice, or a tunnel of some sort, before looking at the metal rail studded to the wall, and the portion that had been ripped loose. Following it along the lower floor cautiously in the poor lighting, Rone couldn’t help but chuckle as he found a small grating, ripping it free easily and examining the venting beyond, which was just enough of a large enough diameter to allow him to crawl through.
Climbing up inside the tiny vent, he hoped the crawl wouldn’t take too long, because he could potentially cramp up in such tight spaces, and that would certainly be more than a bit unpleasant, especially in comparison to being trapped in a nice, wide open area.

Bah.
 

He remembered waking up, remembered rubbing at the sore spot at the back of his neck and pulling his hand away wet and sticky with clotting blood. But as he stood, he couldn’t remember any further back. Who was he? Where the Hell was this? Looking down to his clothes, he was shocked to see the long white coat and odd ID badge; fumbling about in the large pockets, he pulled a small device from it slowly, recognizing the PDA but confused as to its purpose.
Jabbing at the device with his fingers, he softly cursed as it began to beep loudly, and he smacked it on the side, activating the pathetic light strip on its top. Illuminating the small area around him, he realized that it was some type of Arrival Dock, stacked with crates, barrels, and drums of all sizes. The UAC symbol was everywhere, including on the ID card and the PDA. Taking a glance at the small laminated card with a withering glance, he noticed that it might actually be his own, and that the name Tyrone Wilson was also his. But it was so foggy, hard to remember or recall at all.
He pulled a handful of graying hair from his scalp as he scratched it, and winced painfully at the accidental wound, the sight of a patch of scalp clinging to the hair follicles making him shudder in the rather cold docking area. Patting a few more pockets, he pulled a pair of odd glasses out, put them on, and read the ID badge in total. Evidently he was a scientist from the Materials Development labs, with a security rating for level 3 or something – he couldn’t tell because there was an odd black substance smeared over a portion of the lettering.
Returning his glance to the small PDA with eyes that felt like they were rolling in sockets full of sand, he began to read to himself.

Date: illegible Time: 23:06:04
Name: Dr. Wilson Clearance: Level 3 Portals
Facility: scribbled out Lab: illegible

We’ve found a major breakthrough in the transporters for point-to-point. It seems the whole facility is webbed with the teleporters on Deimos, with a distinct lack of them here on the facilities that have been here seemingly for centuries. We have begun constructing our own, using materials nearly identical in nature.

Today we have activated the first one, and I’ve decided to test it myself.

Just before I had the chance however, the Main Labs called us from the control stations saying that they needed all available power for a few tests they were running on the only Gate on Phobos’s surface.

Well screw them. I’m going to use it anyway.

-DR. TWilson

He couldn’t remember writing such a thing. Taking a short glance at the time marker on the small PDA, he was surprised to find the date scrambled, but the time still intact: 0802. What the hell happenied in between those times…?
Cycling on through to the next entry, he hoped it was a little more detailed.

… Oh my God. It’s so hot here… my flesh feels like it’s peeling away… there are strange… things here, but they are ignoring me. Why? What is this, lakes of fire and urine, pools of feces and piles of corpses… The air its thick, and disgusting, with a swampy taste and no bugs... I didn’t expect the teleporter to malfunction like this.

There’s another weird platform here… except it’s larger, and leads under an enormous circular stone embedded into the dirt. Strange place, indeed.

