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Fallen Angel (part 1): An Old Friend
Posted By: Commander Demitri Wolf
Date: 24 March 2006, 12:05 pm
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AN. Something I wasn't going to do, this is a continuation from a previous story, Creations of a Madman, I thought the storyline may have had potential and I expanded on it. Don't expect to understand the story fully without reading the 'prologue' as well, but you should all be able to follow it.
Fear is the mind-killer. Fear is the little-death that brings total obliteration.
- Bene Gesserit 'Litany against Fear'
It had been just over a month since the UNSC Emergency Response team had been called out to the massacre aboard the Deep Space Station, DSS-09; and Hamish Morgan still had nightmares. For the past thirty-one days the Commander would wake in a cold sweat at exactly twelve seconds past midnight, the very time that Mark Keidis took his own life on that haunted station.
Tonight was no exception.
With a gasp he sat bolt upright and fumbled in the dark for the light switch on the wall, with a flickering sound the halogen bars on the ceiling clicked on and bathed the room in light. Panting for breath he looked around his personal quarters, there was nothing there. He swallowed hard and sighed before allowing his body to limply flop down onto the bed, but the second he hit the pillow the lights above head groaned and then exploded, casting the room into darkness again.
Morgan froze, he didn't have the composure to scream or reach for the light switch, little good it would do him now anyway. The shattered light fixtures flashed with sparks of electricity that still surged through the wires, casting ghastly shadows across every surface of the room. On his bunk, Hamish took long deep breaths as his eyes darted around the room following the light.
For a minute there was nothing to be seen and only the hiss of electricity licking the air and the gasps of his own breath to be heard, and then he saw it.
A finger of light zigzagged through the air and lit up the far wall, the wall that when last he saw it was bare. Now it was marked. Etched into it and splattered with red blotch marks were the three words that had plagued Morgan for weeks.
Now there they were, staring him in the face, taunting his sanity. But that wasn't all that caught his eye. Propped against the wall - a dirty blanket for warmth - was a figure, a figure that Hamish had only seen once and never cared to see again.
"Hello Commander."
Mark Keidis was back.
Hamish allowed a scream to escape his lips and in an instant the image before his eyes vanished and he was again up in bed, this time there was a man next to his bed, the lights were intact and the far wall was untouched. Lieutenant Commander Samuel Edwards stood over Hamish and scoffed, "You right there boss? You been screamin' for a whole minute."
Morgan looked about the room instinctively but saw only the clock on the wall that told him it was two minutes past midnight. "I…he…" Hamish looked back at the wall and made sure there was nothing at all there before continuing, his heart rate still rapid, "I had another dream." He said softly and Edwards nodded.
"I wouldn't be worried about dreams if I were you boss, there's something you need to see."
0007 Hours, February 8, 2553 (Military Calendar) /
Communications Facility, UNSC Emergency Response station Gamma,
Sirius Aurelius system, orbiting planet Gaius V
I'm not mad, Hamish told himself as the monitor before him displayed a barren corridor that he recognised from DSS-09, this proves it.
"When did you-"
The speaker was silenced instantly by Morgan's raised hand, and once again all of the half dozen people in the room turned their attention to the screen. The sterile-white walls of the station wavered suddenly as static waves washed over the image, "Wait for it," a technician ordered bluntly and the room's occupants exchanged nervous glances.
In a parallel effect, the facility's ultra sensitive speakers hissed hauntingly as on-screen, lights flickered in the corridor and everything went dark. The technician twisted a dial on the panel before him, boosting the volume to max; over the ambient noise Morgan's ears listened intently for the sound.
DSS-09's main corridor was a dark and silent place for all of a second, and then they heard it. It was only a whisper, but amplified ten-fold by the powerful speaker system the blood curdling words sounded like they came from someone in the room.
"That's it," Morgan sighed, and turned to leave, "I'm going back." As the door closed behind him the silent crowd listened to the voice on loop. It was ten minutes until they had all left and returned to sleep, and not one of them awoke when dawn called that morning.
"Hello Commander, you'll be joining us soon…"
Hamish Morgan wasn't an overly religious man, though there was a time when he was. He bore tattoos of twin crosses on both wrists, a symbol of his initiation into the UNSC, and of protection. Now as his SkyHawk was prepped for departure and he clipped the latches on his helmet, he looked down on these symbols and sighed, hoping that despite his sins God would still protect him.
He heard a far off voice and froze, was this divine intervention? But then he saw the red light flashing on his HUD under the 'COMM. 1'. Feeling foolish, he chinned a button and the voice became clearer and louder, "You're good to go, Sir." The technician said from outside the cockpit and gave the thumbs up sign before calling his team to pull out of the hanger.
As soon as the hanger's blast doors had sealed and the atmosphere vented, a green light strobed outside and the external doors continued launch protocol and silently slid open, revealing the void of space beyond them.
"Relay-Zulu Squadron has clearance for launch, repeat, Green-Light for launch!" One by one acknowledgement lights winked inside the control room, but their message fell to blind eyes and deaf ears.
Lieutenant Junior Grade Zachary Graham had died six seconds ago, the three other operators with him went shortly after and each in the same way. It was three weeks later that their bodies were examined by the coroner, and the sickening details of their death recorded.
In similar states of swollen decay, the greyish coloured bodies were streaked with black and green from the blood breakdown in their vessels, their toe and fingernails had sloughed off and purge fluids were weeping from the nose and mouth. But the most grisly part of the corpses were hard for the coroner to classify in his report, it appeared as though a small, sharp object had been passed between the ulna and the radius on their lower wrists as well as through heels.
