Note from the author: Sorry to break up the flow if you're actually getting into this at all, but I wanted to just make some things clear. First of all, the new main character from the passage below isn't my character, he's been announced (in PC gamer magazine) as a character in GOW2. That, and a couple relatively small spoilers about his place in the GOW universe (which may well end up getting included in this story), are all I know about him. If you don't want GOW2 to be revealed for you even THAT much (which I can understand), you should stop reading now. Consider yourself warned.
Also, JRB, sorry but Stannis won't be back until maybe the epilogue, if there is one. Although I did put in Dizzy since I liked your advice enough to try it out. Look everyone! A passage from the perspective of a non-Gear! Ain't that cool...
Dizzy had known the convoy would be trouble from the moment he'd joined up with it. Hadn't stopped him, of course. Few things did. Besides, they'd been a pitiful lot—hollow-eyed kids and starving wrecks of adults that were to normal people what sketches were to photos—and he'd known from the second he'd set eyes on them that they would never make it to Jacinto without help.
Besides, if he hadn't at least tried to help them out he wouldn't have been able to look at his own kids without feeling guilty afterwards.
He'd thought for a while that his intuition had been wrong—a whole month of traveling had gone by, with nothing so much as a single Grub—and at the time he'd decided that maybe he'd finally struck it lucky. The convoy of refugees he was shepherding were fed and even content at times, Dizzy's kids were happy with having others their own age to hang around, Dizzy's wife was happy the kids were happy, and so Dizzy was happy. At times, like on the good days when the Stranded settlements they'd passed by had done more than just pass them a few morsels of food or ammo out of pity but had actually joined the convoy, he'd even entertained the prospect that God had finally had enough of what the Locust had done to his green earth and gone down there himself to sort them out. Life had been good.
It was times like this, he supposed, that reality liked to sneak up behind you and then kick you as hard as it could in the sack.
The kids' wailing down below was only drowned out occasionally by the gunfire, but Dizzy supposed that, at least, was a blessing of sorts. Gorram Locust snipers! The first hint they'd had that something was finally amiss was when the 16-year-old he'd had on sentry duty had collapsed with an entry wound the size of an egg in his chest. The fact that they'd managed to get all of the invalids in cover without any more casualties was something Dizzy attributed to the last of the good fortune that had stayed with them for the last month; everyone that wasn't able to fight was safely hidden belowdecks of the huge mining truck that had got the convoy this far. Thing was, the truck's steering assembly wasn't belowdecks; it was fully exposed on the top deck, with only a windowed cabin enclosure for cover. Driving the truck out of the ambush was suicide, and nobody was quite ready to die just yet.
Such was the chain of events that had left about twenty good men cowering behind what scant bulkheads the truck—after some thought, Dizzy had named her 'Betsy'—had to offer, and Dizzy himself hiding beneath the thin shell of steel in the driving cabin, unable to even rise in the knowledge that the moment the Locust saw where he was, there would be a slew of bullets punching straight through his hiding place and ending his days right there.
So instead he watched as his eldest, Darron, rose out of his cover with a practised care, pulled up the long-barrelled rifle that Dizzy had spent so many evenings helping him modify, drew a bead and fired. He was back in cover in under a second, and the Locust sniper bullets pounded his cover like rain. Dizzy had to smile at that. "Headshot?" he yelled, grinning over the tumult.
"'Course, Pa. You know me." Darron slouched down a little, making sure none of his body was exposed. "Not like I can get to try't twice, y'know."
Dizzy nodded. Now that the Locust knew there was a man behind that cover, they'd be watching. Darron would be sitting the rest of the firefight out.
"All right then. Uh... Calling all Stranded. Listen up, all right?"
Dizzy turned to the radio. Surprise must have been written all over his face, because Darron started chuckling.
"Hey, it sounds like he's talking to you, Pa."
"I know we've all had some tough times..."
Dizzy listened to the message, his astonishment steadily growing. Either someone was having some serious yuks at Dizzy's expense, or the COG was here. Now. With tank support. Dizzy glanced up at the aged radar system on the cabin console and was astonished to note the two green dots marking the APCs next to his position. He'd already seen them, had been puzzling over them for most of the day, but he'd written them off as the first inevitable equipment malfunctions of the journey, the initial signs of how old Betsy really was.
