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Title                 : Marathon
Author                : Carl Orthlieb
E-mail                : orthlieb@adobe.com
Description           : See the prologue below.
 
Additional Credits to : Ed Rowe, Paul Close, Scott Petersen for copious
				amounts of DukeMatch playtesting and suggestions.

Feel free to distribute this level as long as this text file is distributed
with the marathon.map.                          
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* Play Information *

Single Player         : Yes
DukeMatch Level       : Yes
Difficulty Settings   : Yes

* Construction *

Base                  : New level from scratch
Editor(s) used        : Build
Known Bugs            : Can't seem to get the parallaxing right on some of the
				outdoor scenes. Would appreciate some help in this 
				area.

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Prologue:

Duke muscled in through the airlock and flipped the cycler shut. He pulled off his helmet and cursed, "Damn aliens are popping up like mushrooms on a dung heap". "Now that emergency transmission came from somewhere close by and I aim to help whomever set it off.". He stooped over the mangled remains of some luckless human and grabbed a comm pad and turned it on. "Hmmm, John Mac, he used to be an old friend of mine, small world. Seems like the aliens toasted his butt but good." Duke scanned the display and came across a personal log entry:

John Mac, Chief Biologist
Marathon Biological Facility 
Polaris Outpost, Luna.

Personal Log

16:00 hrs July 15 
Something exciting happened today. After months of tending bean plants and lettuce varieties in low gravity we heard about the beginning of the alien invasion. I'm sure that EarthCorps will kick their butts.

9:00 hrs July 17
I still can't believe it. The news vids are showing our boys getting blown out of the sky. The aliens move faster and have superior weapons technology. The bright spot is that EarthCorps diverted an alien cargo freighter to Marathon for study. At least we managed to capture this freighter, it may prove to be our last hope. I'm sure that Ed and I can come up with a viral toxin that we can waste these bastards with. Captain Wulff said that the whole facility was to drop everything and deal with our "surprise" package.

14:32 hrs July 17 
The handling crew pulled the pod off the freighter with a lot of difficulty. The aliens had booby-trapped the locking clamps and we lost one of our guys. The pod door has been modified to dock with the cargo bay. I started setting up the lab and Ed ran through procedures with the handling crew for storage of whatever's inside in the quarantine area. 

16:44 hrs July 17
The computer jocks tricked the pod main door into thinking it should open and this huge door cycled up into the ceiling. Mother of God, this pod is massive. It has four main walled-off holds--we haven't opened them yet--we're waiting for Scott Petersen, our newbie engineer, to figure out the locking mechanisms. The heat is stifling, the steamy interior makes you break out into a violent sweat on entry and the stench inside is incredible. The whole thing echoes: sounds reflect strangely and seem to come from the wrong direction. An enormous heat pump encircles the entire pod, I swear to God it's breathing...

19:09 July 17
Scott found two side reactors that were producing all the heat, he vented it off through some ports into our system to prevent the pod from melting the seals we used to fit the pod to the cargo door.  I was worried about containment so we added some biohazard sealing doors to the vents. Scott says he's traced the locks to the holds and we'll crack one of them open tomorrow.

09:00 July 18
Myself, Scott, and three security goons walked into the pod. The sec team was armed with chainguns and a rocket launcher. They sealed the cargo bay blast door behind us and we crossed the steamy interior to a control niche on the west side of the pod just below one of Scott's heat bleeding vents. Scott messed with a strange iris control and the south-west hold cracked in half and slid quickly into the floor. We just weren't prepared; we hadn't dreamed of anything on this scale. The whole hold was stacked floor to ceiling with crates and crates of eggs. Each crate was constructed of some sort of metal mesh that glowed with a bloody red pulse. It was warm to the touch and one of the eggs stirred in the crate when I touched the side with my hand.

10:35 July 18
We shuffled one of the crates off to quarantine and sealed everything back up. Even the security guys were shaken. I've got to get that sample up to the lab for testing.

10:50 July 18
All hell broke loose. The handling crew brought the crate up from quarantine and dropped it just outside the hydroponics lab doors. These guys are supposed to be biohazard professionals, for Christ sake. The crate turned from that queer blood red color to blue and the top of the egg inside peeled back like rotten flesh. Everyone started screaming for security and I hit the isolation alarm. A thick sludgy green mass jumped, I swear 6 feet, onto the ceiling and then dropped onto Jena's face. Ed had the prescence of mind to hose her down with a fire extinguisher which froze the animal. It had eaten right through her biosuit mask and her face was a mess. I got security to rush her to Polaris for special treatment.

