Asuka Kazama
Saturday, February 9, 2008, 10:35 AM
Hellgate Guru FFC -The Assault of Canary Dock, Part 1
Falcon Squad picked their way over the rubble of a destroyed building. The roof had been blown away some time ago, and the wooden frame of the house had set alight. Gradually the ashen supports had collapsed, and the bricks had been spread across the pavement outside. It was exactly the same story for all the other houses in the street. The area had, until recently, been the home of a Hellgate; a gateway between Earth and Hell, through which demons entered the world and began to manifest.
Then, when the future looked bleak for the survivors of London, a young recruit had risen his way up through the ranks of men, fighting his way through the mass of demon flesh that lay between the Alliance - an organisation of zealots, spell-casters and stealth hunters - and freedom. He had successfully defeated some of the greatest demonic threats known to exist, before assisting a Cabalist in the assassination of Sydonei, the demonic General.
Now the stealth squads of the Demon Hunters were tasked with ‘clearing up’ the dregs the Burn had left behind, while the Templar chased the elite Primus Caste of demon leaders out of the city. Marcus Flint was a member of one such Hunter squad. They had been tasked with sabotaging the demons’ remaining escape routes - thus why they were scrambling through the demolished street, slowly making their way towards West India Quay. They had left Poplar station several hours ago, and gradually moved across London in the now-relatively safe daylight.
The clouds that had blocked out the sun for the past eighteen years were slowly dissipating, and the first rays of light London had seen in almost two decades were breaking through. Marcus paused in what was once the doorway of a house, and peered up. The sight made his heart suddenly lift, as if the end of the current Dark Age was near. His squad mates paused to as they left the rubble, and for a moment of silence, they were filled with a joy that they hadn’t felt since before the invasion.
Then the sun was covered once again by a blanket of foul gases, and the men turned back to the task in hand. They crossed the street at a run, for fear of the remaining demons that had been left to serve as sentries, and one by one, climbed through a hole in a nearby wall on the opposite side of the road.
They entered some kind of basement car park, situated beneath a block of flats. The cars inside had been flipped over, crumpled, or thrown brashly against a wall by some powerful force. Every so often, a pile of charcoal and ash soiled the concrete floor of a parking space; the remains of a burnt out car. As the squad passed on through the complex, Marcus couldn’t help but wonder if someone had been inside the car at the time. He hoped not.
A row of grated windows lined one side of the car park. There were large gaps in the metal bars, where something or someone had burst through, and at one end, it looked as if a car had been thrown through the wall and out into the dock beyond. A thick smell of long-rotten fish hit Marcus, and he realised that they had reached West India Quay.
A few shots from the squad leader’s Arclight Rifle opened a way through the car park wall, and the team climbed onto the dockside walkway above. Behind them towered a long row of flats, which had presumably once been luxurious and expensive. The quay was lined with the remains of expensive, privately owned boats, littered across the dry muddy surface of the canal bed, and even on the bridge that spanned the length of the canal some way in the distance, there lay an upturned and abandoned barge, looking quite out of place on the tarmac. And then Marcus saw it;
Great towers reaching into the sky, above each one, a swirling red maelstrom. Gigantic Exospector ships circling them, docking occasionally onto organic suction cups that dotted the skyscrapers - scorched pits of burning orange that gave the area the image of being aflame, the harsh colours reflecting on the visors of the squad members’ helmets.
They had finally reached their destination; the fiery remains of Canary Wharf.
They kept to the shadows of the flats, before climbing down to the dry canal bed that ran past the business complex to the nearby fish market. The cracked earth floor was covered with rubbish, scrap and other random items that had somehow drifted down the Thames into the area before the Burn had soaked up all of the capitals water supply. As the squad ran silently from one boat wreck to another, diving behind the broken hulls for fear of being seen, Marcus actually noticed how quiet it was. Now that they had left the streets behind, there were no signs of the usual hellish scavengers that had been the bane of his life for the last decade or so. Instead, the scene was worryingly quiet. Occasionally he thought he saw a shape shift among the shadows - a small creature, the size of a small cat - but then it disappeared, crawling into a cavity or hole that his eyes couldn’t quite make out in the gloom.
