For Tomorrow

Cole flew through the air and smashed through a brick wall. Having been backhanded by the thing that had emerged from the rubble of the ruined house. Bullet so far had proved fruitless but still Anya and Jace unloaded an entire Lancer clip into it trying to slow it down.

"We gotta take ugly out before he rips us all to shreds!" Cole yelled as he stood up and shot another burst of Lancer bullets into the back of their attacker.

The thing was a beast, ripping the ground apart with mighty blows from its large hands. It would attempt to body slam into one of the Gears with its spiky body. For something that was attempting to contain them, it was doing a piss poor job.

Alex was right behind it, her Lancer in hand. She pulled the lever and charged it, bringing the chainsaw down onto its left arm. The chainsaw began to slowly cut through its thick skin causing lime green blood to come spurting out.

"Whoooo!" Cole yelped as he revved his chainsaw up. "If we can cut it, we can kill it!"

"Keep your distance everyone, it's still dangerous." Anya warned as she rolled out of its way as it attempted to charge her.

"Rip the bastard in half!" Jace roared as he somersaulted behind the thing and finished cutting off its left arm.

"Jace be careful!" Anya yelled, in the control room she was always calm. Out of the battlefield she always adopted a little motherly instinct towards the younger members of the squads she was a part of.

Jace barely ducked a wild swing by the beast. "Shit!" he yelled as he backed up and fired at the bloody stump.

The beast roared in pain as the bullets hit his open wound. It slowed for a moment as it bellowed and howled.

"Someone get a grenade in that stump!" Alex yelled as she tried to distract it with a volley of bullets from her Lancer.

"Let's go baby!" Cole shouted as he stuck his rifle onto the magnetic plate on his back and grabbed a grenade from his belt. He let out a loud whoop before running forward towards the beast.

Jace grimaced, if Baird was here he would be cussing Cole out for charging in headfirst. For now he swallowed his fear and tried to focus on fighting the beast and ignoring the pain in his ribs.

Cole charged forward, ducking a wild swipe from the beast. It was getting tired and frustrated. Which meant it was going to make a mistake. Cole capitalized on this and pulled the pin on the grenade. He slammed it into the bloody stump of the beast and rolled backwards, praying he was out of the blast radius.

There was a repressed bang followed by a wail of pain. The beast had lost most of the left side of its body, yet it still stood tall as if it had been simply hit by a fly. There it was, ribs exposed, blood pouring out like a garden hose, anything else would have died by this point.

"We need the hammer of dawn!" Jace yelled and looked to Anya. As the senior officer of the eight she was responsible for the sensor that would drop a stream of power like a hammer from the gods. Jace had been curious as to why Hoffman had just given it to her before the mission briefing, there was no need for that much fire power on a scouting mission.

"We need to get clear, we might not even have satellite coverage and could hit us!" Anya yelled as she covered Cole as he ran over to pick Ayers up.

"Nothing else is going to take this fucker down!" Alex yelled as she fired at the beast.

"We need to get clear!" Jace yelled as he turned and started to run with the other Gears.

The beast sensed them leaving and roared as it charged after them. It came at them like a bat out of hell.

"Jace, you and Cole get clear, Alex with me!" Anya commanded as she turned around to draw the beast's attention by shooting at it some more.

"Yes ma'am!" Alex boomed as she ran over to join Anya, excited to kick some ass.

Once Jace and Cole were clear Anya and Alex took off towards a ramp that led to a rooftop. They fired their guns and screamed at the beast to lure it towards them. Running up the ramp they stood on top of the roof the beast in hot pursuit behind them. The two ran towards the ledge, the beast sped up. Right before it could grab them the two jerked to the right and left respectfully and watched as the beast ran off the roof of the building.

Anya wasted no time in pulling the targeter out and ran over to the edge and aimed the beam at the beast. It beeped several times letting Anya know that a satellite was in range.

"Get down!" she yelled as a stream of fire fell from the heavens and struck the beast like a hammer from the dawn.

