Months later, the EDF came knocking with General Graves in tow. “Duke, did you get my email?” He raised an eyebrow. “The one about the free penis enhancement pills?” He scowled. “No Duke, you know the one I mean. Duke looked taken aback. “But you’re not a Nigerian prince.”
Graves sat across from Duke while his men raided the fridge. “Do you recall the Reptoid mothership you destroyed last week?” Duke stroked his chin. “You’ll have to be more specific, that happens to me a lot.” Of course, he did remember. Partially healed radiation blisters from the stolen nuclear core he was sent to take offline still dotted his face and chest.
“Well, this was the first time you left one mostly intact, so the EDF Naval division established a submarine base and Reptoid detainment center on the seafloor. To recover and contain any survivors from the wreck, and to research what’s left of their ship.” Graves handed Duke a tablet playing a slideshow of photos depicting two monolithic undersea towers, with an inset topographical map of the seafloor around them and a red outline where the mothership was in relation. “Great, sounds like you got things under control. What a general of the EDF does with alien scum in the privacy of his own underwater prison is none of my-” Graves became visibly irate.
“Enough with the cute remarks Duke, you know we lost control of the situation or we wouldn’t be here. A huge module separated from the underside of the mothership as it sank, then moved under its own power to emplace on the ocean floor West of the mothership wreckage, where it transformed into a sea base of their own. By the time we had subfighters in the water, so did they, and it was a bloodbath. We gave as good as we got, but in the end they destroyed all but two of our subs, then invaded both the sub base and the prison as well as invading your own private undersea resort that we so generously built for you following your defeat of the Reptoid armada. Our best subfighter pilots are dead or missing, and the Reptoids freed as many of their own from the prison as they could. But not before we torpedoed prison pod B, flooding it and drowning about half of the Reptoids held there.”
“Sounds like a hell of a fight. Sorry I missed it.” Duke sat crosslegged in boxers and a bathrobe, craning his neck to watch Oprah on the livingroom flatscreen over Graves’ shoulder. “Well, you’re in luck. You’ve been chosen to-” Duke leapt up, strode across the room, opened the door and gestured for Graves to leave. “Fuck no, I hate swimming, makes my fingers go all raisin-y.”
But of course everything had been decided ahead of time, and even Duke Nukem answers to the US government. “The chopper is waiting on the roof. Pack some swim trunks. Oh, and Duke? You’ll be fighting deep this time. Your whole body will saturate with nitrogen, dissolved into your blood stream.” Duke vaguely remembered something about this from his Bill Nye DVDs but waited for Graves to elaborate.
“Once you’re down there, you can’t come back to the surface for any reason or you’ll die. Not without 17 hours of decompression in a special chamber. There’s one in the prison and another in the sub repair facility. Whatever happens, you’re alone down there, and coming up for air isn’t an option. But you will be dressed for success; Our lab guys came up with magnetic soles for your protective boots. Now in addition to shielding your feet from acid or magma, they’ll also adhere to some types of flat metal surfaces and let you walk normally instead of swimming, which may help if you get disoriented in the weightless underwater environment.”
Graves demonstrated, producing a familiar black boot from his suitcase and sticking it to Duke’s fridge. “Groovy. But it sounds like what I could really use is a submarine”. Graves sighed. “We threw every sub we had at the Reptoid base. Their subfighters were faster, more maneuverable. We destroyed or crippled them all but not before they chewed up our whole fleet. So our entire undersea fighting force, for the purposes of this mission, consists of you. To impove your odds, we’ve dropped some air refill stations down to the sea bed along with ammunition crates in a number of spots around the lagoon, so that you can resupply as you go. They are marked by a bright yellow light at the top, you should be able to see them from a distance.”
“Nice. I’ll look out for those. Hey Graves, what’s long, hard and full of seamen?”
“I’ve heard this one Duke. A submarine.”
“My dick”
“Charming as always. Start packing, we’re leaving immediately. Once you get down to the resort, look for a computer monitor. We’ll instruct you from there. Good luck.”
* Play Information *
Single Player : Yes
DukeMatch 2-8 Player : Possible
Cooperative 2-8 Player : Possible
Difficulty Settings : No
Plutonium Pak Required : No
New Art : No
New Music : Yes
New Sound Effects : No
New .CON Files : No
Demos Replaced : No