Their progress was slow, and after an hour, they had only made it halfway down the mile-long stretch of embankment that led to their destination. Exospectors were flying in above from all around the city, collecting their demon passengers and cargo from the Wharf, before returning back to the countryside. News had been flooding into the stations of the demons massing together around Stonehenge, in the Wild, as the Wardens called it. The forces of the Alliance had dug in at the sacred site, and laid siege to Moloch, Sydonei’s second-in-command. The living air ships had begun to evacuate demons from London and move them to the frontline at Stonehenge. The area was reportedly under constant attack from the air, and the ground below the area had cracked, opening up deep chasms that separated the fields apart and allowed the demons to harvest themselves into the bowels of the earth. Moloch and the four leaders of each demonic army had hidden away in caves, dispatching their armies from a secret underground annex and ordering the Exospectors to seek out each human outpost and then assault them in waves of destruction.
A searchlight passed over the squad members heads, and continued its path across the stricken dockland that had once thrived as one of London’s busiest centres of commerce. The airship projecting the beam suddenly paused, as if it had spotted something on the river bank. A stream of what appeared to be waste fell from its rear, and it moved to dock onto a nearby tower, lowering itself onto a suction cup. Falcon squad stopped, following the waste as it descended rapidly towards them. At a hundred or so feet it began to slow, and split into tangible shapes, each of which then sprouted tentacles and a single, large eye.
The Hunters burst into action, some running as fast as they could down the bank, while others took up their positions and prepared to lay down covering fire once the creatures came below the bridge, and the line of sight for any nearby demons. They didn’t want their blaster fire noticed during what was meant to be a raid, and have their presence to be given away.
Marcus unclipped the Perforator machine pistol from his belt, and ran to the cover of the bridge. Two other Hunters had already made it, and they were crouching beneath the bridge supports, in a stairwell that led down into the sewer network. The waste creatures, known as Polyps, passed below the bridge, and the squad began their counter-attack. Marcus’ perforator clicked and shook as he squeezed down hard on the trigger, picking his targets and shuddering as they popped like balloons of poisonous gas.
Three more men of the squad made it to the bridge before the Polyps came close enough to attack. They set upon the remaining men left in the open, some bursting and firing clouds of gas at their prey that caused blisters on their skin, and others pushing forward with their tendrils, slithering numerous appendages down the throats of Marcus’ comrades and choking them alive, or dissecting their brains.
One member of the squad crouching at Marcus’ side, Alissa, threw a grenade into the crowd of creatures. It detonated with a loud crack, bursting half of the Polyps and killing the last of the men left alive outside. Taking their chance, Marcus directed the squad down the stair and into the sewer, firing as they went. When the last of the men were safely inside, Alissa raised her rifle, and fired behind her, collapsing the entranceway in a heap of dust and rubble.
The remainder of the squad regrouped on the thin rail-less path of the sewer tunnel edge. Through the centre, a strange, thick and sickly liquid squelched past, threatening to swallow any who fell from the pathway side like quicksand. It shone it the low light produced by flickering strip lamps that ran the length of the sewer. The squad collapsed against the wall, wiping sweat from their brows, and un-jamming their guns.
Marcus stood up. Nothing needed to be said, he was the next in the command chain after their Sergeant - a man called Johnson, who was now lying dismembered in the dirt of the canal bed. Marcus took out his coordinator, and studied it. The tower of Canary Wharf was now barely minutes away, but getting to it would be a problem.
He ordered one man to get out of his backpack a Drone kit, used on the battlefield as a sentry and aid for a Hunter, and activating it, he ordered the robot to seek out the nearest path to the tower, and find the safest route. He knew that the sewers where just as infested with demons as topside, even more so now the hellgates had been destroyed. With more of the hell spawn fleeing into the networks, escaping the men that hunted them out of the city, they had become vicious and desperate, much like the humans... but Marcus and his squad had no other option. The demons knew they were in the area, and that meant they couldn’t continue their journey above ground.
After a few minutes, the drone discovered a tunnel that led to a shopping complex, conveniently situated beneath the tower itself. With heavy hearts, the Hunters picked themselves up and went on, following the drone, and walking silently towards overwhelming odds, and certain doom.