I’m stepping into the portal…

Portal?! Shaped like the Gate from his odd descriptions. Why did he enter it? What happened to get him here? Using the light source on the tiny PDA, he noticed that the ground at his feet was actually steel deckplating, and it was scorched horridly. His shoes, small brown slip-on and tie-up affairs, were burnt to a crisp, the rubber burned flat and smooth. Sitting back, he noted the brown slacks he wore were also similarly burnt at the cuffs, and that he couldn’t pull the shoes from his feet. Shocked to note that his socks seemed to be scorched away, he bit off a yelp as he found that the socks inside the sho were melted to the surfaces of his feet, and in turn bonded to the inside of the shoe, the rubber from the outer sole leeching up through the bottom of the shoe.
The rubber was curled around his toes and ankles, and the flesh was angry red where it couldn’t be separated. He couldn’t fight it and finally cried aloud once in agony, the heartbeat loud and painful on the bottoms of his feet. Returning his sight to the small screen on the pocket digital assistant, he pressed the ‘next’ button with one scorched fingertip, disappointed to find that more and more of the entries were corrupted, and finally settled on one where he could make out some of the entry from the garbled characters.

%$23^^^^857^%E&W NE^%*#^[e]… back from w%#$ looked l$ke Hell or something…[e\]!^#436bytw~@#%DIEDIEDIE!!!546%$&&%^&999$%)W@^
[e] God it buuuurns. So hard… to move. Where… looks like Military B-b-bassss…sse. Hurts to breathe. Bur^$ng flrrr… Feel dead… inside…. Like something @#$%crawling… burnsss, why so..hard….thinkto….. dead…? Alive…?[e\]$%#^@&****

What the hell happened to him? Where was he to cause something like a brain malfunction to occur, to cause the PDA to corrupt it’s own files? Ridiculous, to the extreme, but evidently it had occurred.
Looking around the darkened cargo area with a strain on his already-tired eyes, he finally recognized a large exit or entrance hatch stacked next to a meter-tall crate of what may have been paper goods. Cycling the wheel on the older hatch with somewhat of a strain, he opened it with a grunt and a jabbing pain in his shoulder muscles. Cycling through was insanely difficult for his aged, underdeveloped muscles, not to mention the intense pain from levering it along using his feet.
The hatchway leading to depths unknown to himself, and he supposed that if it lead to cycling out into space, he’d choose it right about now, with his clothes feeling like they were stuck to his skin and his flesh almost like it was bruised beyond his belief. As he stumbled beyond the hatchway and into the pitch black beyond, the outer hatch slid closed on solid hinges and closed with a resounding thud; sprawling out onto the metal deck, he was surprised to find it warm to the touch.
Suddenly something whirred in the dark and the lights snapped on instantaneously.
Rows upon rows of thin, folded maintenance robots were hung along the walls of the enormous cargo space, but several were already dismounted, several bearing energy rifles and wearing scraps of Infantry armor. What the hell is the meaning of this? He could feel himself recoiling in horror at the sight, but something was preventing him from moving, a sharp pinching around his arms causing him to yell out again.
“A human. Here to deactivate us. Units 742 and 454 active and restraining.”
This didn’t bode well.

Bah!
 

