Chapter 7: No Place for man

He remember being in the Youth Guard much better than his time as a Gear. He knew the job and served the best he could. If you did that, and survived long enough, you got promoted. It made it easier when the person just above you got killed. There was a guilt associated with such advancement, but he was told by the higher-ups to accept it as the way of war.

"You were in the Youth Guard," they said. "And now you're a full Gear. The backbone of the COG. This is your life. It makes you happy. Just keep with it."

He wasn't the kind of man to make a glorious stand against Command like that guy Marcus Fenix. Howe had been sympathetic to Fenix considering the circumstances, and everyone admitted that the man was an amazing solider. But things went bad. That was life.

Alhazred had proven to be a tenuous place. It provided shelter from the cold, but not from the Locusts. Nothing saved people from them. Sera was overrun. Humanity was on its way out.

Howe grabbed up every bit of ammo that he could carry. Everyone they had left was doing the same. Colonel Gaines wanted to move out as soon as possible. The Lightmass bomb had been separated into large pieces. Apparently even more would be added to it in Jacinto. Mika's team and some of Al's Stranded loaded into onto the old train. According to Gaines they would be met by Ravens halfway to provide an escort. "Hopefully," Gaines added. The loss of the forward fire base was major, but Hoffman really wanted the bomb. Either need or hardship was going to have to win.

Clevinger radioed in: "You guys really need to get going."

"They're working on it. What about you?"

"It's not good…"

"Let me get a med-kit to you. Mika's people—"

"—don't worry about that. It's coming. You need to go."

"It?"

"It's speeding up."

Howe could feel it then: the pounding on the distant frozen ground. The tremors rose up beneath them. There would be no way of getting a train past it. Even Ravens didn't like to get close when a brumak was near. The rockets the creature carried were devastating.

Gaines appeared dressed in Gear armor and armed. "What's going on?"

"Brumak. We can't open the train tunnel. It'll never make it past him."

"Well we can't wait here for a clearer day. We're going to have to kill it."

Howe looked at the older man. Gaines had been more than a career officer. He was a lifer. Given the situation the COG was in, that was a common story. The man himself was only in his fifties, but in a world of war that was an old age.

"You serious?"

Gaines straightened the hat atop his balding head. "That's the job. Hope you're up to it."

XXX

"Clevinger?"

He waited a time for the response.

"Clevinger?" Don't die on me yet.

"Yeah, bossman. Still here."

Thank you. "Where is it?"

"It's almost in range. Groups of Locusts are following some ways off behind it. They're probably gonna wait for the rockets to hit, and then they'll be inside."

Gaines and Howe stood at the door. Howe considered the options. There were basically none. The Lancer felt heavy then. He shook himself off from the doubt. All of the other people inside were counting on them. Some of them had no idea what it was. They felt the earth shake, and they knew it couldn't be good. Bill wondered if he would prefer it that way too. He remembered seeing how people on Jacinto reacted whenever it was attacked. They would create any number of horrors in their imaginations, and conjoin them with collections of ridiculous hopes.

That might be their right.

"We're going to have to run," he told Gaines. "You on the left and me on the right. Keep him busy. Sometimes they have a Theron or Grenadier driving them. Take him out. We need it to lose focus."

"I'll try to hit him from here," said Clevinger. "I still have…" he coughed. "The…boomshot."

"Alright," said Gaines. "Let's do some damage."

Howe opened the door, and they ran out into the cold.

XXX

Howe tried to control his breathing as he pumped his legs to run across the tundra. The brumak unleashed its primal scream and with it a torrent of rockets. These rammed into the ground launching dirt and melted snow into the air. Steam was rising into the chilly wind. Howe wasn't sure how long they'd been playing this game. The smaller locusts had fallen back to let their "tank" drive the way through. This hesitation may have been uncertainty. The Grubs had no way of knowing how many Gears were still inside the station.

The lumbering creature was rocked suddenly. It howled in pain, and the noise threatened to crack Howe's skull. Apparently Clevinger had gotten lucky with the boomshot.

For his part, Gaines had done fairly well. The older man couldn't run as fast as Howe, but having someone else to share the beast's attention was nice. Howe and Gaines used the opportunity to pour bullets all over the creature and its equipment. It was grueling work, but damage was being done. Howe lobbed a grenade near the creature's foot. The metallic crack resulted from his angered the brumak greatly. It launched more and more rockets. Howe fled. He hadn't seen a rider on this one, but he hadn't taken the chance to look all that well. Standard COG field manual guidelines told Gears to avoid brumaks entirely unless they had heavy weapon support. The Hammer of Dawn was…

As he worked his way to another run, he radioed Gaines: "Do you have the Hammer?"

