"The best weapon against an enemy is another enemy."
-Friedrich Nietzsche
Prologue: Victories & Deals
-Somewhere-
She looked at them with disdain, but seeing as it gave her quite a deal for her and her people she really had only two choices:
To stay on this dying planet and await the inevitable fate that would claim them. Even if by some miracle they could find a way to survive.
Or
To take their offer, and they would all live as the nightmare that she had feared so much would pass by and they would endure no casualties.
It would seem that the most logical choice would to be to accept their offer, but there was one thing about that the center one said to her that was the catch with the deal, as with all of them.
"We will give you three of your years' time in order to rebuild it, however once the allotted time has expired. You will commit your forces to our cause. Not only that, but you should be glad that we discovered one another, for our goals are not that dissimilar from one another."
She was given pause, with the previous deaths of her military leaders, it now fell to her to lead on the battlefield, but with their help, their resources and technology, it could be rebuilt better than before.
"And what guarantee do I have that you will honor the bargain?"
The one on the left spoke up, "We have no quarrel with your people, despite being one of the enemy…" She narrowed her eyes and threw a look of disgust at him, in which he did the same, though the one on the right showed his hand for her attention, "…which we overlook, due to who it is you lead. You vehemently renounce ever being an enemy, and claim with all conviction that you are what you rule over."
The one in the middle spoke finally after the other two's pieces had been said, "So what say you?"
She looked at them with caution, both options were indeed going to come with a heavy price, however the bargain gave her and her people far more time to live and rebuild…perhaps even find a way to purge the growing disease that would eventually ravage their bodies and consume them all.
"Very well, the bargain is acceptable." As if she had an actual alternative that had no prices. If there were, she would take it, but this was the best option on the table.
The center one smiled at her response, "We are glad that we could come to an agreement. Once you have rebuilt your army, we will discuss things further in detail. May the Gods smile on this day for all of our good fortunes."
-Azura, Last Stronghold of the COG, 18 A.E. and Final Day of the Lambent Pandemic-
They had done it. They held out for so long on their own against a seemingly all-consuming threat and survived. They won.
Many of the Gears that had survived the Locust War had come to help end it all at Azura, Colonel Hoffman and Marcus Fenix led them against all odds and they came out on top and they could build a brighter future.
Marcus organized a plan to strike back at the Lambent whom was assaulting the COG's last stronghold where his father, Adam Fenix was working on the solution to the Imulsion sickness that was killing Sera off by the years.
Hoffman sent Baird, Cole and Carmine out to find help and they not only found the remnants of the UIR, their former national enemy.
And his dad, well Chairman Prescott had him kidnapped the day he went to go rescue him, right out from under his nose. And for the next seven years he worked in secret along with several other scientists to stop the Lambent Pandemic, or at least try to solve way top slow it down. A few of the scientists had injected themselves with the Imulsion to allow Adam to study its lifecycle and ensure that he wouldn't die from lack of methods and to reduce the time frame when it reached critical mass.
Marcus went down by the beach to relax and unwind for a bit, Anya noticed this and decided to join him, she walked down and laid a hand on his shoulder. "So, what're you thinking right?"
Marcus turned up to Anya, "Well, what exactly happens now? The Locust disappeared to God knows where, the Lambent are dead, finally. So what's next?" She had a feeling that he'd think this, since he was a soldier through-and-through, with no more enemies and after his whole life being nothing but a soldier defending them all to his last breath, he was now lost in this new future. She bent down to hug him even if he wasn't a fan of public affection displays, "We rebuild, we live our lives to the fullest and make the future better for everyone and for ourselves. Just what you, your father and everyone else worked and fought for, for so long. And now that he's back with us, you and he can get that old father-son relationship you two used to have." She let go and bent down to his face to try and make him smile at least once, "That, and we have a victory party to get to."
Marcus actually smile a bit at that, he chuckled and stood up from his stump of a log on the beach, "Yeah, guess we do."
The island finally had cheers of victory and joy over the Gears, the world was now rid of the Locust Horde and the Lambent Parasite, and Humanity had won the fight. People were drinking and chatting to their hearts content, and while they did, Marcus' own little group were outside enjoying the fresh air and talking amongst themselves with their future plans.
Baird had been meaning to take a look at Professor Fenix's work on the data he compiled over the years, the Hammer of Dawn, the Locust and the Lambent, the Imulsion Countermeasure Weapon among other things, thought there was one thing that stumped him the most out of everything in the last three years since the sinking of Jacinto. Cole noticed the puzzled look on his face, despite having some laughs here and there so he nudged his best friend to grab his attention, "Yo Baird, what's up? Somethin' on your mind or what man?"