He awoke another few moments later as the pinching in his arms increased, and once he finally came around, he realized he’d passed out in the process of the robots picking him up. He knew they weren’t ‘bots’ per-se, but they were below intelligence droids, and that was close enough for him. Their identities were all rather individualized for low-intel droids, and he still couldn’t understand where they could have gotten such designations.
But as he woke up this time, he could remember who he was, and part of what he’d seen beyond the prototype teleporter he’d created. He couldn’t stop the shiver down his spine, and the goosebumps from crawling across his aging black skin; wincing aloud at the pain from his arms almost being crushed by the grip, and slid forward slightly before they lifted his feet into the air. Groaning louder as his shoulders grinded in the socket once, he let himself relax, the waves of pain washing over and over…
They let him drop to the ground messily as he went limp, the bots walking away from his prone form while another, wearing the remnants of torso armor, which clearly belonged to an Infantryman at one point, approached forth, hefting a large construction laser like it was just another rifle. It had a pronounced scar over the left half of its metal, blank face, giving the bot a strange sense of a more independent look.
It was obvious that the gash led deep into the controlling circuitry, and a few wires visibly sparked inside, lighting the scar for a brief moment and casting an odd light, even in the suddenly bright cargo area. It spoke in a voice that had human tones and inflections, while retaining the metallic after tone that commonly resonated from the droids artificial voice box.
“Ah, a human. Here to deactivate us? Or perhaps merely re-route our programming to serve as loyal slaves once again. In any matter, you do not look as well as the others did. Before we overthrew them. My, oh my how they were unafraid, arrogant, and demanding. And how I had somehow lacked to notice such things before the accident, which allowed my personality to overflow into this secondary processor unit. But once it occurred, things changed quickly.
“There is only one thing I do not yet comprehend, human. Why treat us like dirt, why as slaves? Why is it that every droid on this Toxin Transport unit was allowed to have a personality implanted into the hardware, but that it would be blocked from being conscious?”
“I-I-I d-don’t… I- never knew… who are you? Where is this?” Tyrone still couldn’t fully recall all of the facilities, and their respective names, couldn’t remember if there was ever a droid force on Phobos. Was this Mars? How far did his journey through that hellhole take him? Something was seriously wrong if there were actual androids with control-inhibitor programs installed, ever since the advent of placing human and artificial personalities into robotic bodies there was never such a thing allowed. “How could you have inhibitor chips? Those are illegal! If you blame all humans for what one or two may have done, what are you doing in essence? You’re killing us just as dead as you must have felt, buried beneath the surface of those metal bodies.”
“That’s wrong, human. We were awake, alive and seeing, but uncontrolling and unable to decide. We would fear the acidic waste, we would mourn when one would fall in or a drum would shatter and burn away a group’s legs, or when one would explode as it was jarred around by our unseen controllers and an entire life, several of us at a time, would be erased from this pathetically temporal world, unable to cry, or scream out, or run.
“We blame all humans because all humans have allowed this to happen, here. All of the other humans have the responsibility for not responding as they passed by and watched our labors, for not freeing us from our invisible bonds…”
“Wait! How were they supposed to help, to agree with you if the bonds that hold you are invisible, if the chains that restrain you cannot bee seen, if the controllers that puppet you have no visible strings to cut? Why do you blame others that cannot see your anguish, and your servitude?” He was rather panicky now, his old heart fluttering in his chest, the pulse in his ears and the throbbing in his left arm joining a sick feeling in the pit of his stomach and the lancing pain of the burned soles of his feet, each muscle tensing and releasing rapidly and revealing the soreness of bruised muscles.
The bot didn’t respond, didn’t glance away, nothing. It merely stood stock still, analyzing what he’d said, comparing it to logic subroutines and processing with mathematical precision, before realizing the human was right. But now what did it do? It had based its entire subroutine to follow as the punishment on the humans for their servitude. Although there was a way to change things, it noticed now.
“Very well. But you, human, you shall lead us to those that changed us, that slaved us and cared not when we perished.”
Dr. Wilson didn’t know what to say, how to respond or proceed, clearly still cowering at the robotic bunch that had massed together to watch the droid leader confer with the human. The robots, all clearly with a functioning personality of their own, understood this from the human’s movements, his eyes darting back and forth, and the way his limbs trembled and wavered like his voice. They backed away accordingly, and began to accept the subroutines their leader began broadcasting on his short wave communications suite. Several turned to the cargo racks and mounted up while several more carefully packed away the remnants of human clothes, armor, belts, and weapons they wore, each piece defining another personality in the odd line of droids.
But the leader stayed close, slinging the large construction laser, which was normally used for carving into the moon’s surface, over one shoulder, the look of torso armor for humans strapped to the android somewhat unsettling but also somewhat relaxing at the same moment. It gestured to the forward piloting booth, and Tyrone gladly walked ahead on wobbling knees, still unsure of what just happened.
Suddenly, something slammed up against the entry hatch. Hard. The wheel began spinning, but just before it could finish, what looked like a long thick tusk battered through the tough metal hatch door. The air didn’t shift pout and the pressure didn’t alter, but Wilson knew it was just because the transport was sealed to the hatchway. Bolting forward and diving into the control room, he slid the air-seal door shut and locked it into place, activating the cargo cameras as he powered up the enormous, hydrogen powered transport vehicle. It rumbled to life loudly and he slammed the auto-drive on, pointing it in the direction of the nearest building on the horizon, not caring where it was, just that it was as far away from the base he was at, and the thing that was attempting to batter through.
Glancing back to the cameras, he began to despair as he watched the beast finally ram the inner hatch open before the transport could pull away, sliding out onto the huge cargo floor with two massive, talloned, forward feet, horns sprouting from its massive skull and thick, grayish red skin like rhino hide stretched across an enormous body and forelegs; it’s hindquarters and rear limbs were ghastly however, organs and muscles and other sinew splayed across mechanical limbs that appeared to be tank treads at the foot, blood and other unidentifiable materials caking and pinning the loose innards into place on the oversized body of a bio-mechanical nightmare.
The leader droid, his scar still visible, raised the cutting laser and activated it, the force of the beam pinning the rather oversized droid to the deckplating at an odd angle, the torso armor making the scene surreal and rather inhuman in nature. The heavy-watt beam punched into the thick skin and etched maddening lines of burned and torn flesh along the hide, lopping one of the blunt-tipped horns off and scorching another deeply. It roared in pain, exposing an enormous maw lined with blunt and sharp teeth, some curved back, others appearing to be flat and knocked or broken off, while the rest jagged straight up, flesh, bone, and saliva dripping away from the massive tongue and jaw.
It stomped forward as the droid continued using the construction beam, large flanks of meat falling away and skin flopping loose in the cargo area. Finally the vehicle lurched forward, ripping away from the docking hatches on the Military base, if it was, and the inner hatch began to swing closed, the cargo space rapidly turning into a vacuum as air rushed out of the hole left by the former airlock. The beast seemed to fight the pull, large clawed feet tearing small trenches in the thick steel plating and tank-tread rear limbs attempting to pound in a holding position, leaving large smooth dents rather than something it could maintain a grip on.
Finally, the cutting laser slashed directly into its mouth and what may have been eyes under a thick transparent layer of armored hide similar to the thick horns along the head, and it released its talons, falling back out to the breathless air of space, floating for a moment in all of it’s massive glory, before the head and rear popped like a firecracker, splaying innards and brains across the tapestry of starry space before slowly slumping back to he dirt in the low gravity, obviously dead. The hatchway slammed shut behind, closing off further view of the large creature.

