Two Months After Lightmass Bombing
City of Ephyra, Parkway Street

The blood was pounding in Dom's ears as he rushed up the street and threw himself into cover behind an overturned, half buried car. High caliber rounds smacked into the other side, beating the hood like a drum and punching through what little was left of the burned out X-Rod. Little clouds of orange rust and concrete dust puffed into the air with each consecutive hit.

"Reloading!" shouted Dom as loudly as he could over the ear-rending din of gunfire. He dropped the empty magazine out of his Lancer and reached into the pouch on his left hip, finding another mag with deft fingers. He slammed it home without another thought, his body working on years of muscle memory.

Across the street in Dom's peripheral vision, the hulking form of Marcus squeezed off a burst and dropped into the cover of a shallow, sagging doorway. He was working with measured precision, entirely focused on the firefight and every detail of his surroundings. A dozen Locust bullets cut through the air within inches of his arm and face, but his grizzled mask of concentration remained unbroken.

"Dom!" he shouted, holding his Lancer close to his chest with one hand while he dug into his belt with the other. "That Troika is going to cut us to pieces! Cover me!"

Dom closed the Lancer's magazine latch around the fresh clip and snapped back the charging handle. He already knew what Marcus was doing, could see the grenade in his friend's hand, but the only thing registering in his brain was the thought of the Troika just twenty feet up the street. Troikas were big, nasty mounted machine-guns, heavily fortified and run by a Locust cabal. Dom hated them; they were designed to obliterate Gears, tear straight through their armor, and this one was punching fist-sized holes through his cover within inches of his arms.

But Dom was a commando, trained in the Pendulum Wars to survive and kill his enemy no matter the circumstances. His body took over and he shoved his brain into the backseat, sliding around to the left end of the car so he could fire from cover. The Troika couldn't see him there, and he had a clear line of sight on several Drones moving about further down the street. He unloaded into them with quick controlled bursts, the staccato sound of his Lancer fire drowning out everything else. One grub went down in a spray of blood and the rest dove for cover.

Taking advantage of the moment, Dom leaned further out on one knee to where he could just see the Troika. It was big, an iron plate bolted to the front to provide cover for its operator, but it still had vulnerabilities that a canny Gear could exploit. His sights lined up on the Locust gunner's exposed legs and he squeezed the trigger.

The next few seconds were a murderous frenzy. Dom's two six-round bursts enfiladed the Troika cabal, taking the gunner in the left leg and driving the spotter under cover. In the next instant Marcus had slipped the pin on his grenade and came out of the doorway at a run, swinging the frag on its long chain. He lobbed it underhanded and dove into the cover of an empty concrete flowerbed before the Locust at the end of the block could focus their fire on him. At the same time the Troika spun around on its mountings, the gunner bellowing in pain with one leg dragging limply behind the other. Dom rolled back into the cover of the buried X-Rod before it could open fire, the massive twin-linked barrels of the turret spinning up with a high pitched whine.

The frag explosion took out both grubs and the Troika a split second later with a horrific reverberating blast, shredding the gunner and hurling the spotter out into the street. Dom could feel the detonation through the gloved palm of one hand, pressed flat against the shattered asphalt. Large chunks peppered the shredded X-Rod, followed by little bits and pieces that rained down seconds later. A thick cloud of dust was already rolling out of the alley when Dom risked looking up, cutting off all visibility as it began settling on the bodies and debris.

Marcus was already up and running, intent on taking advantage of the makeshift smokescreen to move up and find a more advantageous position from which to engage the remaining grubs. Dom rose to his feet and followed the example, rushing up the other side of the street as fast as his legs could carry him. Hammerburst rounds were zipping through the air all down the block as the remaining Locust began advancing as well, the bullets tearing large, swirling holes in the dust and smoke. Dom zigzagged, ducking low as he ran, but he felt the wind of several near misses anyway.