"Ah, girl," Dizzy murmured, "I'm so sorry I doubted ya." Maybe his luck was still up and about.
After the Gear had finished his convoluted, slightly-offensive speech, Dizzy just stared at nothing, pondering the distance to the cabin's radio and how fast the Locust would shoot him down if he tried to make a go for it. Even his eldest was silent. As if to make the decision for him, Dizzy felt the truck under him begin to shake, and the rest of the earth with it. He'd seen enough Locust emergence holes to know what that meant. And the ground was really shaking, so there were at least three holes coming up, and probably more. The Locust had finally decided to up and swallow Dizzy's little convoy whole. Ah hell, he thought, there's nothing else for it. Besides, if I go down swingin', I know the wife'll understand.
"Oi!" Dizzy yelled. "Give 'em hell for a couple seconds, boyos! Take their ambush and shove it up their poxy—"
As if by magic, the whole of the deck lit up in muzzle flashes. Dizzy nodded, satisfied, and dove the meter-and-a-half across the cabin. His hand yanked the radio mike off its stand as he went by and his forearm was in place to take the brunt of the impact against the other side of the cabin. His body fell hard against the deck and he had just enough sense left to curl himself up back into cover. For a second or so he didn't even breathe.
Nothing. No ominous ptoink as a bullet shattered his idyll and slew him. No cries of warning from his buddies. Just him, and a ringing in his ears... and the radio in his hand.
He pulled it to his mouth. Later, when he looked back on it all, he would wonder why he hadn't felt some kind of... Ah, even then he couldn't name what he should have felt. Touch of destiny, or something. Maybe a little surge of excitement from opening up a whole new door into the future blindfolded and sticking his foot through to see what was behind it.
"Lissen, y'all. You wanna help us out, do you? Well, we're about six klicks north-northwest of your south APC and we're in a heap of shite. You wanna help, come on down. Just follow the gunfire."
"Goddammit, Marcus!" Dom could only hold on to the turret controls as the whole of the APC shuddered and flew across the rough terrain. "The APC isn't built for this shit!"
Marcus probably didn't even hear him. The APC's turret enclosure swung into his jaw again, and this time Dom was positive he felt a tooth go. He pulled himself away and shoved his arms against either side of the turret, holding himself erect while the world bounced and crashed. He swore to himself, and felt a surprisingly sudden ache for his wife.
God, Marcia...I'll be with you soon. I'll find you... or I'll die fighting this stupid war. Either way.
He pulled himself back together, found the commlink to the driver, and flicked it open. "Marcus! Marcus! Get a grip, man! Slow down!"
The APC only slowed marginally, and only for a few seconds. Afterwards the world was still rushing forward to meet him, but Marcus had taken a hand off the wheel and opened the comm so he could talk back. "Dom, those people are fucked if we can't get there three seconds ago. Grow some balls and shut up."
"The APC—"
"No shit. I heard the first time anyway. You think that matters right now? We don't go this fast anyway, they're dead. We crash, or we go too slow, they're dead. Shut up so I can concentrate."
Dom shut up. Life went on for another few seconds. Then the comm clicked on again.
"One other thing," said Marcus. He sounded a little hesitant, for some reason. "See that taller building in the distance? The one that looks like it used to have another twenty feet of spire attached to it?"
"Uh huh."
"There're two smaller buildings next to it. Blast them down. Nevermind if you see Locust in them, just get those first. There's emergence holes underneath."
"Damn, how could you know that?"
Pause.
"They were rumbling a couple seconds ago. You couldn't see?"
"No way, man."
"Oh." The comm clicked off again, leaving Dom alone to feel puzzled at how Marcus had known.
By the time Baird managed to drive his APC back to the Stranded distress call, it was all over. There were a couple dead people lying around, but as far as he could see the casualties had been light for the human side. Locust bodies, on the other hand, littered the ground in the no-man's-land between where the strike force had unearthed itself and the Stranded group. By the looks of things, the Locusts had begun with sniper sentries in one building, and when they'd spotted the convoy, Locust reinforcements had tunnelled up beneath the two buildings adjacent, assuming the structures would cover their insertion. Evidently, they had been wrong. Debris and torn pieces of cement littered the ground where the buildings used to stand, hiding the Locusts that had been fatally entombed inside only somewhat. Chalk one up for the COG, Baird thought. Sergeant Fenix's APC was already parked next to the mining truck the Stranded seemed to be using as a makeshift home and transport.
