The DOOM Chronicles

Chapter 37: Gathering Darkness

Jack was beginning to wonder if he was actually approaching his limit.

When he'd been going through Basic training, he had reached it. More than once. That was kind of the point. You get to know yourself, how far is too far, where your threshold lies, so that you can push yourself, move beyond it. And that taught you to keep pushing yourself, to keep expanding your limit, so that you could triumph in crazier and crazier situations. And God knew that the world had enough of those nowadays.

But this...

This was beyond the pale of anything anyone had ever realistically expected. This was beyond the lunatic fringe.

But Jack did have a hard limit, a point at which his body or his mind would just...give out. Either one of them or both of them would simply have enough. Honestly, he was amazed that he was still going as strong and as focused as he was. But his hands were shaking from time to time, his vision was going blurry every now and then, and his mind was starting to wander. These were all signs that he was headed towards a death sentence, because a split second often made all the difference in life or death situations.

And that went like...quadruple here.

He needed another break, his body was breaking down, but there was just no time. He never thought he'd find himself missing the boring routine his life was settling into when he'd first arrived at Mars City. Hell, even Phobos seemed fairly decent compared to everything that had come after it. But at least he still had Jennifer, he thought, looking over at her as they stalked through the bloody, chromed corridors of the ruined city. And he had backup. Real Marines. They had a fighting chance to put an end to this.

Well, sort of.

More like, they had a half-assed maybe that might work.

"Hey McNeil, where did you see action?" Jack asked suddenly, wanting to be talking about something, anything really.

"All over," the Corporal replied. "Madagascar, Sri Lanka, Estonia. Fought briefly in that campaign for Antarctica."

"Oh shit, you were down there?" Jennifer asked. "I remember hearing about that. It was like a media frenzy for about two months. I never actually figured out what the hell was going on with all that," she added.

"There was this treaty signed back in the nineteen fifties basically stating that Antarctica would only ever be used for scientific research. Slowly, more and more countries signed the treaty, and those that didn't basically adhered to it anyway. By twenty one ten, pretty much everyone had signed. The thing is, there's a lot of oil under Antarctica. That scientific treaty stopped anyone from drilling. Well...some countries started getting desperate. And then there were talks about revising the treaty, as there were still some countries that really relied on oil and natural gas and such. And in the midst of these treaties, basically, a small army was discovered trying to set up a quick and dirty mining operation and everything kind of went crazy for a little bit. The conflict lasted like three months, I was only there for a week before I got rotated out, but man it was so fucking cold down there. Crazy fighting, too. Miserable place to fight," he replied.

"It really sounds like it," Jack said.

"Doesn't hold a fucking candle to this place, though," McNeil muttered. "What about you, Pavel? Where'd you fight?"

"Russia, a lot. Syberia, mostly. Japan, during that two week conflict with the Brazilian transplants. Bosnia. Did a quick stint in Ecuador on loan from the Russian government," he replied.

"Oh shit. Russia. How's that civil war going?" Jennifer asked.

"Dunno, really. Stopped keeping up with it. Last I'd heard, and this was a year ago, the new government was winning. But it changed all the time." He shrugged.