To complete the disturbing visage, a wound that looked as if it had been made by a spear appeared on all four victim's sides; their internal organs had perforated by this unknown object. Written at the bottom of each of their official death statements the coroner had summed up his investigation:
Cause of death; unknown. Possible combination of blood loss / severe haemorrhaging. Victim inflicted with Stigmata - the Holy Wounds of Christ
0059 Hours, February 8, 2553 (Military Calendar) /
Docking Bay, UNSC Deep Space Station, DSS-09
Commander Morgan and his five man incursion team stepped out of their Hawk's and onto the cold bay floor, the first man out of his plane was Edwards, as usual, and he was quick to make sure the area was secured. Hamish was last on the deck and straight away he signalled for his team to fan out and follow suit with Edwards, who was now moving around the perimeter.
He removed from its holster his modified 18-round magazine M6D pistol, flicked the safety off with a satisfying click and scanned the walls, floor and ceili-
…fwomp… fwomp…fwomp…
Each of the three large strobe lights in the hanger flashed off and Morgan crouched down instantly, his helmet's dropdown HUD covered his eyes and activated night vision. Through the darkness he saw another five pairs of glowing green dots in different parts of the hanger, each one was a soldier, and behind each pair of goggles they were worried.
He saw one of his men, out of the corner of his eye, attempting to stand up, but as soon as he had moved the slightest fraction upwards he was wrenched off the ground by some invisible force and flung towards the hanger's rear metal wall at phenomenal speed.
But he didn't stop there, he continued on, right through the wall itself, which seemed to shimmer and ripple as he passed through it, and he didn't stop screaming all the way. Two more of Morgan's men grabbed for their sidearms, only to meet the same treatment as the first man, a third soldier tried to run, but was sucked through the floor as his feet made contact. Morgan's heart rate had spiked again, but he dared not move, what he had just witnessed had him frozen to the ground in fear.
It looked as though a sonic grenade had exploded at their feet as his team were plucked into the air, a large sonic wave having blasted towards each one of them, the first three from the front and the forth man from the back, shoving him into the floor.
Morgan slowly looked around to Edwards, who had been the furthest away of all his team, and found him staring right back at him. The Commander also saw he was crouched right next to the door controls and could tell that Samuel was judging the distance.
Then his second in command made the mistake of beckoning his commander towards him, all of Morgan's instincts told him this was a bad move and every nerve screamed at him to save his friend, but he was still crouched down a second later as Edwards, too, was blasted off the ground.
Hamish couldn't take it anymore he jumped to his feet and roared, 'What do you want with me!', firing three bullets into the air in rage. It wasn't until he drew breath again that he realised he was still standing, undamaged, unlike his team. It also hadn't dawned on him that there was a chuckling sound coming from the ground beneath him, or in reality, his fallen headset.
He scooped it cautiously off the ground and fitted it on his head where he heard an all too familiar voice on the other end of the comm channel, "Hello Commander, you remember I once asked you what death was, don't you?" The dead medical officer's voice echoed in Morgan's ears and he remembered the many horrific nightmares he had had the last month, "Well you're about to find out."
Hamish Morgan was unconscious before his prone body cleared the length of the hanger and exploded through the wall on the other side, the voice on the other end of his headset was laughing the whole time.
Four minutes later
Hamish came to minutes later in the middle of the corridor he had seen hours ago on the video feed in the Communications Room, the exception was that this time it was not deserted. Before him were seven hooded figures and one man in the uniform of the UNSC Medical Corps; Mark Keidis.
Since Morgan had seen the dead man one month ago he had not changed at all, his physical appearance was exactly how he had looked before death, all that was different was the uniform, "Finally we meet face to face Commander Morgan, it is an honour," Keidis extended his hand towards Hamish, who backed away in disgust and rose to his feet of his own accord.
"You killed my team," Morgan said pointing a shaking finger at Keidis, "you plagued me with nightmares and now you greet me like a friend? If you weren't already dead I'd kill you where you stand."
The doctor laughed again and replied, "I don't need life to live, Commander, not with friends like these," he gestured behind him to the hooded figures, "Allow me to introduce; Abaddon, Samyaza, Asmodai, Leviathan, Samael, Astaroth," A twisted smile fell across his face as the final figure stepped forward, taller than all the others by a full head, it was quite apparent to Morgan that he commanded their respect.
"And my Lord," Keidis announced in a revered tone as the figure pulled back his hood and looked Morgan in the eyes, the crosses tattooed on the Commander's wrists burned white hot and he screamed in agony as the doctor knelt at the robes of the thing before him, "Prince Lucifer."
Hamish wreathed on the ground clutching his wrists as Keidis got to his feet again, "I have the army of Hell behind me, Commander, and we're declaring war, you may think you're a player in this game, but all along you've been my pawn. The United Nations will hear of this before long and they'll send their troops by the shipload to die at our hands, and we have you to thank for this. The Covenant, too, will fall, and the legions of the Nephilim will reclaim their place as rulers of the Universe."
Morgan couldn't hear him, he was already dying of the pain lancing through his body, and he would be gone shortly, re-born as a soldier of Hell, feeding the juggernaut that would soon eclipse the Universe.
By Keidis' side, Lucifer replaced his hood, covering his black eyes, and turned to leave, his six-winged Seraphim following close behind. Mark Keidis crouched by Morgan's side in the dying man's last seconds and taunted him, "What is Death? Well I don't know, Commander, but it looks as if you will soon." Hamish closed his eyes and stopped his quivering, Keidis rose and smiled at his fallen body and turned away.
He had an army to command.
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