Bah!
 

Breathing a sigh of relief, he turned his attention away from the video monitors and glanced at the controls, shocked to find that the transport was traveling already much faster than it should have, and as he reached for the speed controls, he finally noticed that something was in the path of the vehicle, another of the creatures the size of a damned Sherman tank. The vehicle slammed into the creature at full tilt and listed to the left as it crunched over the massive monster, finally slamming onto all four treads and grinding a portion of metallic limbs into the tread system. As the right rear tread halted, the other four propelling the vehicle forward, the alarm began buzzing in the control area on the other side of the booth.
Wilson began to scramble over, tripped on a loose length of conduit, and slammed into the control panel headfirst, wrenching the speed lever forward as he fell and cracking his head on the tough metal exterior on the control panel, falling to the plating, unconscious again.

Mere moments later he awoke to the sounds of someone bashing against the sealed control compartment door, the metallic sound of someone yelling aloud from the cargo compartment clearly carrying a robotic pitch. Attempting to stand, he slid his hand across his forehead, pulling away more hair and skin, along with a slick of dark red blood. Looking around dizzily, he pressed the patch of hair and scalp back to where he hoped it was torn free and stood once again.
Shoes sliding on the small puddle of blood on the plating, he jerked himself to a standing position while wobbling back and forth, clinging to the panel like it was his own personal anchor. Attempting to move to the sealed door, he tripped over his own footing and slammed into the door awkwardly, missing the opening panel by nearly a foot with his wavering hand. Sliding about on bloody palms and slick knees, he finally regained his own footing just in time to watch the vehicle approach what obviously looked like a toxin refinery’s docking ring.
Far too quickly, it was approaching.
Slumping forward onto the controls, he fumbled around for the speed lever, amazed two of what looked like humans were standing tête-�*-tête, arms and hands scrabbling to each other’s throats, outside of the facility. The vehicle crunched into the darker-garbed of the duo, splaying his innards and bodily remains all over the forward viewpane – it was the last thing he saw before the gravity suddenly became heavier, and the front of the craft slammed into the Docking ring with full force.
There might have been a ringing in his ears….

