Gears of War: Snowblind

Snowblind

Please note: This literature is rated M for language, adult themes and situations, sexual humor and contact, violent acts, and some gore.

Background Synopsis
Attempting to relocate Jacinto’s remnant from Port Farrall to the island of Vectus, the Frost starts to take a toll on an array of insurgent camps surrounding Port Farrall. Several “groups” or clans of Stranded begin to clash amongst themselves over food and supplies, pockets of Locust begin to pick at Port Farrell’s defenses, while amidst the chaos, a nomadic faction of mostly females, known as the “Feral,” come into conflict with their new neighbors.

Just within a few weeks, deployed squads begin to discover the brutal repercussions of the clashes between the Feral and the Stranded, however, as the hostilities between the factions start to spread to the outskirts of the Port as dispatched squads, investigating attacks on their outposts are being ambushed and decimated. This forces the COG to fight on several fronts while trying to protect what is left of Jacinto’s citizens and their own armories.

Fate, however, gives the COG the upper hand as they manage to somewhat find allies within the Feral faction. The Feral have taken some major blows in the past year as a result of Locust attacks, losing a quarter of their clans, although, remnants of those clans were later found by dispatched squads. They were given sanctuary in exchange for assistance of their insight into the terrain and location of the Stranded insurgencies. Though the Feral seldom ally with anyone, the renegade Feral agreed in hopes that this alliance will protect what is left of their clans by destroying the Locust.

To quash the hostilities on land around Port Farall, the COG enlists the assistance from the renegade Feral to guide deployed Gears through the “badlands,” since their extensive knowledge of the land is crucial to locating the insurgent camps and Locust outposts as well as avoid potential hostilities with the other Feral. With the Frost becoming more unforgiving, the COG must quickly relocate the rest of Jacinto’s last remnant to the Vectus Naval Base, before the other factions and the harsh winter obliterate them.

During this time frame, the COG outpost north of Port Farrall, known as Fort Block, becomes a central outpost for squad placement, drafting, conscription, and supplies. It is here where all the squads gather to receive reinforcements and intel. To get ahead on the offensive, Colonel Hoffmann makes the decision to send out ten squads into the mountain areas surrounding Port Farrall to eliminate Locust outposts, and locate the Stranded insurgents gathering in the area. With the squads mostly consisting of new recruits while the more “experienced” Gears are running thin, Hoffmann decides to reform Sigma One, employing veteran Gears Corporal Damon Baird and Private Augustus Cole.

With the winter conditions becoming more problematic for the infantry, the Gears must now rely on the navigational wits of the renegade Feral. The squads, including the newly reformed Sigma One are dispatched in King Ravens to be dropped several miles outside of Port Farrall. Among the members of Sigma squad are veteran Gears Augustus Cole and Damon Baird, the rookie, Sven Dunrich, Sergeant Barker Milane, and their Feral guide, Raven McNight, a.k.a. Feral.

Along the way, they encounter almost calamity after calamity of unseen events that force the group of to rely on each other to stay alive and keep to the mission at hand. This story entails their little venture through the thick and thin of the hostile environment around them and their clashing personalities as humility and hilarity ensue.

Conflicting Factions:

The Stranded are the remnants of civilians left after the orbital beam attack in a last ditch

effort to destroy the Locust. Scattered throughout the land, the Stranded

have adapted to their new surroundings, while others formed organized

groups and factions. As a result of the attack, friction between the Gears

and the Stranded has been escalating, all the while, the Stranded have often

clashed amongst themselves and have come under hostilities with the Feral,

not to mention, the Locusts.

The Feral are a rouge faction, made up of mostly women in response to

the sad circumstances that are all too often, common with war. After so many

years of exploitation, starvation, rape, and murder, a group of women with

some military background formed the faction, later nicknamed as the

“Feral.” Little is know about the Feral since the faction typically keep to

themselves, with exception to breeding “seasons.” What is know is that

they are extremely organized and self-sufficient, amassing in numbers

recruiting survivors of destroyed settlements. With their strict

kata, and vigorous training, the Feral have developed techniques of guerilla

warfare that have enabled them to survive the COG, the UIR, and even the

Locust on E-Day. The Feral are nomadic and do not settle in a place for too

long to avoid being detected and hiding their numbers. This strategy has

worked for years, however, after the attack from the Hammer of Dawn and

the Lightmass offensive, the Feral began to run out places to hide and

started their offense against pockets of Stranded, Locust, and even Gears.

Gears of War: Snowblind
In a violent world where deceptions free

Things I can’t control taking over me

Did they try to take my identity

So what the hell have they done to me

I will take your thoughts away

And I’ll ignite your fear today

Well I can take you far away

With my mind.

Cold

With My Mind

Preface

The cold, thin air feels like breathing a sodden robe, as a Gear struggles to keep a steady pace, running through a dense conifer forest as if he was a deer being followed by a pack of hungry wolves.

He is what is left of Theta Four, sent to investigate a disturbance at an outpost, located north on the outside of Port Ferrall. Since the incidents on the Vectus Naval Base a few weeks earlier, outposts all around Farrall have been attacked, struck down one at a time, testing their defenses. By whom, they didn’t know, until recently. Although the Locusts attacks have been few, the others were staged by the Stranded insurgencies, gathering on the outskirts of Port Farrall.

As he runs, he can feel the collection of moister in his helmet, beading and then sweating down the side of his face and his neck. He dodges the trees, kicking up snow on the ground with only a pistol still in his holster as his only means of defense. His shotgun was dropped a ways back, after he tripped falling forward down a slope, not looking back as the snow falling in the air, mixed with the fading afterglow of the setting sun is making visibility difficult. He wasn’t being pursued, he was being hunted.