Somehow he managed to keep Marcus in the corner of his eye, his friend vaulting over a low wall before taking cover behind a concrete barricade just as a volley of rounds zipped by overhead. How he managed to anticipate shit like that was beyond Dom, but he put it out of his mind and turned his concentration back to the battlefield before he could get himself killed. It only took one small slip-up in a firefight to wind up in a body bag, especially when you were fighting an aggressive and intelligent enemy that outnumbered you at least three to one.

The Gears pushed forward to the mouth of the alley where the Troika had been, the dust parting before them as they went. Dom could see bits of the Troika gunner reduced to a foul mess in the street, a pile of strewn organs and entrails twisted around one another like snakes in a pit. Not much of it was recognizable save for the upper torso, but somehow the spotter Drone was still alive, lying in the middle of the dust blanketed street and bellowing in agonized rage. It as shredded from the chest down, one leg a shattered stump, and streams of blood were spouting and spewing from its many gaping wounds. The sight was horrifying, even if it was a heartless monster, and somehow the grub was still hanging on. Worse, it was trying to get back up and fight.

"Watch out!" Dom shouted at the top of his lungs. The downed spotter was struggling with a holster on its hip, producing a massive blood-smeared revolver. The bastard supported itself weakly on one arm, beady pale eyes casting about feverishly between the two Gears rushing toward it like some kind of goddamn zombie out of an old movie. Both men converged their fire on it at a run just before it could decide who to shoot, a dozen rounds cutting through its body just before it could fire a shot. The corpse collapsed limply back into the street, blood pooling from ragged new holes onto the white dust of the asphalt.

Marcus slammed into another long abandoned barricade near the Troika, which was still mostly intact despite smoking heavily from its targeting instruments, before returning fire on the Drones moving up the street. The bastards had been content to stay back and pick off targets while their turret had still been active, unwilling to throw themselves into a crossfire, but now they were eager to get up close and go in for a melee fight. It was as if they loved fighting with their hands, exploiting their massive size and fearsome appearance to give themselves an edge in combat. Dom's heart was pounding at the back of his breastplate, but it wasn't fear that coursed through his veins when he thought of hand-to-hand.

Dom dropped into the cover of a crumbling brick pillar as the last of the dust was blowing away on the wind, sighting in on the nearest Drone. It was funny how time seemed to slow down during combat, each moment stretching into seconds and each second stretching into interminable minutes. When he'd been younger he could remember seeing shell casings fly by him during a breech-and-clear; he'd been able to read the bottoms of each and every one of them. Seven point sixty two. Fifty four millimeter, Daskan, they'd read - the same ammunition Dom still used today, even though Daskan Armory had gone under years ago. He could remember the little details like that when his adrenalin was pumping and they didn't matter a damn, but right now all he could think of was the fact that there were a lot more Drones coming up the street than he'd been anticipating, and Lancer rounds weren't as effective on Locust as they'd been on human targets in the Pendulum Wars.

One of the Drones toppled backward gushing blood from gaping holes in its chest, firing wildly as it fell. Dom was aware of every instant of it, time passing in slow motion. He could almost see the trails of the bullets passing by him, even the bullets themselves when they came within inches of his face or ricocheted off of his cover. Training and almost two decades of experience had long ago ironed out the fear and indecisiveness normal human beings felt in a situation as stressful as combat, installing an autopilot that had kept Dom alive for years. He fought by turning off everything but the adrenalin, the muscle-memory, and the reflexes. Conscious thought rarely entered into the question. It was how he'd survived two wars and the genocide of most of the human race. But he just about shit himself every time one of those heavy rounds came his way or ruffled his hair with a near miss.

Marcus, meanwhile, was something else entirely. It wasn't just that he'd been trained differently, he just operated on a whole level above anyone else that Dom had ever known. When he fought it was like a conscious machine running a thousand calculations a second through its head. Whereas Dom was just along for the ride, Marcus was in complete and total control of both his body and mind. He didn't so much react to surprises as anticipate them and plan around them. He always seemed to know where to move next, which target to focus on first, and it wasn't just subconscious instinct like it was with Dom.