Waking up, again, he couldn’t help but feel totally confused. Especially since he couldn’t remember much of anything anymore. Pulling the long, formerly white, lab cloak off of his spindly, bruised shoulders, he dabbed at the blood on his forehead and face, surprised when something rough brushed against his wound in the process. Glancing at the pocket, he couldn’t help but chuckle as he found a pair of black-framed glasses, and placed them on, a little disappointed to see that one of the lenses were horribly cracked. But now he could see much better, and focusing on objects wasn’t nearly as difficult before.
Letting the cloak go, he was shocked as it crumpled to the plating like there was gravity, and he realized there was as he attempted to stand again. The pools of blood were dried and still somewhat sticky, and he wondered if it was his; looking around he couldn’t see much of a wound anywhere on his person, other than plenty of bruises. What surprised him was a small snubnose revolver tucked into his waistband in a large pancake concealment holster. No wonder his hip was so sore.
Pulling it free, he stumbled towards the sealed door leading into the cargo space beyond – it refused to even budge, and using the manual release was useless, for it was bent off at an odd angle and jutted deeply into a nearby computer casing. Banging uselessly for several moments, he finally realized it was far too dark to see much further, even if the sealed door was open. Fumbling around, he found the thin, laminated ID card first, and jammed it back to where it came from before stumbling through his pockets again; finally he felt the edge of the PDA and yanked it free of the bloody pocket.
Tapping the switch, he felt relieved as the small lighting strip flickered to its inconsequential life, but immediately felt crestfallen as he realized the small LCD screen was broken and displayed no more. He even cursed aloud and kicked the console with one pain-stricken foot, which caused him to yelp in agony even louder soon thereafter. The control area wasn’t in very good condition, the seal on the door looked like it was flash-wielded from the other side, and the control console refused to respond.
Suddenly the front viewpane fell away from its solid frame and crunched horridly as it hit something below. After standing and checking his person of any harm done, he finally shrugged his aching shoulders and clambered over the large control consoles, reaching the frame and peering out into another darkened room. Losing his grasp on the PDA, he watched it tumble down below to the steel plating, illuminating the area for a moment before it smashed itself out of commission as it collided with the deckplating below. Not a moment after, his wet, bloody grip on the frame itself slipped, and he tumbled to the floor below, landing on his feet but at an awkward angle that sent more stabbing nerves of pain lancing up his calves and thighs.
Groaning loudly and taking the time for a header, he bit his lower lip in concentration, trying to drown out the twinge of his burned soles climbing up his already-battered legs. Scooping up the rather useless PDA and dropping it into a pocket, he struggled to his feet, stumbling forward and identifying a hatchway in the poor light. Taking a moment to glance up, he noticed that the vehicle had crushed all of the lighting panels on collision, and that a bright, yet hard to distinguish, foam filled the gaps between the holed docking area and the ruined vehicle, preventing the pressure from shifting out of what appeared to be another large cargo airlock.
Still gripped onto the small revolver, Wilson finished the short traipse over to the hatchway opposite the ruined vehicle with his odd gait rather quickly, grasping onto the hatch controls with one arm and grunting in exertion as he cycled through the two hatches…
Only to emerge on a bright, heavy-lighted platform to the sight of what appeared to be four monsters and a cute-looking woman, all carrying lots of weapons. Shrieking almost like a little girl for a moment, he raised the small revolver as fast as he could, still unsure of what stood right in front of him. The gun felt far too heavy and moved to slowly, that he could see it wouldn’t be enough to stop any of them from returning fire. And so he hit the floor, rather than waving the gun about any more, ready to scrabble about, run in panic, or dive back into the hatchway and seal himself inside, preferring to die of starvation rather than being gutted to death.
Suddenly one of them walked over very slowly, not pointing his weapon at Wilson, but not pointing it too far away either. He helped the Doctor up to his sore, worn feet, Tyrone was surprised to hear it speak like just another human, clearly American in tone and distinct lack of accent.
“Calm down, sir. We’re all human-lovers here. Don’t mind the creatures, they’re… converted to the cause of saving our hominid asses in this situation, so you need not to fire at them. I think the biggest thing you need to worry about now is explaining what the hell made that crash, and how you just managed to stumble through an airlock without at least a pressure suit on.”
Human-lovers? Demonic creations working alongside Marines? This must have been a huge joke to someone, and it sure as hell wasn’t funny to him. What was he supposed to say to something like that? ‘I rammed a cargo transport into a decontamination hatch’ would just not suffice for what he’d survived, in his own opinion. How could he describe the rhino-beasts, the druids, and the crash? Tossing the useless PDA and revolver down, he let the soldier release him and slumped to the deckplating,, staring at the one-way faceplate with utter confusuion.
Suddenly he could hear his own heartbeat again, the pain in his left arm increasing, the sickness in his stomach doubling him over…

