Leviathan

[Doomguy]

-Crescent Lagoon Inner Sanctum-

An uneasy silence had been poking me in the back of my mind as I entered into the hallway. The idea had been stalking me, that something else might be here. Perhaps there was the chance that it was some dumb animal skulking around now that the humans with guns had left, but the smashed blast door at the end of the corridor proved that the hairs standing up in my neck was just unnecessary paranoia. Something had tried to force it's way out, judging by the bits of metal on my side of the door. Something large. At least Pinky size, and just as strong. If it's as dumb as a Pinky is another question all together. I held my shotgun up, over-watching the massive door, and with a thrust of my elbow into the control panel the two halfs of the door separated. Servos hidden within the wall pulled and struggled to move the wait as the damage done to them had knocked something out of place, and a loud crash as something broke inside the mechanism had one half grinding to a halt.

"Fuck" If they didn't know I was here before, there sure as Hell did now. No animalistic roars or heavy footsteps coming at me, but that didn't mean there wasn't some ten foot tall sack of shit waiting for me on the other side.

I popped the shotgun on the other side of the door before poking my head out. Nothing. I swung the shotgun the other way. More empty hallway. The slow sweep of the base was not my preferred style of fighting, but until I confirmed there was something here I wasn't about to sprint head first into I was looking through every nook and cranny. And there was far too many of them. Unlike the UAC buildings back on Phobos and Deimos, this fortress was built to keep people out. Every hall longer than 10 feet had supports jutting inwards at regular intervals, big enough to hide a humanoid behind to pop out and attack. The corridors randomly jutted at hard corners, reducing the effectiveness of long ranged weapons and explosives. And I could practically sense the hidden windows where those with access to the inner rooms could surprise an enemy, particularly where the hallways made u-turns. This place was a proper military base, and each defense added made more and more labyrinthine.

A labyrinth that smelled like dead fish. I'd say it's like Hell, but, well...

Eventually, through the twists and turns and the constant paranoia of some eldrich abomination pulling itself from the shadow, I finally reached a door that reached further into the sanctuary. Once again I expected the worse as the door rose, and I found what appeared to be the mess hall. Stacked chairs and overturned tables pushed to the walls where soldiers and officers once ate and an overhanging catwalk where news and orders were given from, along with where defenders could rain down firepower on someone coming through. Off in the back I could see where the food was once prepared and served. And what made the awful smell.

It leaned through the doorway leading into the freezer. Standing at 8 feat and twice as wide as me, the slimy creature's scales where a dark and sickly blueish green, which slowly changed to a milky white at the underbelly. It had fins running down the spine and on it's squat muscled legs, and when it turned around to notice it's intruder the creature had the face of a fish: Bulging, dead eyes popping out of a flat wide face with no nose, and a mouth that stretched to twice the size of it's head and filled with teeth. It looked exactly like some deep sea monstrosity that had dragged itself from the ocean to walk on the land. It had been pilfering the pantry before I showed up, but now that a more enticing target arrived it began to sulk it's way towards me. It's stretched it's body out from the slack position it was sloped, long gangling arms reaching out toward me. It seemed that expected that its mere presence would have been enough to tip me into madness.

Which I'm sure it was disappointed when all it got was a silent stare through my helmet and half of its face erased when I fired my shotgun.

Fire and thunder roared out of the barrel as I pulled the trigger, aimed at the fish creature's face, and it fell over backward clutching it's face as blood and bits of bone splattered across a nearby cabinet. It shrieked and flailed in pain from the missing part of its head as it attempted to push itself back up, but I was already right next to it when it recovered, another shotgun shelled pumped in, and I unleashed one more shot into the monster's chest. Ichor splattered across the floor and my pants, and it slumped over. Dead as a door nail.

"Groovy" I'd be lying if I said I didn't enjoy that. A big smile went from ear to ear as I looked at the corpse. It was dead, I was sure about that. I drove a few kicks into the creature's skull, so if it was alive it would too dumb to do anything about it.

I was about to walk over the corpse and see what was left in the larder when more screeches filled the air from all directions. This monster was not alone, and if I didn't do something I was about to be up to my asshole in more of these fish creatures. A quick glance to my side and I spotted a bundle of cables lead up to the second floor. I raced up as the doors on the other side of the room began to rise, and had flattened myself against the cat walk as three more of the fish creatures walked in. They were on the look out for me, slowly walking towards the corpse of their comrade, and only looked up when they heard the spin of my chaingun speeding up.

"Time for some fishing!" I yelled from the catwalk, and unleashed a symphony of heavy firepower as the chaingun spewed out bullets onto the targets below. It was music to my ears, the din of the bullets firing off and impacting into flesh "Perfect weather for it: heavy rain of lead and blood"

The closest one to me exploded in ichor as I pumped bullet's into its chest, the abomination dancing about from the force of each hit until it the limbs flew off and the torse fell to the floor. The others made a break for it, but I swung it towards them while the gun still fired and caught them both in the sweep. Shell chasing rained down onto the floor below, the smell of spent gunpowder a heavy perfume as I sawed one of the fish men in half and vaporized the brain pan of the other. The upper torso of the half-a-fishman attempted to crawl away, but a burst fire found its way into the neck of the beast and it bled out and died.