As the commando slammed a fresh clip home and sighted up around his brick pillar, he wondered just what exactly went through his lifelong friend's head. Not just during casual hours around base, but during firefights like this one. But he didn't let the question distract him for more than a split second; he shoved it out of his mind and watched his hands snap from target to target, engaging charging grenadiers and flanking Drones with a measured precision that his body recited by rote.

"This is Delta One," Marcus was yelling into the comms in his weary monotone, one hand to his ear. "We're being overrun down here by Parkway. Kappa One, do you respond?"

"Kappa here," came the voice of Sergeant Arman. "Is that you we've been hearing? Sounds like a party over there."

"Yeah, a great fucking big one," snapped Marcus in irritated reply. "We need urgent assistance, pronto!"

Dom's Lancer was beginning to glow red hot from the sustained firing, venting heat like an oven. The modern Lancer was designed to turn most of that heat into energy for the chainsaw, but he was still in danger of slagging the barrel if he kept up the full-auto for too many clips.

That's when the ground started rumbling beneath his boots. Emergence Holes, plural. He knew then that he and Marcus alone couldn't hold this street; he suddenly wished for Cole and Baird, but his brain couldn't work out what had become of them or when he'd last seen them. It seemed like it had been days ago, maybe years.

"Roger that," Marcus was saying, firing his Lancer sporadically with one hand. Dom must have missed something that Arman had said on the comms, then. "We've got them bottled up at a choke point near the intersection with Unity street. E-Holes nearby, at least two. Make it quick."

Dom was sweating, bullets chipping away at his cover. The rounds were coming in so thick and fast that it was all he could do not to duck and fall back, or at least hunker down for a breather, but he knew that as soon as he tried something like that he and Marcus would be dead. They had no ground left to give, and no smoke grenades to cover a retreat. So he settled in for the long run and slammed a fresh clip home while Marcus covered him from across the street. Kappa One couldn't be far; he distinctly remembered being on patrol with them less than five minutes ago. Or had it been ten?

One thought kept rising to the surface of Dom's beleagured mind.

Could they survive this?

The Locust were getting closer and closer, stepping over the bodies of the fallen as they pushed steadily up the street. Marcus was running out of ways to engage them; the Locust weren't stupid, not most of them, and they were doing their damnedest to anticipate where his head would be every time he stuck it out to fire. He didn't have the luxury of a helmet - not that he needed one, his peripheral vision and situational awareness were his greatest defenses - so he just had to keep mixing it up.

In times like this he just fell back on his Two-Six RTI training and the years of drill. Hug the cover, don't expose more than a little of yourself trying to bite off more than you can chew. He leaned out only far enough to see a few of the Locust at a time, maybe just one or two, and while that meant he needed to move around a lot it also meant he didn't need to worry about drawing too much fire from too many angles. Every experienced Gear learned this early on, or they didn't make it. That was MOUT combat for you.

"Reloading!" he shouted when his mag clicked empty. Dom picked up the slack while Marcus fished out a new clip and cycled it into his Lancer. The damn thing kept trying to jam up on him; the magazine latches were wearing out and he hadn't found the parts to replace them yet. It took time he didn't have just to close them up again.

Rounds glanced off the lip of the concrete barricade just over Marcus' head, sprinkling his black do-rag with chips and dust. Whoever had set up the bullet ridden barrier had placed it flush against the brickwork of the stump of an old block pillar so that either end protruded a foot or so into the open. It gave a Gear plenty of options, wide enough to move around behind and tall enough to comfortably hide even his massive frame when he crouched, but it was in terrible condition. Sustained fire was shaving inches off of his cover at a time.

"Shit" he grunted when the left side of the barricade collapsed to the ground in a jumble. A loose brick from the shattered pillar bounced off his shoulder plate and added itself to the heap with a clack audible even over the din of gunfire. Dom's cover across the street wasn't faring much better, but he at least had the benefit of an entire pillar and a brick archway for shelter.