Chaplain Fordo
AKA Spocked of the Sydonei server.
Falcon Squad picked their way over the rubble of a destroyed building. The roof had been blown away some time ago, and the wooden frame of the house had set alight. Gradually the ashen supports had collapsed, and the bricks had been spread across the pavement outside. It was exactly the same story for all the other houses in the street. The area had, until recently, been the home of a Hellgate; a gateway between Earth and Hell, through which demons entered the world and began to manifest.
Then, when the future looked bleak for the survivors of London, a young recruit had risen his way up through the ranks of men, fighting his way through the mass of demon flesh that lay between the Alliance - an organisation of zealots, spell-casters and stealth hunters - and freedom. He had successfully defeated some of the greatest demonic threats known to exist, before assisting a Cabalist in the assassination of Sydonei, the demonic General.
Now the stealth squads of the Demon Hunters were tasked with ‘clearing up’ the dregs the Burn had left behind, while the Templar chased the elite Primus Caste of demon leaders out of the city. Marcus Flint was a member of one such Hunter squad. They had been tasked with sabotaging the demons’ remaining escape routes - thus why they were scrambling through the demolished street, slowly making their way towards West India Quay. They had left Poplar station several hours ago, and gradually moved across London in the now-relatively safe daylight.
The clouds that had blocked out the sun for the past eighteen years were slowly dissipating, and the first rays of light London had seen in almost two decades were breaking through. Marcus paused in what was once the doorway of a house, and peered up. The sight made his heart suddenly lift, as if the end of the current Dark Age was near. His squad mates paused to as they left the rubble, and for a moment of silence, they were filled with a joy that they hadn’t felt since before the invasion.
Then the sun was covered once again by a blanket of foul gases, and the men turned back to the task in hand. They crossed the street at a run, for fear of the remaining demons that had been left to serve as sentries, and one by one, climbed through a hole in a nearby wall on the opposite side of the road.
They entered some kind of basement car park, situated beneath a block of flats. The cars inside had been flipped over, crumpled, or thrown brashly against a wall by some powerful force. Every so often, a pile of charcoal and ash soiled the concrete floor of a parking space; the remains of a burnt out car. As the squad passed on through the complex, Marcus couldn’t help but wonder if someone had been inside the car at the time. He hoped not.
A row of grated windows lined one side of the car park. There were large gaps in the metal bars, where something or someone had burst through, and at one end, it looked as if a car had been thrown through the wall and out into the dock beyond. A thick smell of long-rotten fish hit Marcus, and he realised that they had reached West India Quay.
A few shots from the squad leader’s Arclight Rifle opened a way through the car park wall, and the team climbed onto the dockside walkway above. Behind them towered a long row of flats, which had presumably once been luxurious and expensive. The quay was lined with the remains of expensive, privately owned boats, littered across the dry muddy surface of the canal bed, and even on the bridge that spanned the length of the canal some way in the distance, there lay an upturned and abandoned barge, looking quite out of place on the tarmac. And then Marcus saw it;
Great towers reaching into the sky, above each one, a swirling red maelstrom. Gigantic Exospector ships circling them, docking occasionally onto organic suction cups that dotted the skyscrapers - scorched pits of burning orange that gave the area the image of being aflame, the harsh colours reflecting on the visors of the squad members’ helmets.
They had finally reached their destination; the fiery remains of Canary Wharf.
They kept to the shadows of the flats, before climbing down to the dry canal bed that ran past the business complex to the nearby fish market. The cracked earth floor was covered with rubbish, scrap and other random items that had somehow drifted down the Thames into the area before the Burn had soaked up all of the capitals water supply. As the squad ran silently from one boat wreck to another, diving behind the broken hulls for fear of being seen, Marcus actually noticed how quiet it was. Now that they had left the streets behind, there were no signs of the usual hellish scavengers that had been the bane of his life for the last decade or so. Instead, the scene was worryingly quiet. Occasionally he thought he saw a shape shift among the shadows - a small creature, the size of a small cat - but then it disappeared, crawling into a cavity or hole that his eyes couldn’t quite make out in the gloom.