"Ah, it's nothing. Don't worry about it."
"Nah, come on. How long we known each other, you know you can trust the Cole Train baby."
Baird shrugged in knowing that he wasn't gonna stop with the questioning, "Ok fine, but I'm gonna ruin the mood just to give you a heads up."
"Well seeing as how you can sometimes do that, shoot brother."
"Well, you know ever since we sank Jacinto and started going mobile around the planet, moving place to place to get outta the Lambent's way, which only worked every couple o' times. We never saw the Locust again. I mean don't you think that's a little weird? And plus, how did Marcus' dad know exactly what could kill the Lambent off and burn out the Imulsion? I mean this is me talking about decades of research that well, solved the problem of the killer miracle fuel in almost no time at all."
Cole never really was one to think on things like this, though his main man did raise some good questions, "That's…actually a good question. Think the old man knows?"
"I'm sure he's got some idea." Baird walked over to where Adam and his son were talking, or at least attempting to talk with one another, though Adam seemed to let Marcus go as he walked over to Anya talking with Sam. "Hey, uh Professor."
"Oh, Baird. Did you need something?"
"Actually, I kinda wanted to ask you a couple of things. Like how did you come up with the idea to use a pulse wave to kill off the Imulsion?" Adam seemed to mull it over in his head, as they way he had originally come across the idea wasn't exactly quite believable and he himself couldn't truly believe it, "That's actually a complicated question, but at the same time it's a simple one. Follow me." He turned around towards a large rock that jutted up from the sand, and lifted up a false rock that no one would've suspected and placed his hand on a scanning pad that fit his palm perfectly and a computerized voice sounded off to him, getting a few others in Marcus' group attention also and himself, "Uh, dad? What're you doing?"
"Welcome Professor Adam Fenix. No further incidents have been recorded in 1,825 days, since initial contact with artifact. Have a pleasant day." A false rock lifted down revealing a pathway down underground.
That had caught Baird's attention, no one had stepped into this little hidey hole in about ten years? And something about an artifact? Interesting, at least the scientist in him thought. Adam turned around to see that Baird hadn't moved from his spot, "Well, Baird? You said you wanted to know how, this is the way."
Marcus walked over to Baird whom was now walking down the doorway behind, "What the hell is this Baird?"
"Woah, hey, I just asked your old man how he came up with a way to kill all the Glowies, and then he walks over here to punch up a door down under." Marcus just looked down to the doorway, and he felt something off with it, he heard his dad's voice saying something he couldn't make out and heard more electronic whirring down below, most likely his dad doing something else.
"Well, better make sure the old man doesn't break a hip."
"Hah!"
"What?"
"That sounded like you made some father-son humor, haven't anything like that from you."
"Yeah, well…shit happens." Marcus dropped the subject and followed Baird down the pathway where his father was getting who knows what. "Hey, Anya, I'm going to below to make sure my old man won't break a hip or something."
Anya just nodded and went back over with the rest of their friends, as Marcus and Baird walked down further they saw that a lot of wires heading down further into the tunnel, but what they began to notice was the sleek and clear metal that began to show through the rocks and several symbols that didn't look Locust or anything they had ever seen before. There were a few other doors that they passed through that held different security measures one a coded lock, a second a voice lock, and a third a retina scan.
Baird voiced his obvious insecurity about this place, "Jeez, what the hell's with all of the security?" It seemed that Adam heard him as his voice echoed through the tunnel, "This was something that only I along with two other scientists and Prescott knew about. And we kept it at that for good reason…" Marcus and Baird finally came down to a small room where Adam was cranking up an old console and getting some papers picked up off the floor, and they took in its appearance.
The entire ceiling, the floor, and even the walls were all a bright silver with many different symbols that decorated the walls, with blue lights flowing and flickering here and there at different parts, "This is what helped me." Adam walked over to a tarp draped over something in the middle of the room, and as he pulled it off, it showed a table with some sphere with small hexagons making up its surface, with the similar symbols on the surface as it gave off a bright blue glow.
But the one symbol that stood out from the rest was on the wall, with a large circle around a hexagon, that had two bars on the upper left and right sides of the hollow shape.
"Umm…what the hell is all of this…?" Baird was amazed by what he was seeing, while Marcus was just confused, "Did you build this?" It was a stupid question really, but he doubted the Locust could've done this since they weren't too fond of bright silver and blue.