A grenadier lined up in Marcus' sights just fifteen feet away, swinging a grenade and bellowing something in its guttural excuse for a language. The Lancer kicked against Marcus' shoulder, putting one long burst through the grub's bare torso. It stumbled and pitched forward, dropping the frag on its ankle just as it yanked the pin. A nearby Drone snatched up the bolo before it could explode and tried to hurl it away, but it was already too late. The frag detonated in the bastard's hand with a rapid beep-beep-beep and took out several more Drones in the violent explosion. Deadly shrapnel carved through the air, lacerating faces and leathery bodies, but the Locust pushed on anyway. Their single-minded determination reflected that of the towering nightmare of a Locust General that Marcus and Dom had fought on the Tyro Pillar for control of the Lightmass Bomb.

And they just kept coming. Marcus could see the bullets as they passed him by or slammed into his cover. Half a dozen sprayed the ground within an inch of his foot. He was becoming completely pinned, and the grubs knew it. That alone was enough to piss him off.

One enterprising Drone got too close, weaving through cover, and nearly took Marcus' head off with a swing of its rifle. He stumbled it with a burst through the knee and hauled back on the chainsaw's activation lever, lunging into the scaly gray monster with a savage roar. Both he and the grub were screaming as the saw dug in deep, the rotten stench of decay on the latter's breath, a violent spray of arterial blood hosing the former with surprising force. He roared at the dying grub, venting his rage into its inhuman face. The deep-seated urge to lean forward and bite its throat out suddenly appealed to him.

"You want this, motherfucker?" he was screaming. One massive white arm slammed into his shoulder as the grub flailed in blind, terrified panic. Sheets of blood hit Marcus in the neck and chin, sharp like needles with little splinters of bone. "Huh? You want it?"

He'd passed the saw halfway through the torso before Locust rounds started peppering their mostly-dead buddy, so he dragged it down with him and tore the body off of his bayonet; the whole right arm came off at the shoulder, blood from all sorts of arteries spraying Marcus and his kit. He reveled in the gore of it all, spitting out the bitter metallic taste and wiping his chin. The Locust on the ground was somehow still alive and had shit itself, pale red eyes rolling around in its skull and internal organs spilling onto the concrete as it died.

The Locust liked to think that they were the toughest, scariest shits in the world - and maybe they were - but for just a minute Marcus was the nightmare monster, exacting vengeance for every human life and and the COG had failed to save. It was empowering. Nothing beat carving grubs; close combat was definitely the most satisfying way to go. Sure it would leave him cleaning the chain of the bayonet with a toothbrush when he got back to base, but by god it was worth it. He wanted to do it all over again and again and again.

When Marcus turned back to the fight just six seconds had passed, but it still felt like an eternity. Locust were boiling out of a doorway down the street and the rest filled his vision, horrifyingly close, skull-like visages trapped in his muzzle flash. He snapped from target to target, firing extended bursts, his Lancer spitting shell casings all over a fragmented sidewalk that was already littered with them. Sweat ran down the back of his neck, beaded on his brow; one mistake, just one, and he'd be dead. He knew without having to think about it that a world without Marcus spelled disaster for Dom. He grabbed onto that thought like a lifeline and kept up the fire, cycling in fresh ammo when the clips ran dry.

Dom needs me. Don't fuck this up.

They were perhaps half a minute from being overrun, fighting in breathless silence with just a couple clips left to spare when Kappa squad appeared behind the Locust and opened up on them. The grubs at the back when down immediately in a storm of Lancer fire before half of the survivors turned around to face the unexpected assault. In an instant the horde in the street shattered, scattering for fresh cover, but the immediate threat was still right on top of Marcus and Dom. Six grubs rushed straight at them, firing Hammerbursts and Gnashers from the hip. On the left, Dom was caught reloading when a grub cannoned into the middle of him.

The combat instinct that Marcus had honed over the years kicked into high gear, the raging animal inside threatening to overwhelm him. Usually he was the master of his mind and body, acting on reflex only when the truly unexpected forced his hand, but sometimes it took monumental effort to restrain the beast inside of him. It had only grown worse after his escape from the Slab, where a man was reduced to an animal and pitted against his most important principles.