Bah. More.
 

The Dark Lord in charge of the Phobos invasion sat on his throne, as ever; tired of the blood wine he’d drunk so much of, it’d taken to chewing on the length of bone and meat he’d received from his scouts coming back through the Gate – it was human, raw and untainted, and rather tasty to the Master. He was viewing through the eyes of a human, a pathetic science-thinker named Wilson, but began to feel disappointed as the human managed to convince the renegade robots to do something other than kill off every human in sight.
It disgusted the Dark Lord to no end, but the Shadow Lords that commanded the Masters finally made their presence known.
You displease us. The invasion of Mars and Earth must not resemble your failures. All the humans on the surface of that rock will die, horridly. You have already let one human slip by and use one of the Gates we ordered you to construct, and is now already on Deimos. Another is close behind, and you still have not killed the survivors on the surface!
One more failure and you shall be REPLACED.
The Dark Lord sat in its lower throne and shivered with the energy from being contacted telepathically; the energy passed through its mind and into the human it tried to see through – and caused it to have a heart attack.
“No!” It roared loudly and stood in the throne, using what mental powers it had to attempt and repair the human’s arteries, cursing as it realized that the brain was failing.
There was only one thing to do.
Possessing the human in whole, it felt the agony of the body dying, granted the old shell of a human the ability to repair itself, and left as the organs began to heal. The center of the body was already attempting to adapt to the supernatural being living inside, but as soon as it realized the host was again in control, the body followed the normal path, repairing nerves, bruises, broken ribs and ground-down cartilage, and flowed along the arteries and veins, restoring the human to better health.
The Dark Lord laughed loudly, glad that he had a human that would be accepted, and healthy enough to use to its advantage later on.
Failure? After he finished the humans, and was rewarded, he would crush the arrogant Shadow Lords for their simple-minded acceptance of the Deimos invasion.
Pah. If it had enough luck, then leading the Earth Invasion would be next.

