The DOOM Chronicles

Chapter 01: Isolation

Staff Sergeant Kyra Morgan opened her eyes to a world of bleak gray pain.

For several seconds, she felt nothing but that pain. She knew nothing but pain. She had absolutely no idea where she was and icy black fear infected her body like a toxin. She blinked several times. Something was wrong, that much was obvious. But...where the fuck was she? She tried to move and fear began to morph into panic as she realized she was in a confined space with hardly any real room for movement.

Kyra jerked violently, then did so again, and pain flared as she hit her forearm against something hard and unyielding. That made her at least stop moving for a few seconds, which was enough time for training to kick down her mental doors and at least temporarily subdue her fear and confusion. It made room for logic and rationality.

Reason the situation out.

Closing her eyes, Kyra took a deep breath and let it out slowly.

When she opened her eyes again, everything seemed to be sharper, the world coming to her with a hard clarity.

She was behind glass.

No, she realized, she was behind two panes of glass. One was in front of her face, a faceplate, a helmet. The second was about a foot and a half ahead of her. It was cracked, though the crack didn't look terribly bad. Beyond that...what appeared to be miles and miles of ashy gray rock. Though in the distance she thought she could see maybe some kind of reddish-brown mountains. Where the hell was she? Where had she been?

Where was the ship for that matter!?

That thought knocked loose several others. Realization came down hard on her: she was inside of an escape pod. Kyra blinked a few more times and slowly looked around the interior of the small thing she was in, confirming that it was, in fact, an escape pod. Okay, so, something had gone wrong. A fresh burst of pain assaulted her skull and Kyra winced. She wanted to reach up and gently probe the place that hurt, sure that she was bleeding, but she was in a fully contained atmospheric suit. Why didn't she remember putting that on?

Her memories were foggy at best, and for now, she put her attempts to excavate them aside. Right now, she was in an escape pod with limited power and oxygen. Unsurprisingly, the UAC had skimped on the pods. So that meant she had to pray that somehow, someway, she had landed somewhere not far from a place with heat and power and atmosphere. This place looked pretty grim, wherever it was. She shifted around and managed to get the straps holding her in place undone with some careful maneuvering.

Now somewhat more free to move about, she twisted to the right and found a small screen mounted on the wall. It was intact. Working as fast as she could, she used the pod's limited abilities to scan the immediate area, looking for signs of life and power signatures. While that was running, she typed at the little wristpad mounted on her suit and ran a check of it. Obviously, she was going to have to leave this pod at some point and there didn't seem to be very much of an atmosphere out there. What sky there was looked very thin.

Both checks came back at about the same time and delivered a little bit of good news. The suit itself was intact and she had about an hours' worth of oxygen. The scan from the pod confirmed that the area was totally lifeless for a quarter mile, which was the pod's maximum scanning range. However, it did bring back a single hit: there was a weak energy signature a little less than a quarter mile behind her.

"Well, great," she whispered, then winced as another bolt of pain hit her.

It was time to get moving.

Before cracking the seal, Kyra took a moment to, as thoroughly as she could, search the escape pod. It didn't have anything of any real value in it. Weren't these things at least supposed to come with a damned Medikit? At least a StimPack? Kyra sighed and, pushing aside her mounting frustration with the situation, broke the seals.