This was one of the hard times. The first grub to come his way met with a swift death, but by then Marcus' vision had blurred around the edges and objects in the distance were simply filtered out. He fell back, rounds zipping by as a grenadier stepped over a corpse and leveled its shotgun at his face. He fired from the hip, blowing the top half of the fucker's head off with one wild shot out of five. The shotgun went off anyway, something punching Marcus in the shoulder hard enough to spin him halfway around.

Two more grubs came charging forward, intent on wrestling Marcus to the ground with their wickedly sharp claws. He barely had enough time to put a burst through the closest one to give him time to rev his chainsaw and slice into the second monster's chest. Blood misted in his face, the Drone's cavernous maw gurgling more and more blood until its eyes rolled back in its head and he kicked the corpse to the ground. The saw's motor was still screaming in his hands, flinging blood everywhere, a string of connective tissue slapping against the magazine with each revolution.

The other grub recovered from the shots to its gut and grabbed Marcus by the left wrist, wrenching his hand off the Lancer and snarling in his face with giant, snapping teeth. Its boot fell upon the outstretched arm of a corpse and slipped, throwing the bastard momentarily off balance and nearly dragging Marcus down with it.

There was no room to maneuver the Lancer. Marcus dropped it, went for his sidearm, headbutting the Drone in-between the eyes before bringing the Snub up under its chin in the split second that it was stunned. Crack, crack! One eye burst out of the socket, the forehead exploding in Marcus' face. The crushing grip on his wrist tightened for a moment and then went limp.

He caught the body as it collapsed and took another step back, holding his meatshield out in front of himself by the iron bands crossing the Drone's shoulder. By now the crossfire was hot and heavy, the grubs attempting to rally and find some cover that Kappa couldn't hit. Drones were dropping in the street, cut down by Lancer fire from multiple angles. Marcus was no longer worried about the remaining Locust by this point - it was his fellow Gears that dredged the animal instinct out of his gut. Several stray Lancer rounds slammed into the armored back of his meatshield and set him back another step, grunting with the effort of supporting the limp corpse.

"Goddammit!" he barked. "Crossfire, crossfire! Open your eyes, Kappa!"

Some of the grubs succeeded in dispersing to either side of the street, sheltering behind barricades, empty flowerbeds, piles of rubble, and even a row of sandbags that might have once withstood a Locust assault. Marcus aimed his pistol down range over the meatshield's shoulder, blood gushing down the collar of his armor where the mushy head sagged against him. Another Drone went down, this time to a barrage of Snub fire. One of its remaining buddies remembered Marcus and sighted up on him, knocking him back yet again before he could steady his aim and slot the bastard. A moment later it was down too, blood pluming from its chest and face.

The Snub clicked dry after two more shots. Marcus didn't have time to reload one handed, so he crouched in the rubble and draped the meatshield over his left shoulder while he searched his belt pouches for another clip. He grabbed his Lancer too, holstering the reloaded Snub to easier carry the heavy rifle.

Marcus' vision of the battlefield was mostly obscured by the body of the dead Drone, but he could hear Kappa in his earpiece and that was enough to build a mental picture up with. Gears were calling out targets, staggering reloads and moving up the street, trading fire with the last few remaining grubs. Where was Dom?

"Fuck!"

Shifting, Marcus hauled the meatshield to his other shoulder and braced himself against the impact of another hit. A round glanced off of his shin plate with agonizing force barely half a second later.

Dom was across the street, struggling with the last of the Drones that had rushed Delta upon Kappa's timely arrival. A second Drone lay motionless on the sidewalk two meters away, Dom's Lancer still embedded in its sternum and pumping a steady fountain of blood onto the concrete.

There weren't a lot of Gears left that could really hold their own in hand-to-hand with a grub without having to resort to a chainsaw, but Dominic Santiago was a commando with a giant knife and a never-say-die attitude that had carried him through more fights than anybody could count. He and the Drone grappled viciously, each trying to throw the other, shoving back and forth as rounds whizzed by them. Dom was stabbing and slashing at the bastard over and over with every chance he got, cutting into the back of its hands and arms, his blade a blur as he rammed it into the gut, the armpit, the eye socket.