The truck. It was magnificent. By the looks of things it was about fifty tonnes worth of machinery, a massive steel block that made his heart sing in his chest just to look at. It was cube-shaped mostly, with four massive treads along the bottom that were about where wheels would be if the beauty had been a car, with heavy cowlings over each of them to hide the complex system that drove them and protected them from grime. Vertical ladders hung precariously on either side of the truck, in front of the treads. It was about five stories tall and, by the looks of things, it wasn't all machinery. Baird could see faces, mostly those of children, peeking out from small square windows chiseled in lines across the top two stories of the truck. Cranes and other derelict mining equipment dotted the top deck, and a driver's cabin sprouted out of the front, the inclined front making it almost look like a bird's beaked head, angled forward at something.
"Yeap, she's a beaut, ain't she?" Out of his peripheral vision, Baird saw a man almost as heavily tattooed as Dominic turn from his conversation with Fenix and walk over to him to place an amiable arm round his shoulder. The man's huge cowboy hat bumped up against Baird's temple. "Name's Dizzy, fella, and her—" He gestured, taking in the vista of the entire truck—"name's Betsy. Her and me 'ave been keeping each other alive for, oh, must be a good five years now. I found her in an old mining town a ways away from here, all alone. Hard to think anyone'd abandon a sweet girl like this." The man turned to him and pulled his sunglasses off. "I seen the way you've been looking at her, young fella. I'm guessing you'd be the mechanically inclined type, someone who'd get a real kick out of making sure this purty girl's still running properly. You do think she's purty, right?"
Normally Baird had some kind of obscenity-laden rant for situations like this. 'Get your damn hands off of me, you filthy Stranded bastard' was favorite, or maybe just a simple invitation to fuck off. But for some reason what came out of his mouth was "Yes, sir. She sure is."
The man winked. "'Spect you'd like to take a poke round inside her, then, eh?"
"...Uh..."
"Baird! Over here, now. Command's got orders for us."
Not ungratefully, Baird firmly pushed Dizzy back and headed for the rest of Delta. Cole was already there, grinning like an idiot. "Damn Baird, you see the crazy shit Dom and Marcus pulled the way in here? They pulled down two buildings on those Locust suckers! Four emergence holes, and those scaled bastards never even saw what hit em!"
Marcus threw a calculating glance at Cole as he continued to gloat, then apparently decided to just talk right over him. "Listen. I just got off the radio with Anya about this. Dizzy says this convoy's got about sixty people total in it, with twenty men able-bodied and another twenty-six children under thirteen."
The news had the desired effect. Twenty men that could take up jobs in Jacinto immediately, with no hospitalization to rid them of the starvation and infection symptoms that usually plagued Stranded, and twenty-six others that were young enough to be eligible for proper Gear conditioning? Even Cole shut up for a while. Dom said, "Damn. Marcus... that's more than we figured we'd get in a month."
"Exactly. Think about it. Everyone that would have joined up with us around here, and then some... they're already going to be here, in the convoy. So our orders have been changed. Here on in, we've got to get this truck to Jacinto. There's us, two more Gear squads recruiting nearby that can come in and help us out if we feel like the Locust are really pushing, and a squadron of five King Raven choppers that'll be doing trips between us and Jacinto for the next couple days, ferrying the invalids out for us."
"Why not just do everyone like that?" Baird asked, but Cole was already nodding in understanding.
"They want the truck too, don't they?"
Marcus nodded, approving. "Damn right they want the truck. We can't mine under Jacinto because the Locust will exploit that to bypass our defenses. We can't mine outside Jacinto because the Locust will pour out of the ground and kill us. So we're stuck scrounging parts from Locust-made weaponry and ruined cities. This truck—"
"Betsy," Baird supplied, deadpan. Cole started laughing. Marcus glared a little for breaking his flow but said nothing about it. "Betsy," he continued, with a nod to Baird, "is one of the biggest processed-metal finds that they can drive back to Jacinto this year."
"They're going to take her apart for scrap? Dizzy isn't going to like that."
"Dizzy'll get used to it if he wants his kids to grow up in the last city left in the world." Marcus folded his arms across his chest. "The COG just hit the jackpot here, and we know it. We're keeping these people safe with every scrap of resources we've got to spare."
