This story is based mainly upon the "Gears of War" trilogy by Epic Games, and the novels by Karen Traviss, with just a pinch of plot from the graphic novels. "GOW: Judgment" will be treated as an alternate universe.

EMERGENCE DAY

[Ephyra, 0915 hours]

Dom was sleeping in. Or rather, Maria refused to wake him because it was a rare weekend off and he looked so peaceful.

She finished putting up her hair in the vanity mirror and turned back toward the bed. Dom had the sheets pulled up above his waist and one arm thrown over his head. His stubbled cheek was resting on the pillow, his mouth slightly open and soft with sleep. She resisted the urge to trail her fingers over his lips (her eyes skimmed down his body) or anywhere else, for that matter.

'This is the reason you have two kids already,' she reminded herself. 'Let the man rest for once.'

Dom huffed at something happening in his dream, making his abdomen flex briefly. Maria raised an appreciative eyebrow. She had an elaborate rating scale for how attractive he looked while asleep. 'I'd give that a 9.3 out of 10.' He snorted. 'Maybe a 9.2.'

Maria went downstairs to make breakfast. She'd already sent the kids to her mother's house for the day, so she only needed to make breakfast for two. However, one of those two people was a bottomless pit. She made a fried egg and a bowl of oatmeal for herself, and a four-egg omelette, three pieces of toast, a quarter pound of bacon, another bowl of oatmeal and a glass of orange juice for her massive husband. As she waited for the last piece of bacon to finish turning brown, she tapped the spatula against the edge of the pan, thinking, 'Is it too soon for a third kid? Three is a good number. That way we'll have an oldest, a middle, and a youngest child. Perfect.' She waggled her eyebrows. 'And we could start working on it right now.' She laughed out loud at herself. 'Damn, Maria, at least wait until after breakfast before you start molesting the poor man.'

Maria arranged Dom's food on a large tray – her meal wouldn't fit with the rest – and took it upstairs. Her toe caught on the second step from the top. She did some fancy footwork and managed to not even slop the orange juice over the edge of the glass. 'Nice, Maria. That would be a good start to the day. "Good morning, honey. Your breakfast is on the floor in the hallway. Do you want to get busy, or should we clean it up first?"'

She stopped in the doorway and her mouth went dry. Dom had rolled over on his stomach and the sheet was covering considerably less of him than before. He squirmed a little, a ripple of hard muscle starting at his shoulders and moving south. Clearly he'd been working on his score while she was gone. 'How does he do this to me? He's asleep, for crying out loud!' Maria decided he couldn't top that perfect 10, and it was time to wake him up. His dark eyelashes were just starting to flutter anyway.

"Dom." His eyelids fluttered again. "Dom? Dom, you awake? I brought you breakfast." She put the tray down on the night stand. "The kids are at my mother's, so we've got the whole day to ourselves." His deep brown eyes were open but not focused. "Dom, are you awake?" He blinked slowly but didn't respond. "Dom? Dom!"

"Huh? What?" he sat straight up in bed, nearly clipping her chin with the top of his head.

"Whoa, there!" Maria steadied him with her hands on his shoulders. "Sorry, honey, I couldn't tell if you were awake or not."

"Mmm." He ran a hand over his face and through his hair. Maria realized that touching his warm skin had been a bad move on her part. He was never going to get breakfast at the rate her blood pressure was rising.

She stepped back and tucked her traitorous hands behind herself. "Eggs, toast, bacon, oatmeal and orange juice."

Dom shook his head to clear it. "Thanks, baby." He reached for the orange juice, and when he sat back the sheet lost its tenuous hold on his dignity. Maria looked out the window over his head and tried to count the number of palm trees she could see from this angle.

Halfway through drinking his orange juice, Dom noticed her rapt attention to the foliage outside. "What are you looking at?"

"Nothing." She kept her eyes straight ahead.

"Seriously, though." He took another sip.

She sighed. "A better question is what am I not looking at?"

He paused in swallowing and tilted his head in that adorable way he had. Then he looked down at his birthday suit. He finished swallowing his mouthful of orange juice and looked back up at her. A wicked grin crossed his face and he put the glass aside and stood up.

'Oh, Lordy, here comes that third kid.'

Dominic stretched and flexed like a cat waking up from a nap. "Beautiful morning, isn't it?" he said.

She narrowed her eyes at him. "Yes it is, darling." Two could play this game. "Would you like me to go downstairs and make a pot of coffee?" Maria deliberately did not look anywhere but his face. "We've got scones, too, I could warm up some of those if you like."

He caved immediately. "You're not going anywhere." Dom caught her by the wrist and pulled her tight against his body. "The coffee, the scones, and the whole damn breakfast can take a number." He kissed the spot just behind her ear and said, "It's been way too long since I was alone with my wife."

She put her arms around his neck and rested her temple against his jaw. "Yes it has, Dominic."

"Mmhmm," he said into her hair as he kissed his way down her neck.

"Dom?"

"Mmm?"

"What's going on outside?"

He turned his head toward the window.

Sometime in the last thirty second, the palm trees had been draped with a thick layer of ash. More flakes of immolated carbon drifted down, making it look like it was snowing outside.

