The bitter taste of suspended animation wears off. As your vision comes into focus, you see the medical officer standing in front of you.
"Rise and shine, marine," she says, tapping at her datapad. The sarcasm sloughs off every word. You've heard it before, too. Twice from this MO alone. "We're in transit to the combat zone. Command wants me to brief you, as usual."
"Which planet is it this time?" you say. The words feel like they take forever to come out.
"Earth," she says. "Some activity in the ruins of Los Angeles." Still fussing with that datapad. "Members of one of the reclaiming teams wound up missing and resurfaced as zombies. Scouts checked it out and found the city overrun with demons at least five clicks from the shore. HQ set up a perimeter, but they want you."
"A new gateway." It would have to be, wouldn't it.
"No," she says. "At least, we don't think so." You step out of the pod to stretch your legs. She does her scans. "According to command, there's a top-secret military base underwater, off the coast of the city. Deep, like bottom of the ocean. It was the experimental prototypical community of tomorrow. Manufacturing, hydroponics, research, you name it. Even had a civilian population. They wanted to use it as a blueprint for future population expansion."
So an old gateway. It's all the same. Demons out, marine in.
"They were going to use teleportation as the main means of transportation. We're still putting together records of what happened when the invasion occurred, but the brass thinks that DeepStar One went down at the same time."
"Why do they suppose?" you say.
She clutches the datapad to her chest. It's an idle action. "Its sister teleporter was the epicenter of Doomsday," she says.
"When will we be there?"
The scene is amazing. You wouldn't think there'd be anything left to burn, but the city is on fire, again. They never stop. They can't.
"Hendricks says you're clear to go." The captain of the Athena. She couldn't be bothered to brief you. She knows better. "We'd touch down closer, but the skies are full of shit. Anything else you need, you got it. What do you want to do?"
You step off the ramp and onto the dusty soil.
"I want to kill," you say. Carrying nothing more than your sidearm, you speed off.
"How does he run so fast?" says one of the soldiers.
"I'm more amazed that he can see where he's going," says the captain.