Gears of war

Life But No Living

Disclaimer: I don't own any of the characters, ideas or worlds used in this story. This is just a ramble trough the back story to Gears of War the game for Xbox 360.

Chapter 1

5:45am April 23rd 2145

Camp Virtue planet Sera

Master-sergeant Sam Kelly lay on his bunk, hands under his pillow, dozing. A hint of dawn was beginning to light the horizon through the window by his bunk. Next to his bed was an old wooden table, its ancient wood the colour of toffee. It had two draws in it with carved wooden knobs and the whole cabinet stood on carved wooden lion's feet. The pale dawn light feebly washed over the empty water glass, book and various other items on the table. Through the window the sentry on the camps wall paused in his patrol, lent on the breast work and looked out over the flat, grassy plains to the mountains in the distance and the sun clawing its way over it.

The young sentry yawned and hoped the watch lieutenant hadn't seen. A breeze blew up from the west ruffling the grass. Suddenly a feeling caught him and he reached of the handle of the MR37 AR on his back, the weapon more commonly known as the 'Lancer' and considered unslinging it. His breath caught in his throat and his chest tightened. He wanted to shout out but the cry wouldn't come. The breeze stopped, the grass settled and the feeling of terror passed. He shook himself and moved on. The sun crested the mountain and spilled across the plaint. The edge of the light raced across the plain and illuminated the camp.

Camp Virtue was a 1km by 1km square with 3meter thick concrete walls with guard towers every 25 meters with search lights on the top and chain guns and missile launchers on the lower levels. There was a 4 storey command bunker with more gun and missile emplacements in the very centre of the camp. There were garages for the camps APCs tanks and jeeps and pads for the camps 10 King Ravens. There were long barracks that could fit the camps compliment of 15000 soldiers and parade grounds filling the rest of the room. The architecture of the base was limited to concrete with flaring around the base of the walls and raised blocking on the balconies like the side of a grenade. The general effect was of a rhinoceros that had crashed in the grass 10 miles from the nearest city.

A bell rang in the camp and the watches began to change. Sam Kelly rose and stumbled out of his small rooms with its grey walls and the duty roster pinned to the wall towards the shower. Along the walls the guards stepped down from the stockade and down the metal stairs 12 meters from the top of the wall to the bottom. For a time as the guards changed the walls were nearly un-manned.

Under the ground of the plain they stirred and began to tunnel upwards.

Sam Kelly stepped on to the walkway of the bases wall in full armour with his Lancer slung on his back. The men saw the stripes on his shoulder plates and saluted and Sam snapped back a salute and moved to the parapet and leaned on it, making him one of the first to see the declaration of war.

At the same time, in the bases control centre all the radio channels suddenly jammed and a deep, menacing and above all non-human voice spoke.

"You have stolen our liquid gold for to long. We will reclaim it and extract payment from you." The officers and technicians took a step back from the consoles and exchanged glances.

Sam watched as the ground blistered and burst as Imulsion fumes billowed out 200 meters from all of the bases walls. The soldiers crowded against the wall and gazed on as humanoid creatures leapt out of each hole at the same time and aimed rifles at the men the wall and fired. As the first creatures reloaded more snipers leapt up and fired. Their shots impacted killing 1257 men in the first volley and many more with the second as the Gears scrambled for cover. Limp bodies fell from the guard towers and pitched over the wall as alarm bell sounded through the camp

The young soldier next to Sam was hit in the head with the first volley and his still warm blood splattered Sam's left side. The sergeant grabbed the soldier on his other side of him and dragged the man to the floor as he yelled to the soldiers get down but some men stood rooted to the spot with fear or confusion to be hit with by the third and fourth volley.

Sam lay on the floor half covered in blood with more accumulating on the floor from the dead men that lay around, under and over the survivors. Sam grabbed the man he had dragged down and yelled over the sound of the attacker's fifth volley and the cries of the wounded

"Get down that ladder and tell the command chain. We need the Ravens to provide air support and see if you can get an ammo supply running up here."

The man nodded, panic plain in his eyes, but he never the less made a crouching run to the steps and descended down to the base floor. Sam flexed his shoulders under the weight of the body on top of him. He reached round and retrieved his gun, brought it round in front of his eyes and checked to see if it was in order and, apart from the warm and sticky layer of blood, the gun seemed fine.

"Sound off!" he yelled and about 50 men answered in his area. Sam flexed again before shouting "Up and at 'em". He shook himself like a dog, dislodging the dead man from his back and stood up. At the same time 50 other Gears dislodged themselves from the dead, blood dripping from their arms and guns and running down their leg armour to drip in waterfalls from their knees and shin plates, they sighted and fired. Rounds tore into the unprotected snipers, tearing apart their knees and chests, breaking bones and shredding skin and muscle. At the same time around all the base walls the survivors stood up and opened fire, ripping apart the attack force.

Sam was only a few meters from the bottom of the nearest guard tower, its concrete mass towering 50 meters above Sam's head. Suddenly the computer controlled Chain guns roared into life spraying 85 armour piercing rounds a second down onto the enemy.

Sam looked out in time to see more of the creatures climb from their holes holding huge metal shields that they planted in the ground to provide cover for the next wave. Sam watched as the Lancer rounds bounced off. The chain guns had better success but there was time for a new shield to be in place by the time the guns got through. Sam signalled his men down and to use the built in periscopes. With a swish a missile fired from its launcher on the tower above Sam, even from 20 meters away he felt the rocket heat from the tail. An explosion ripped apart the shield wall, a hole the chain guns exploited, killing many before the gap could be plugged.

With a roar 4 King Ravens, the Gears helicopters, took off from the base and flew out, pretending to be evacuating, before turning and executing a tight turn and strafing down the creatures unprotected flanks with their machine guns. They radioed pictures from their cameras back to the base. It showed hundreds, or maybe thousands of emergence holes behind the shield wall, and crawling over the space between, maybe a million of these creatures. The Ravens reached the end of their run and turned back to fly down again, this time to demolish the remains of the shield wall while the bases guns and missiles levelled the numbers a bit. Half way down the line however missiles flashed upwards and the helicopters crashed down into the hordes behind the remnants of the wall in flames, sliding along the dew laden grass, spilling petrol and fire onto the fields.