Chapter 14: Once More into the Maw

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The tunnel that led to the final place Kyra intended to visit in this miserable hellhole was thankfully intact, and the tram rode smoothly enough across the tracks. Though it ran over a few corpses with ugly snaps and sprays of blood. She ignored it all, checking over the chaingun to make sure it was in top condition. She had no idea what might be waiting for her in the final structure: Site Echo. The second teleportation site.

As she finished making sure the chaingun was up to snuff, she set it aside and then looked over her latest toy, the primary item she had liberated from the locked armory. It was beautiful, somehow even more wonderful a sight than the chaingun had been. She had absolutely no idea what a DX-88 Eliminator Rocket Launcher was doing on a UAC moon-based research station, but honestly, she didn't give a single fuck.

What mattered was that she had a fucking rocket launcher.

And three rockets to go with it.

She'd also managed to find another few boxes of bullets for the chaingun, a stack of ammo for the assault rifle, and a box of shotgun shells. It was quite the haul, and this time she actually felt ready to fight through hell. Well, probably as much as she could, given the reality of the situation. The launcher looked to be in good condition. Of course the only real test was to pull trigger, which she couldn't really do. She planned on saving it for a real emergency, which...she supposed she'd know when she saw it.

Given everything she'd run into so far, especially considering what had happened in the machine shops, Kyra was prepared to see something a hell of a lot worse than the nightmarish horrors she'd run into by now. And having a rocket launcher to blast right into their screaming faces was a pretty great thing to have. Plus, she could use the chaingun until then. Kyra looked up. The tram was coming to a halt and the airlock was very close now. She stood up and began settling all of her gear. She was pretty much at her limit now.

The airlock finished its cycle and granted her access to the structure.

There were zombies waiting for her on the disembarkation platform. They were armed, and almost all of them were former Marines. Shit. This wasn't going to be easy. She was now more than grateful for the suit of power armor, because she probably wouldn't be able to carry five damned weapons at once without it, especially considering the chaingun. She let it hang across her back and selected the assault rifle.

The second the tram doors opened up, the three nearest zombies opened fire. Almost none of them were armored, at least. It was just a matter of point and shoot. Kyra took a few pistol rounds as she lined up the zombie's skulls and squeezed the trigger, letting out one round apiece and making a killshot each time. As the nearest three zombie bastards went down, others swarmed in. One of them had a shotgun. Kyra took cover and began to operate a bit more tactically. She set to work, wearing out the enemies numbers.

By the time she'd emptied her assault rifle, the last of the zombies was put down, as well as a pair of fiends that had shown up at some point during the firefight. She hastily reloaded and waited to see what else would come her way, but the local forces seemed to have been depleted for the moment. Kyra left the relative safety of the tram and stepped out onto the platform. Still nothing around. She didn't expect that to keep.

She spent a few minutes checking the corpses, gathering up some more shells and magazines for her pistol, finding nothing else of note. Though if there had been, maybe she might not be here to complain about it. After clearing the area, she passed through the security checkpoint that had been utterly wrecked by the invasion. The walls were painted in blood and corpses littered the area. There were, at least, corpses from both sides. Though it looked like something had been feeding on a lot of them. Kyra moved among them, grabbing whatever ammo she could find. Passing through the security checkpoint, she came to the crossroads. It was a pretty similar setup as the previous structure, with scientist's dormitories to the right, and a practically bombed-out security center to the left, and the teleportation core dead ahead.

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