##########

Carmine and Sam stood around waiting for Marcus to finish calling Command while Baird muttered to himself about the new guns and weapons they had found. Sam watched as Carmine passed the time by doing sit-ups and pushups. Something she found ironic since he was already huge, or huge compared to D-ke who still was rather large but Clay made him look small.

"Burning off the extra energy?" Sam asked.

"Yeah." Carmine responded, one-word answers normally weren't his forte, he could talk for hours off of the question 'how was your day going'?

"Not feeling talkative today Carmine?" Sam asked him as he grunted and kept crunching.

"Nope."

"Why?"

"Why you asking?"

"Oh come on, what happened to that wonderfully humored young man who escorted me to the Gears Ball last week?"

"Last week wasn't Ben's birthday. Nor was last week two-fifty, exactly when he entered this god forsaken world."

Sam paused for a moment before looking back at Clay. She cleared her throat before trying to steer the conversation into a different vein of topic. "So, what do you think of that thing we found? The new armor?"

"Obviously we're going to be out to fight again. We're giving up our lives as fill in farmers, police officers, whatever we were supposed to be in order to make shit run again. They ain't friendly, they ain't here for the common good, and they most fucking surely ain't here to combine forces. They're here to kill the men, rape the women, and then convert the children. We're going back to fighting the Stranded all over again just like we did on Vectes because we're fucked."

"Bit pessimistic aren't you. Starting to sound like blondie over there."

"Hey, Carmine's got a point. They didn't even bother asking us to surrender or even want to talk. They just opened fire on us. They must have some serious firepower if this is any indication." Baird said as he stood up and pointed to the barrel of the gun he had been observing for the last fifteen minutes. "Look at the size of the barrel, it's about the size of the Hammerburst, you know the second one the one that wasn't burst fire god how I miss that first one, anyway it's fires Hammerburst caliber rounds while being attached to a Lancer body. Giving it accuracy, firepower, and a chainsaw bayonet. We have the accuracy and a chainsaw bayonet, but not the firepower. However it has only thirty rounds and it seems to eject ammo quickly. That being said we do have an advantage with our sixty round clips and…" Baird was cut off as he had to dodge a rock Carmine threw at him.

"Fucking can it Baird." Carmine growled as he went back to doing crunches.

"Nobody appreciates me." Baird moaned as he went over and started to strip the armor off of one of the corpses.

"Mount up Delta. Raven approaching for extraction in five minutes, they apparently were coming to end the recon." Marcus told them as he turned to Baird. "Hurry it up Baird, we're leaving in five."

"Yeah, yeah, yeah. Then we go home and dance naked, got it!" Baird cracked sarcastically as he pulled each piece of armor off carefully and placed it into a bag that he had stored in his tool kit for new tech he found out on the field of battle.

"Come in Delta. KR 4 inbound." a familiar voice crackled over their TAC/COMs.

"Duke? That you little bro?" Carmine asked as his tone picked up a little.

"Yes sir. Decided to get off the island for a bit, can't let you have all the fun can I?"

"Whatever, just be expecting a big hug from your big brother." Carmine told him with a mischievous smile you could see through his helmet.

"Ha, ha, can't wait."

Carmine cracked his knuckles and watched as he saw the helicopter draw nearer to them. He waved both arms into the air, glad to see his little brother for the first time in a week. Suddenly a giant laser fell from the sky, smashing into a building and sending rubble crashing into the King Raven. The Helicopter swerved as it started to crash towards the ground.

"Mayday! Mayday! KR 4 is going down! Clear the area!" Duke's voice came screaming over their TAC/COM as it smashed into the ground a few blocks over.

"DUKE!" Carmine screamed as he tore off towards the downed helicopter. He reached the crash site minutes later to see the helicopter burning. Carmine crashed to his knees, tore his helmet off and threw it to the side before pounding his hands into the ground as tears spilled from his eyes. "NOOOOOOO!" he screamed as the fire continued to crackle and burn the helicopter.