They looked at each other.

"Check the phone line," he said, turning and yanking open the drawer with his boxers in it.

Maria ran to the stand in the hallway and put the receiver to her ear. Nothing. "There's no dial tone," she called to him.

She could hear drawers opening and closing forcefully. "I have to get to the base," he yelled.

"I'm on it!" she said.

Maria pounded down the stairs to the hall closet and yanked out Dom's "go" bag, the one with his armor and weapons inside. She upended the contents on the floor, snatched up the steel box with his pistol and knives inside and dialed open the safety lock.

Dom leapt down the stairs three at a time. He stepped into the supporting harness that Maria held out for him and strapped on the thigh plates. He shoved his feet into the boots and Maria slipped a combat knife into the sheath on the right one, then tightened the straps. "Good?"

"Good," Dom responded, shrugging on the chest piece. He held the front and back together while Maria slapped the circular seals into place and twisted them clockwise, making the gel layer expand and suction the armor to his torso. The blue lights came on. Dom pulled on the forearm greaves and Maria slung his tactical belt around his waist. She handed him the pistol and he checked the magazine before snapping it into the hip holster.

Maria heard the kitchen door crash open. Marcus's thunderous voice yelled, "Dom!"

"In here!" he answered, slipping another combat knife into the sheath mounted on the front of his shoulder.

"We need to get to base, now!"

"No shit, Marcus!"

Maria keyed open the Lancer case and hefted the huge weapon so Dom could take it. He checked the magazine, slapped it back in, and attached the sword-like bayonet to the end. Marcus burst through from the kitchen, locked and loaded. "You ready?"

"Yeah."

"Wait one." Maria clipped the canteen of water to Dom's belt.

He kissed her cheek. "Thanks, honey."

Maria dug her fingers into his unarmored bicep. "Dom. The kids."

Dom traded glances with Marcus. "We'll send someone over there, and they'll call you as soon as the phones are back up."

She let go. "Okay."

There was an explosion in the distance. A few bits of plaster rained down on them from the ceiling.

"The roads are gridlocked. We'll have to walk," Marcus said.

Dom crushed her to him with his free arm and kissed her in a very rough, very un-sexy way. "I'll call you as soon as I can."

"Right." She followed them through the front door and down the path to the gate.

Dom walked backwards for a few steps. "Stay inside!" He jogged after Marcus, who was shrinking rapidly into the distance. "Don't go over to your mother's!"

"Right." She watched her soldiers disappear into the shifting curtains of ash. "Okay."

#

[Kosoly Barracks, 0915]

Klaxons began blaring all over the compound. Baird's unit stumbled to a halt in the middle of their twentieth lap around the parade ground. Their drill sergeant slapped a hand to the tac/com in his ear. Baird hadn't thought the crusty old bastard could wedge that stick any farther up his ass, but the expression on his face proved him wrong.

There was a massive explosion in the distance that made the entire unit jump. "Frak!* What's going on out there?" asked the pimply-faced kid next to Baird. An angry-looking cloud of smoke jetted up into the atmosphere.

Baird shrugged, a lot more calmly than he felt. "You tell me, man, I only work here."*

"Listen up, grunts!" the sergeant hollered. Every Gear present snapped to attention, even Baird. "We are under attack from an unknown enemy. They are not Indies." He paused. "Front-line reports strongly suggest they are not human."

'Not human? What the hell? The COG is under attack by frakking aliens?' Baird's mind worked furiously. 'Where the hell did they come from? Surely someone would have noticed a fleet of invading spaceships before now.'

The brand-new soldiers began a cacophony of chattering questions, confusion and panic rising quickly.

"A-ten-HUT!" They reflexively snapped back into a silent formation at their sergeant's voice. "You are Gears, not a bunch of panicking civilians! You will not break formation unless I tell you to do so, even if the frakking sky is falling!"

"Sir, yes, sir!" they yelled enthusiastically. Many of them were clearly grateful at that moment to have such a hard-ass leader.

"You will not be facing the enemy head-on." They relaxed a fraction. "You greenhorns haven't even learned to do an active reload yet. Instead you will be assisting with the loading of ammunition into the supply APCs going to the front line."

There was another bone-rattling explosion, this time from a different area. The sergeant raised a hand to his tac/com. The soldiers remained in a very tense formation as he listened.

"Private Baird!" he barked.

Baird delivered a perfect "Sir, yes, sir!"

"Your file says you have extensive technical experience."

Baird grinned cockily. "Sir, yes, sir!"

"Then get that shit-eating grin off your face and hustle your sorry ass over to Control. They need extra information hubs set up ASAP."

"Sir, yes, sir!" Baird took off at a sprint. He got to avoid heavy labor, play with high-tech equipment, and aliens were invading. This was going to be fun.

When that first devastating attack was over he realized he hadn't thought about her once. That was definitely progress. Maybe he could survive without her after all.

# # #

* Author's Note: Yes, those are references to "Battlestar Galactica" and "Aliens".
Brace yourselves for the shameless plundering of one-liners from my favorite sci-fi materials.
I'll try to keep them to a minimum, but sometimes I just can't help myself.