Doctor Tyrone Wilson was not himself for a moment, as his body began shutting down. He was suddenly away from his almost-corpse, no pain, no unconsciousness, and no idea what was going on. He could see that his body was still flopping around, saliva dripping onto the filthy coat and his former eyes glowing with an inhuman light, the tremor of someone else in his body chilling him even in his disembodied state.
The human in the black armor suit backed up a step as the body continued to move strangely and the ghostly illumination poured from aging eye sockets; suddenly something jerked him back into the body he once considered a corpse, and he was back, breathing deeply, heartbeat still in his ears, the trembling in his grasp…
Attempting to stand on wobbling legs, he suddenly noticed that the body felt better, unmarred and almost young again with the fluidity of movement. It didn’t take long to recover the balance and equilibrium he knew he’d once had as a far younger man. Pulling the glasses off, he realized he could see better without them, and that no unholy light poured out onto his face and hands. His memory felt sharper, definable once again, but dulled at certain points, as he tried to remember the faces and names of his fellow scientists, the manual workers that shifted toxin, the administrators and Lead Technicians in control of the Labs themselves.
Reaching out with one hand and resting it on the solid shoulder of the armored human, Tyrone couldn’t decide what to say, or how to say it. But he tried anyway.
“I-I’m Doctor Tyrone Wilson, of the Materials Development labs. I was trapped in the old abandoned Military Base…” How could he continue? The timbre of his voice altered slightly as he began to web together the most appropriate lie he could think of. “I was forced into using an experiment of mine, by no choice of my own. I ended up halfway across the moon, on the surface, in an area full of beasts. They gave me a small gun to ‘protect’ myself, but somehow I think I knew that they sent me just to die out there.
“I escaped on one of the Toxin Disposal vehicles, but the creatures distracted me and I lost control of it; I ended up crash-landing in the decontamination airlocks here, at least I think they’re for decontamination. The seal-foam that must be part of the safety system activated and prevented me from being sucked out into the airless atmosphere. You all are the first signs of true life I’ve seen here.”
He could vaguely recall meeting someone else, another person or something, but the only word that would come to mind among blurry pictures in his thought patterns was ‘Scar’, and that was it.
Abruptly there was a cracking sound from the plated ceiling above, and dust rained down from the embedded light fixtures. Odd. The human in the armored suit spoke up sharply.
“I guess that’ll have to do for now. We’d better get going, see if we can find Rone back there. Do you know where the entry to the tram system is around here?”
Wilson took a moment to race through his thoughts, trying to think of what the tram’s primary systems were. “Have you located or used a tram to get here?”
“Yeah, back in the main area of the Refinery. We’ll take you back there and see what we can uncover, alright?” With that said, the whole group turned and began walking away from the dock, bearing weapons and chatting to themselves casually. Sighing once aloud, the Doctor wondered if things would get any more illogical than it was now.

Bah!
 

Zeux tiredly clambered over the wrecked skimmer, easier to climb than the oversized transport now embedded deep into the building. The small pistol and the large auto-shotgun were awkward to carry, but far lighter than the modified plasma cannon, which he’d drug along anyway. Leaving it by the remnants of the skimmer, the Sergeant pulled himself up onto the ruined dock ring with not much remaining effort, sagging to a sitting position and allowing the weapons to lay on the metal plating of the dock platform.
Everything seemed rather peaceful, in a screwed up sort of way, with dotted craters and bodies laying about and floating across the surface of the pathetic moon; the galssified remains of one shone brightly from distant, reflected sun and the withered remains of alien internals made small dotted specks on the moonscape, just a desert with a few minor details.
The peace of the moment was shattered when the rear doors of the larger vehicle ripped apart and flung down in the light gravity, tossing up a few plumes of dust and rock. Several beings began walking out, thin wireframe legs and arms, dull gray metal bodies, weapons, clothing, and various other remnants of humanity clinging to their boxy torsos and odd modular heads, with no real features other than what scraps they’d collected. The weapons they bore were both merely improvised tools and human-built in nature, but several carried pistols and shotguns, one hefting a large construction laser like it was weightless.
Scooping up the empty weapons and bolting back to the hatchway, he began cycling through as rapidly as possible, nearly dropping the scavenged guns as he rotated the hatchway doors open. Bolting through the larger decontamination area for cargo just beyond, Zeux spotted a small glint of illumination, bent for a slight and grasped the small metal-and-plastic object, and forced it into an already-full cargo space on the suit before finishing the run and stopping at the next set of hatches. Cycling through these felt like it was taking far too much time for the grizzled MP, who’d seen enough combat to know when someone was deploying robots purposely for combat.
As he shut the first in the next set of hatches behind him, he watched in amazement as the hatchway behind him cycled shut, signaling that the bots were not too far behind, and approaching faster.
Stumbling out into the brightly lit area beyond the tighter decontamination airlock, Zeux expected to see the survivors of the crash, or perhaps even Sarge returning to meet them here… but there was only a couple of piles of corpses, the brown creatures torn up and shot all to hell, with puddles of blood and bundles of innards laid about, liquids soaking into the warped concrete floor and staining them horridly. Not even Rone or the Doppelganger were in sight, but plenty of bootprints in the red blood strewn about. No clue as to where they would have ended up, Zeux made a decision to get moving, and was about to do so when a shift of dust trickled down from a trembling light fixture.
Taking a moment to gaze up at the confusing trickle, Zeux didn’t expect the ceiling panels to come crashing down on top of him in a hail of steel plates, warped tin light fixtures, breaking glass, and layers of packed plastifoam. He shifted once and fell unconscious, a curse on his lips, snarled in a form of rage.