But the grub wasn't going down, howling angrily as it tried to get a hand around Dom's throat and rip him to pieces with its claws. At the former it succeeded, but a second later the pair went tumbling to the ground in a tangle of flailing limbs when Dom planted his boot on the wall behind him and shoved off with visible effort. The man's face was beet red, raw concentration and determination rolling off of it like a sheen of sweat.

The two rolled into the street, wrestling ferociously. The grub ended up on top, but Dom wrapped one arm behind its head and pulled the bastard into a bear hug against his chestplates. Unfazed, it drove a solid punch into his side just below the armor, forcing a grunt of pain out of the man. Rounds glanced off the asphalt all around them, kicking up dust and sparks.

Marcus sprang into action. Normally he tried to play the odds, cutting risks wherever he could, but sometimes you just had to gamble and go for broke. This was one of those times; Marcus and Dom were each other's last links to the happy past, lifelong friends that kept each other afloat in a sea of death and despair.

And if Marcus hesitated now, Dom would die.

Rounds zipped by as he broke into a run, tugging at the fabric under his armor with each near miss. He had to drop the meatshield - it was too heavy and he needed his right arm to fire. The Lancer found its place in both hands. A round clipped the high collar behind his head, the ricochet ringing in his ears.

The Drone broke free of Dom's hold after no more than a couple of seconds, powerful neck muscles pulling its head free of the man's arm. It rose to its knees and caught Dom's knife by the wrist, doubling the hand back on itself and forcing the giant commando knife toward his throat. Dom grabbed hold with his other hand and struggled with all his might, writhing between the grub's knees, but the inexorable strength of the Locust brought the knife closer and closer until there was surely no way he could hold out any longer.

Fear flashed in Dom's eyes, his mouth bulging around the corners with the pressure of breath held in by his massive effort. Triumph flashed in the grub's sole remaining eye, its savage features spreading into a sickening, toothy grin.

And then Marcus barreled into the bastard like a speeding truck, the steel toe of his boot coming up into those needle-like teeth and kicking it bodily to the ground. He kept going, striding over Dom and emptying the last of his clip into the prone form of the Locust as it struggled to rise off of its back, blood in its mouth.

Still he didn't stop, the animal urge to destroy unshackled by his frantic gamble; he brought his boot high into the air and drove it back down again with all the force of nearly fifteen years of combat behind the muscles of his massive legs, his lungs giving vent to an inhuman roar. For just a split second his eyes locked with the Drone's, and all he could see was raw, pants-shitting fear. Then the Drone's head exploded like a ripe grape squeezed between two fingers, blood and brains and skull splattering in all directions onto the pavement with a sickeningly wet, crunchy pop.

A moment later it was over. The Drones were dead, the last of the gunfire fallen silent. Besides the dull ringing in his ears, Marcus could hear nothing but his own ragged breathing and a relieved wheeze out of Dom. All the ear-shattering noise and chaos had stopped in an instant, even the echoes absorbed into the crumbling buildings that flanked the street as if the whole world held its breath. He gave a sigh of relief and sank to one knee, resting his Lancer across one knee. It was actually over.

If there was one thing Marcus loved more than a chainsaw kill, it was the euphoria he felt after a firefight when everyone was still standing and the last of the grubs had been finished off. Kneeling next to Dom on that desolate, carnage strewn battlefield, he felt more blissful and euphoric than he had since they'd rammed the Lightmass Bomb down the Horde's throat two months before.

They'd survived. Their training as young Gears, their decades of experience and indomitable wills had seen them through. Lightning fast reflexes and focused self-control had killed their enemies, and left them the victors. Nothing could beat that.

His thoughts turned to Anya as his eyes turned upward to the orange sky. He repeated the words to himself in his mind.

It was over.

There we go, done. 5,136 words, the first story I've completed in a long-ass time. It's just a oneshot, but it's so fully complete and satisfactory that I had to post it.

Written for a Monthly Writing Competition on the Epic Forums. The theme was "Survival," of course.

Might add a short little epilogue that returns to Dom's POV. Not sure yet.

R&R, please.