Their progress was slow, and after an hour, they had only made it halfway down the mile-long stretch of embankment that led to their destination. Exospectors were flying in above from all around the city, collecting their demon passengers and cargo from the Wharf, before returning back to the countryside. News had been flooding into the stations of the demons massing together around Stonehenge, in the Wild, as the Wardens called it. The forces of the Alliance had dug in at the sacred site, and laid siege to Moloch, Sydonei’s second-in-command. The living air ships had begun to evacuate demons from London and move them to the frontline at Stonehenge. The area was reportedly under constant attack from the air, and the ground below the area had cracked, opening up deep chasms that separated the fields apart and allowed the demons to harvest themselves into the bowels of the earth. Moloch and the four leaders of each demonic army had hidden away in caves, dispatching their armies from a secret underground annex and ordering the Exospectors to seek out each human outpost and then assault them in waves of destruction.
A searchlight passed over the squad members heads, and continued its path across the stricken dockland that had once thrived as one of London’s busiest centres of commerce. The airship projecting the beam suddenly paused, as if it had spotted something on the river bank. A stream of what appeared to be waste fell from its rear, and it moved to dock onto a nearby tower, lowering itself onto a suction cup. Falcon squad stopped, following the waste as it descended rapidly towards them. At a hundred or so feet it began to slow, and split into tangible shapes, each of which then sprouted tentacles and a single, large eye.
The Hunters burst into action, some running as fast as they could down the bank, while others took up their positions and prepared to lay down covering fire once the creatures came below the bridge, and the line of sight for any nearby demons. They didn’t want their blaster fire noticed during what was meant to be a raid, and have their presence to be given away.
Marcus unclipped the Perforator machine pistol from his belt, and ran to the cover of the bridge. Two other Hunters had already made it, and they were crouching beneath the bridge supports, in a stairwell that led down into the sewer network. The waste creatures, known as Polyps, passed below the bridge, and the squad began their counter-attack. Marcus’ perforator clicked and shook as he squeezed down hard on the trigger, picking his targets and shuddering as they popped like balloons of poisonous gas.
Three more men of the squad made it to the bridge before the Polyps came close enough to attack. They set upon the remaining men left in the open, some bursting and firing clouds of gas at their prey that caused blisters on their skin, and others pushing forward with their tendrils, slithering numerous appendages down the throats of Marcus’ comrades and choking them alive, or dissecting their brains.
One member of the squad crouching at Marcus’ side, Alissa, threw a grenade into the crowd of creatures. It detonated with a loud crack, bursting half of the Polyps and killing the last of the men left alive outside. Taking their chance, Marcus directed the squad down the stair and into the sewer, firing as they went. When the last of the men were safely inside, Alissa raised her rifle, and fired behind her, collapsing the entranceway in a heap of dust and rubble.
The remainder of the squad regrouped on the thin rail-less path of the sewer tunnel edge. Through the centre, a strange, thick and sickly liquid squelched past, threatening to swallow any who fell from the pathway side like quicksand. It shone it the low light produced by flickering strip lamps that ran the length of the sewer. The squad collapsed against the wall, wiping sweat from their brows, and un-jamming their guns.
Marcus stood up. Nothing needed to be said, he was the next in the command chain after their Sergeant - a man called Johnson, who was now lying dismembered in the dirt of the canal bed. Marcus took out his coordinator, and studied it. The tower of Canary Wharf was now barely minutes away, but getting to it would be a problem.
He ordered one man to get out of his backpack a Drone kit, used on the battlefield as a sentry and aid for a Hunter, and activating it, he ordered the robot to seek out the nearest path to the tower, and find the safest route. He knew that the sewers where just as infested with demons as topside, even more so now the hellgates had been destroyed. With more of the hell spawn fleeing into the networks, escaping the men that hunted them out of the city, they had become vicious and desperate, much like the humans... but Marcus and his squad had no other option. The demons knew they were in the area, and that meant they couldn’t continue their journey above ground.
After a few minutes, the drone discovered a tunnel that led to a shopping complex, conveniently situated beneath the tower itself. With heavy hearts, the Hunters picked themselves up and went on, following the drone, and walking silently towards overwhelming odds, and certain doom.
Chaplain Fordo
AKA Spocked of the Sydonei server.