The animal seems to be mostly teeth and muscle. There is no evidence of a digestive system or anything beyond the most rudimentary of brains. I can only conclude that it is some sort of parasite and that after attacking a host it injects itself into the corpse which then grows into the adult. It looks as if it could turn itself inside out and leap down your throat. I'm sure I don't want to know what the adult is. At least we know that they are susceptible to cold. I rigged up a nitrogen freezing unit for security just in case one of these things got loose.

13:22 July 18
Polaris outpost notified us that Jena died in intensive care. The doctors are not sure why but her body temperature rose significantly and started to exhibit green fibrous lesions. I argued with the head of the emergency unit and asked him to space the body right then and there. He insisted that they should do an autopsy. I've got a real bad feeling about this. Everyone is in shock still and I've asked Wulff to confine unnecessary personnel to quarters for safety reasons. 

Scott is convinced that the temperature inside the pod is rising. I was worried about the whole batch hatching and so he rigged up an explosive jetison device in the core of the pod in case anything more goes wrong. If we have a containment breach we can blow the whole pod into vacuum. Scott wants me to come down and look at the analysis he's done of the pod's circuitry. He claims that the pod uses an advanced organic-based computer.

17:00 July 18

We've lost contact with Polaris outpost. I'm sure that whatever was hosting inside Jena has now metamorphed into an adult. We notified Earth corps but they're too busy regrouping. I've advised Wulff to jettison the pod but he has asked us to continue our research.

The egg hatchling is alive and well, even after we'd frozen it. The only thing that seems to kill these organisms is direct physical assault. Even exposing the sample to some of our most deadly diseases proved fruitless. Ed's running some DNA tests to see if we can't find a chink in it's armor.

Scott has asked that we close the biohazard seals: the organic circuitry is starting to grow out of the pod and through the ducting. Jesus, this stuff is hard to contain! Scott's still real excited about this and thinks this may be a breakthrough in bio-electronic engineering. 

8:12 July 20

Still no word from Polaris and now we know why. An assault group of aliens has attempted to break in through the exterior airlocks. Scott is on his way down to the cargo pod to jettison the module. Wulff and his security teams are near quarantine preparing for battle. Three groups of roving sec teams exterior to the facility have not reported within the last 4 hours.

10:22 July 20

Scott is dead. I saw the aliens fry him on his way into the pod. Ed and I have stripped everything useful from the lab and we've headed into the air ducts for protection. The aliens have enslaved the rest of Marathon's crew and are having them unload the pod. I am so stunned that I have no emotion left, my fear is on hold and my only hope is that Ed and I can sabotage whatever efforts they're up to. We've started to sneak around and cache weapons, ammo, and med supplies in safe spots in the venting system for later use.

03:46 July 21

Ed conceived of a plan to wedge the cargo bay doors closed and sneaked off with some explosives to do the job. I watched earlier this evening as the aliens herded all the women off to the hydroponics lab. They're performing major structural reorganizations up there using human labour (the bastards). They ripped everything of use out of the lab and tossed it. Even the air/water recycling chamber is undergoing some severe changes, I'm convinced that they're preparing to hatch the cargo in the pod and use the humans as hosts.

Ed still hasn't come back, I'm going down through the service access to investigate.

03:56 July 21

Ed died in the explosion outside of the cargo bay. The door is almost wedged closed. He took some of the aliens with him and so it wasn't in vain. They've started an intensive search in the ducting. Shit, I hope I can get into some of the venting near the air recycling chamber and dump some of the chemicals I've got into the cleansing system.

04:20 July 21

I'm hurt pretty bad. They've started to send robot probes through the venting to hunt down anything that's living. I poisoned the cleansing system but without any effect. I also found out where the women have gone to. The aliens have meshed them in some organic goo inside the recycling chamber. I'm going to take my freezethrower and try and free some of them.

10:02 July 21

Couldn't do it... Some big fat bastard shooting missles out his ass hit me real good... I'm dying but I've managed to get to the airlock and trip the emergency signal. I can only hope that someone can...

End log.

"Now I'm really pissed", said Duke, "not only do they steal our chicks but they also are knocking off my friends. It's time to blow that freighter pod back into space where it belongs!"