"No, this room, this whole complex that Azura is sitting on top of, it wasn't built by human hands, and not by the Locust…" The ominous tone that Adam used set them off on edge, and what he was suggesting well…it was only in the movies…
"Wait, hold on a second dad. You're not suggesting that…"
"Aliens built this place? And this is only part of a complex?" Baird was astounded at what Adam basically said.
"Yes, what I just said sounds ridiculous but there really isn't any other explanation." Adam turned to the spherical device and placed his hand on the device, "When we first found it, three of our people died when they found it, the ground collapsed and they broke their necks. We original thought that the Locust had found us finally, but we were wrong. We found this room and after scanning for anything else we might have missed before when this place was built, we found an entire complex that spanned deep into the ground, but there was all we could investigate as the Lambent was our main priority. But, just before we left this room, the sphere activated all of a sudden, but for some reason I couldn't bring myself to leave, not yet. I had to know what it was…" He moved his hand across the sphere as red lights came up with some negative beeps pinging, "…before what you saw, it acted differently. The sphere seemed to move with my hand, as when I finally placed it on, the lights were blue instead of the red you just saw. And…it gave me a vision of some type. I remember it, but the vision was vague as it showed me a planet with some twisted life forms and a massive wave of energy, that spread all across it, and it killed the creatures. That's what gave me the idea to use a pulse to kill the Imulsion."
Marcus didn't understand it all, and was having a hard time trying to understand it, and Baird, the smart guy of the Gears found it skeptical, but he seemed to understand it better than he did.
"So, some alien machine gave you a vision, that helped you kill off all the Glowies, and the Grubs, who will still haven't seen in three years when we sank Jacinto, which kinda screwed us a bit with Glowies, but still this…strangely awesome and complete bullshit in some fucked up way." Baird decided to see if the damn machine would work for him and walked over to it with Adam stepping back a bit, to let the mouthy soldier a better look.
"Hey, Baird. Don't go blowing us all to hell." Marcus wasn't too keen on this place, and with some alien device that even his dad didn't fully understand, didn't sit with him all that great. Baird just looked back annoyed, "Oh, come on, I haven't done anything like that before. Why doubt me now?"
"Because we have something that's alien, and no one, not even my dad knows what this damn thing does."
"Just give me a minute or two, alright, then we can go back upstairs to getting drunk and partying like college dumbassess." Baird was over the device now and held his hand over it, as it now seemed to do what it did with Adam's own before, and it activated the same way as he put his hand over it. However instead of being hit with a vision like the professor, instead a hologram popped up of something else, "What, the hell…?"
"This is amazing! This has never happened before!" Adam was astounded at what just happened, while Marcus and Baird were curious as it showed a hologram of a planet with six other nearby, each with their own distinctive characteristics, but the main one that seemed to have a beeping sound coming from, had large crater that made up an ocean, and an asteroid belt surrounding it from a good distance away.
"Is that…"
"An entirely new planetary system, and it looks habitable."
Then all of a sudden the machine went down and the room went dark, save for the symbol on the wall and the device. "Uhhhh…was that supposed to happen?" Baird, really hoped Marcus didn't call him on that blowing them to hell shit.
"Baird, what the hell did you do?!"
"Nothin'! I just did what your old man did and…"
"Boys, we need to go now!" Adam interrupted them as he pointed to the device, that now was pulsating with a pace that was quickening…a lot like a bomb would…
"Oh shit!"
"Let's get everyone the fuck out of here!"
The men ran as fast as they could back upstairs, where Anya, Hoffman, Cole, Carmine, Sam and Dizzy were at, Marcus yelled over their voices desperately trying to warn them all, "Everyone! We need to get the hell of the island, it's gonna go!"
"No time to explain, just get everyone off of here!" Baird was hoping that shit wouldn't come back his way, well he knew Marcus was going to give him some shit and bitch about it.
The rest of their friends, and the Gears heard them, while the Gears were away from their position, the rest weren't. All of a sudden a bright light emanated from the tunnel and flashed all of a sudden consuming Marcus and his friends, leaving nothing but dust in the aftermath. The others could only wonder what the hell happened to the legends of the war…
Now Marcus had gone through many weird things in his life. Killing a Seeder big as a fucking warehouse, dancing with Bersekers, giving a Brumak the shock of its life, putting Locust generals to shame, and even getting eaten by a giant ass worm and cutting his way out of, after its intestines began to fill up with blood.
Yeah, that was a fun day.
But what he just felt, and experienced was nothing like before. He felt like his whole body light up on fire and was ripped apart from the inside out, and then smashed back together. He was clinging to consciousness while he could as he threw up in a nearby, fountain?