"Catch of the day. Going to have to throw those ones ba-" Whatever joke I was going with was rudely interrupted when a heavy hand clubbed me in the back of the head, pushing me into the railing and almost over it where it not for the chaingun giving me a safe margin. By having the casing rammed into the stomach.

I spun around to find that one of the bastards had snuck up on me. It threw another attack at me, attempting to rake it's claws across by chest. But I jumped to the side, the creature instead denting the railing I had almost gone head first over. I attempted to spin the barrels of the chaingun back up to speed, but it was already swinging again and it caught me in the arm holding the gun. the claws dug into the flesh, pain shooting up and the chaingun was nearly ripped from my hand. But I pulled back, and answered the monster's assault by letting go of the rapid fire weapon with one hand and quickly drawing my pistol.

I fired a shot as soon as it had it up, but it hit what I was aiming for: one of the large bulging eyes popped at the small bullet dug into its head. It staggered, reeling back from the hit, but when it hesitated I stuck back. I drove my boot into the chest of the abomination, forcing it backwards, and with one more kick the tall creature toppled over the railing it had weaken earlier and plunged to the floor. It landed onto one of the upturned tables, and both of them snapped in half.

"Biggest fish I ever caught" I took a picture of the broken fishman through the camera in my helmet, and I left the second floor of this messy mess hall in some good humor. No more exploring uselessly on the first floor. Up here is where all the good things were kept. In fact, it only took a quick walk around where the officer's quarters once were when I found a map on some receptionist's desk pointing me out to the armory.

It took a bit of finagling to get through the door to the armory. Doors, actually. It was those kind of systems where you needs to get into a completely separate room to even get into this restricted area, and once I got past that it had the gall of having a keycard lock between me and it. Security was exactly the same, which would be where the keycards are normally. But while poking around the large room that connected them together, the reception desk that sat in the middle had a spare glued to the bottom of it. A little scrapping later and I was inside. Both rooms had been largely stripped, but between both rooms and a latter searching of the officer's quarters I managed to fill several of the duffle bags with the same plastic toy guns I saw the soldiers in white armor using, with a few oddities here and. It wasn't exactly the greatest haul, but there was still more base to search through.

I was more focused on filling these bags as quickly as possible before I moved on, throwing them out the door once they were fill, when I had heard the footsteps. More of the assholes. Oh well, all I would be losing is a few more shotgun shells. I pulled my shotgun out, loading a few more shells into the weapon as I stepped outside of the armory with a confident stride.

"Alright you knuckle-dragging walking tv-dinners, which one of you want to be tenderized first?" I asked. But what was outside wasn't the fish men. Robed men with automatic rifles stood in front of me, ornate masks covering their entire face, and as soon as I was out of cover they opened fire. Their aim was terrible, but on full auto aim was a secondary concern. Laser bolts slammed into my chest, shoulders, and stomach, bits of armor flying off as they took the blunt of the impact, and I was forced backwards into the room.

"Fuck, where did YOU come from?" I asked, but they weren't answering as they kept up the suppression fire. Already feeling bloodied as I looked over what had hit me, I took the safe bet and blind fired around the corner, rapidly pumping until I heard a grunt of pain followed quickly by another and the firing stop with each. The first was likely the real thing, but they were too far away to have been both hit my the same shot. The other had faked it and was expecting me to come back out to check.

Rather, I loaded another shell into the shotgun, couching down as low as possible, and then spun around the corner. It took a split second for the masked man to re-aim, but it was enough time for me to fire an aimed shot at his leg, which flew off form the damage and he fell to the ground clutching his stump. I rushed over, and before he could pull his gun back up and was above him, and I drove the stock of my shotgun into the face and smashed it to pieces. I was ready to do the same with the other fallen man, but the bloody crater in his chest showed that he was already dead.

As I reassessed the situation, I removed the mask of the human who's head was still intact, and I recoiled back at what I saw. Well, I found out why they were with the fish people. The men weren't human. They looked the part, but they had the same flat faced features. As with a little more searching on their person, I found around their neck a neckless with some religious like symbols of some octopus headed monster, which merely looking at hurt my soul.

"Great, half-fish people cultist. Demons, hostile fishmen. What's next, universe? Want to throw some aliens from beyond the stars at me?" I really had been getting tired of this crap. The job had already gotten harder than I though it was going to be, but it need to be done. I tossed the weapons the attacker's weapons into the bags and headed out to finish what I started, not aware just how much trouble that taunt towards the omniverse was going to land me in.