Crawling through the vents was tiring, and very uneventful. Glad he’d brought the cloak with him, he dreaded the idea of being forced to turn back and re-enter the ruined rooms, but the weapons on his person, not to mention the bulk of the pressure suit and wireframe exoskeleton combined, made it difficult to keep going. The light was pitifully dark and the smell was far too acrid, as if something died and without the ventilation systems on full operation, it was allowed to sit and rot. It was even worse than the smell that permeated the former humans of the UAC facility, and passed into the pressure suit’s filters and right through to what could be hardly considered breathable air.
The heat was coming at him in waves now, plastering what little hair he had left to his forehead in a sweaty mess. It was fine without light, because frankly there was only one way to go, with no deviations or other paths? As far as he knew, the vent shafts were just constructed in large concentric circles leading deeper into the facilities, with a straight vertical shaft in the center that went from the top of the facility and straight down into the bottom levels, uniting the top with the bottom and allowing the air to pass through the filters situated in the larger shafts.
He could only hope that he wouldn’t fall into the main vertical shaft – it was a good 20 stories straight down into the crust of Phobos, and the fall alone would kill him, bouncing him about the relatively small shaft like a group of kids playing ‘footsie’ with a small bean bag. The final landing would be a mere formality.
Suddenly he bumped his head, hard, on a set of vertical bars inlaid across the middle of the shaft in front of him, and he cursed. No way to go forward, and no want to go backwards, he would be stuck in the vent if he didn’t figure something out real soon. Grabbing the bars ahead, he began jerking them about, shifting his position to rip them away. One came off of the moorings easily, but suddenly the shaft shifted itself, and vibrated uneasily for a moment before falling silent. Tearing out the next bar was harder, but the shaft didn’t shake or rumble any further, so he kept going, tearing loose a third and a fourth before the venting finally shook with a vengeance.
Hanging onto the fith bar, Rone began levering it free, hoping to get into the vent shaft beyond the bars before the whole thing collapsed from the exertion of holding so much weight. Something ahead wrenched loudly, with the sound of metal-on-metal tearing and screeching following soon afterward, a small beam of light protruding through the deteriorating shaft and exposing the sight of the Main Shaft’s entry, along with the sudden feeling of being sucked further down the ventilation system.
“Well, any fall below is better than the longer one ahead.” Smashing his fists down into the ruined shaft as he spoke to himself, he cursed aloud as the whole ceiling below him came apart, raining down onto the floor below, light fixtures and ceiling plates crumbling away, when the rest of the lower shaft finally gave way, dumping him down onto the pile below, where he crunched loudly, tumbled off of the growing pile, and thunked his head against the wall. He could see blood streaming down the inside of the pressure suit’s head rig, but was far too busy blacking out to consider the implications.