He stopped for a moment to wipe what puke he had dripping from his chin, and took in his new surroundings. He saw that the fountain he puked into had a statue of woman in some toga with a torch held high in one hand, and a book in another. He saw buildings that he didn't think would reach so high into the sky, unlike Jacinto and that the sky had two different planets. One held several rings around it, while the other looked a lot like their own moon in Sera's orbit. But then he got a better look of the buildings, they all looked so futuristic and had thing screens here and there that some you could see through and the people wore clothes that were very different than what he remembered.
Now that he looked at the people, he saw that their faces were a mix of terror and curiosity, then he heard a voice boom over a loudspeaker, "Stop right there, hold your hands above your head, and get on your knees!" He looked around to see the source of the voice, only to know see that his friends were all unconscious and on the ground, he ignored the voice when it boomed again, as he rushed over to see if any of them were alright. He turned his dad over to see that he was still breathing, something that he was grateful for…oh and he'd be kicking Baird's ass seven ways 'till Sunday.
"Dad! Dad! Come on, you've gotta wake up dad!" He heard the soldiers barking orders at him, but he ignored them. Trying to bring his dad back to consciousness. It was like back with Ephyra, he had orders to hold the line with the Hammer of Dawn and knew that COG command would send help for his dad, but he had to be there top rescue him, at least that's what he told himself. He failed or so he thought, and he lived with false guilt for the rest of his years in prison, and even when Dom came to get him out of prison, he carried that guilt but it turned in to resentment later on while in the slammer and even when they made the Lightmass Offensive and killed RAAM. Only reuniting with his dad made him realize how wrong he was to resent him, and now that he got his dad back, well...things were different...
"Get, on your fucking knees asshole!"
"Do it, I blow your head off motherfucker!"
"Are you deaf? Get on your fucking knees!"
Several soldiers ran up and began to cuff the rest of the Gears, and had medics with them checking their vitals. Three of them now had their guns trained on Marcus as he was still trying to get his dad up, but he had success, then Marcus felt the butt of a rifle slam against the back of his head, and his world went black.
-One Hour Later; Elsewhere-
A trio of troopers stood guard outside an outpost in the snowy mountains. The weather was a bitch to deal with, but it didn't matter since they were the comms station's backup along with a few other boys patrolling the area. If they lost it, then they lost all contact off planet, so they took this job seriously, especially with things so bad now in the war.
"Heard NOBLE Team had an interesting morning."
"Yeah, they surprised a couple of Innies trying to hijack a supply transport. Bastards never saw them coming."
"Innies vs. Spartans? That's not even fair."
"Did you guys hear about how some possible Innies tried to bomb Liberty Square, over in New Alexandria? The bomb apparently was a dud, and the idiots were all out cold."
"Well that's probably why-"
All of a sudden they received an order over the radio, "Corporal Travis. Prep your team for immediate mobilization to Visegrad. We've lost contact with the Comm Relay Hub. Possible Insurrectionist activity."
"Roger. We're on the way. Charlie 3 out."
The soldiers packed up their gear and equipment, and loaded onto the Transporter 'Hog. "It's bad enough we gotta fight the Covenant, but we also have to deal with our own fucking people screwing us over and watching us die trying to keep them alive."
"That's the job. And you can bet your ass there'll be more fire's to put out tomorrow…so stay focused. Let's move out boys."
Little did they know what truly had done the deed…
And so, with Gears of War 4 being a great success and the start of a new trilogy, I thought about doing a Halo-Gears story for a while, but I was unable to find something good and concrete until I thought, 'Hey, why don't I bring the survivors of Gears 3 into the Halo storyline?' I had seen many, many stories of everyone coming to Sera, and everything being mostly post-Halo 3, during Gears 1 type of story, but to me, they just didn't feel like a good crossover concept, at least to me that is.
This series will go through Halo: Reach, Halo: Combat Evolved, Halo 2, Halo 3: ODST, Halo 3, Gears of War 4, and Halo 4. This will take my Halo-Star Wars series place for the time being as I felt that it was simply too big, and too grand having to go through Halo 4, Halo 4 Spartan Ops, Halo: Escalation, Halo: Hunt the Truth, Halo 5 rewrite, Halo Wars 2, and a rewrite of Halo 6 from that franchise, and there would be Star Wars: The Clone Wars season's 6 & 7, and a rewrite of the events from Star Wars Episode III: Revenge of the Sith. So yeah, a lot of stuff that would require a team of writers and patience for the latter two Halo storylines. So this new series would do better as I would have less to work with on my own.
So please continue to read, review, favorite and follow my stories both here, and on my profile. Enjoy, and see you guys until next time :) !
