The DOOM Chronicles

Chapter 05: Military HQ

For a little while, she didn't think.

Kyra simply sat there in the conductor's chamber at the front of the tram, staring out of the windows into the glass-and-steel tunnel ahead of her as she slowly trundled along the tracks. Something brought her back to reality bit by bit, something repetitive and familiar. Metal tinking on metal. Something being jostled ever so slightly by the simple motions of the tram cart. She realized that she had seen something on the way in, something important, something that demanded her attention. With a soft sigh, Kyra came back to herself.

She couldn't keep indulging in these shell-shocked moments.

And that brought her back to the reality that she was still holding her hand over her arm. As soon as she realized it, the pain spiked and she growled in frustration. Fucking stupid. She hadn't been paying attention. After this many years of being a Marine, after this much combat, she would've thought that paying attention would be ingrained into her by now. But apparently not. Apparently facing alien demonic horrors was throwing off her game. Who knew? She pulled her hand away and looked at the shredded remains of her environmental suit sleeve. She was going to have to fix that. And the gashes in her skin.

Well, she had some time.

Sighing quietly, Kyra tracked down an emergency medical kit that came with the tram and cracked it open. The most she could do was a patch-job. She bit back a scream as she dumped a combo of antiseptics and numbing agents into the wound, then let out a long sigh as the numbing agents went to work. She slapped a bandage over the wound that sealed it tightly and would do for now. Then, after a moment's consideration, she grabbed a universal antibiotic/antiviral dose and injected herself. Fuck knew what kind of bacteria that thing had been carrying. Was it an alien? She didn't want to think about that, not yet.

Kyra then hunted down a suit repair kit and took a moment to slap a second patch over her bicep, sealing the wound in her suit. She was going to have to get some real armor soon. She was holding out hope that there would be some in the Military HQ. Now that her arm and suit were taken care of, Kyra stood up and moved back into the main cabin. She had to see what was bugging her. She'd seen something on the way in.

And that something was at the back of the tram, almost tucked away into a corner.

Kyra moved across the tram slowly, partially out of a newfound abundance of caution, but also out of worry that she might roll this corpse over and see a familiar face. They were facing away from her, wearing an environmental suit like her. As she crouched down, she saw a lot of blood. Pistol in hand, she grabbed body's shoulder and rolled it over.

"Aw shit," she whispered. "Erikson."

He was a PFC onboard her ship, a rifleman. He'd gotten rotated in at the same time she had, and was anxious because this was his first spacebound assignment. She remembered looking over his service record. He'd seen a few firefights, and, from what she'd gathered from the psych notes, he was out here because he'd basically lost his nerve in the last one. He'd been protecting a city under siege by rebels over in Greece, since they were currently allied with the US and Norway, which was where he was originally from, and the US was trying to keep Greece from falling after its economy had tanked for the tenth time this century.

Staring at his pale face, as white as a corpse left in the snow for three days, she felt a powerful sense of empathy and regret. They'd stuffed him out here because they figured he wouldn't see any combat.

Hell, someone probably thought they were doing him a kindness.

And they probably would've been...if this hadn't happened.

Judging from the ugly wound in his stomach, which had basically been ripped out, one of those red-brown bastards had gutted him. The poor kid had died, alone and in pain, on some distant fucking moon.