"Yeah, but we don't have good visibility. We're not supposed to use it like that."

The brumak was slowly turning itself back around to Alhazred despite the attempts to lure it away. Whatever chaos was at work it its mind still had some room to follow the will of the Horde. It knew it had to break the facility. Somewhere there was a greater will that itself. Pain and fear were excellent motivations.

"Do it," said Howe. "We need everything we can bring down."

Howe stepped up his antagonism of the beast while Gaines found a safer location behind some of the metal rubble leftover from the downed ravens. He'd cut off his thumb for a fully armed Raven.

Another rocket blast came from the high reaches of Alhazred. Clevinger was still alive—still a delivery man of long range death. Stay with us. We can still do this.

The rocket clipped the brumak's arm causing a spray of blood to fall upon the dirty snow. Its arm was still intact, but Howe was still glad to see the monster so injured. There was so much noise that he hadn't even heard the rocket as it flew near. He felt the heat, and saw the bright light of its motor. The explosion was felt against the inside of his chest.

They'd been grinding away at the brumak's weapons platforms. The brumak itself was something of an overgrown, abused primate made of elephant skin that was resistant to most bullets. COG scientists had been hoping to capture one for years. Howe thought of Dillion and his want to study Locust blood. It was an unusual benefit to meeting the Locust he supposed. Humans had an odd need to find and examine new life forms.

In the smoke and steam Howe couldn't see Gaines, but he could hear the man swearing. It wasn't uncommon amongst soldiers. They approached the death game with all the rage and hatred of a bitter teenaged boy. The use of foul language worked like prayers against the dangers they were asked to confront.

"Run, Howe! It's coming down!"

Howe dropped another grenade, and ran for the shelter of one of the rundown utility sheds.

From the cold gray sky came a beam of pure golden light as though the sun was impregnating the planet below. Gaines was holding on the trigger for as long as he could. Howe stole a peak as the Colonel's handiwork, and saw that the beam hadn't connected with the brumak directly, but was close enough to give a severe roasting.

The reaction from the creature was one of pure pain. It almost looked to be dancing within its own halo of bright glowing agony. As the beam subsided, the brumak moved faster with more urgency. The Hammer was the best weapon the Cog could muster at any given time. It wasn't enough.

Howe drew a large Boltok pistol, and began squeezing off rounds. Each bullet was as big as a man's thumb. He figured it was worth a try. A few of the bullets seemed to be penetrating the thick flesh. It was still a minimalist's attempt at death, but he had to busy himself with something. Then he noticed the dark smoke coming from the rocket platforms. Howe believed that they would explode, and sought cover. Rather than suffer spectacular failures, the rockets just fizzled, and broke off the creature.

They'd done it.

He continued his barrage with the Boltok. From his own position, Gaines opened up with his rife. Another rocket came out from Clevinger. The beast staggered, and turned away from Alhazred. It fled into the snowy distance. Howe called a ceasefire, though it took a while for Gaines to stop shooting. It was over.

Gaines came over to where Howe was standing. Both men were breathing heavily even though the air was choked with smoke.

"That was amazing," said the Colonel. "It's been awhile since I've seen action like that."

Howe couldn't help but smile and shook his head. "Almost hard to believe that you're a colonel sometimes. But, I'm glad you were out here. I'm not sure if Blair would've been up to this."

"What do you think happened to them?"

"It can't be a coincidence that Team Howard hit them, and then we get all of this. The only question is how much damage did Howard really do to them?"

Gaines sighed. "We need to get back. Mika and his people should be on the train by now."

Howe nodded. At some point he needed to get away from all of this. There had to be some place that was quiet without all of the tension, smoke, and death. Years ago he'd spoken to Sarah about ditching the unending war they lived through. She reminded him that there was no escape. Their wholes lives had been lived during one war or another. It was unavoidable.

Something whizzed by his head. He fell to the ground out of instinct, and called for Gaines to do the same. Gaines' legs shook. Howe looked up to see the Colonel clutching his throat. Blood began coating the metallic blue armor.

Howe stood up and grabbed Gaines' arms. "Let me see it. Let me see it!"

Gaines kicked Howe away. Howe didn't understand this until the torque bow bolt promptly exploded in a rupture of smoke and thick gore. The Colonel's headless body collapsed to the dirty snow field.

Howe heard the charging of the bow. He dove to avoid another bolt, and came to a crouch, from which he emptied the entire cylinder of the Boltok. The Theron Guard fell down in a bloody mess, but the other locusts were coming in.

Howe ran. He threw one last grenade over his shoulder, and put everything he had into getting back to Alhazred. He couldn't stand to take one last look at Gaines. He told himself that the older soldier would understand.