They took out his squad, strategically one at a time, as they fired their weapons in vain, already trapped in the ambush. It was apparent that someone was expecting them, but before they realized what had just happened, it was too late.

As he attempts cautiously gallop down an incline when suddenly, a shot rings out in the dense forest, whistling through the trees as he senses a sharp pain burst into the back of his thigh. He comes crashing down, tumbling down the rest of the incline, bumping into trees and brush along the way down, until he comes to a stop, landing on his back. His body starts to shake from the sudden rush of adrenaline that has been pumping through his body while his heart rate beats even faster, forcing him to pant for more oxygen.

The area is silent as he looks around, trying to stable himself, but he couldn’t move. He then heard the footsteps of his pursuer, walking slowly with care as a dark figure proceeds to move around the trees on the incline, and then disappear. The Gear tries to reach for his pistol in his holster, trying to pull it out, but the pistol wouldn’t budge.

Slowly, the footsteps were coming closer as the sound of crushing snow under someone’s boots became even more clearer, and the dark figure came out of the shadows, right out in front of him. It stood there, as if it was glaring at him, although he couldn’t readily tell what it was, a Locust perhaps, but it’s demeanor suggested otherwise. It took a few steps closer to him and then it carefully kneeled down in front of him. Immediately, the Gear could tell it had a Lancer in hand, the metal teeth glistening in the dim light, as he watched it, noticing the warm air seeping from the dark, cloaked figure’s breathing. He was petrified as it started to speak with perfect clarity.

“So…tell me Gear…what has Chairman Prescott done for you?” the figure asked, in a low voice that almost resembles human. He could see the warm air coming from it as it spoke, slowly moving and seeping into the air as it quickly dissipated. The figure then cocked its head and then turned it to the side as more footsteps begin to become audible.

Oh, no.

Other dark figures began to emerge from the trees as they all stood in their place, watching for the one who is kneeling in front of him for it’s next move. It slowly turned its head back as it stood up and then roared out, revving the chainsaw mechanism on the Lancer as the phantom bellows out.

“I…have…responsibilities, to my fellow citizens…I…shall…be loyal to them…” reciting the words of the "Octus Canon."

“I…shall…remain…vigilant and unyielding, in my pursuit of the enemies of the Coalition….” the dark figure continues to recite the oath, an oath the Gear suddenly reckognizes.

“I…am…a…Gear!”

The crowd behind him shouts and rants as they raise their weapons in the air, while the figure slowly looks back at his menagerie. As the crowd begins to simmer, he slowly turns to the fallen Gear as he revs his Lancer again, shuttering the silence with it’s violent noise while the Gear can see it’s teeth, bristling in the smoke coming from the drum.

“Here is the message we will send to the enemy of the Coalition,” the figure rants as he grips the handle on the Lancer, raising it over the defenseless Gear as he let’s out a blood, curdling scream, echoing throughout the woods. The noise of the saw, cutting through armor, flesh and bone can be heard outside the thicket shortly after silencing the hideous shriek. Then the woods become silent as night and snow blankets the sky, gently falling, concealing the blood that drenched the ground beneath it.

Chapter 1: The Shit Starts Here
FORT BLOCK, Recruitment Staging Area

A sign frozen to the utility post, hangs high, scouting over makeshift buildings and garages, looming with fuel heaters and generators, as the scent of exhaust mixed with the winter aroma fills the air with bliss and promise of food, shelter, and possibly a warm shower for a group of grimy grunts just stepping out from their APC’s from a long ride.

In the distance, King Ravens land in an open, snowy area just outside of the camp, their clamor heard all across the fort as the pilots do their routine maintenance before being deployed later in the afternoon. Fuel trucks camp along the makeshift roads as civilian volunteers shovel snow and ice to make way for gravel.

More APC’s start to pull into the fort, carrying reinforcements, as they slowly drive over the grimy, icy roads. Coming to a halt, the gears exit the vehicles and march their way to the fort mess hall, where Col Hoffmann awaits for everyone to enter the mass for debriefing.

As the Gears take their seats, the air in the vicinity takes a turn as several, unfamiliar women enter the mess hall, wearing familiar armor, attire that resembled what the Locust horde had, made of Reaver hide and other, unknown leather materials that were light, but hardy. Three of them are wearing what appears to be black war paint, possibly used to help them blend in with their environment; an alternative camouflage. The other two wore similar attire, but their faces were clean of cover, and appeared just as intimidating. As the four, wild women, lined up behind Hoffmann, the Gears could sense the Colonel was awkward within the presence of the rogue faction, only known to the Gears as the Feral.

As the group stands at the front of the makeshift tented mess hall, Col. Hoffman makes his way on top of a table that he intended to use as his podium. He looks around his fellow Gears as the crisp air around them sets the atmosphere of apprehension, as he can see the battle scarred demeanor of his mentally exhausted men, shrouding their self-assurance. The fact that they lost their place of refuge only made the men even more hardened to the bleak future that awaits them, but nevertheless, the fight for survival still runs deep in their blood, as if they we’re hardwired to wage war so they can exist. Col Hoffman has seen these faces before, more times than he will probably want to admit, though he himself is an old warhorse, still bucking against the odds as the barbwire drives him even closer to insolence. He still had some fight in him yet.

“Men…listen up,” he begins as the air around him hung onto him like a wet napkin.

“It has been confirmed that we have a new menace. Despite recent events at Vectus, we are still under threat, here on the apparent home front of some other Stranded insurgents that are rumored to be located in the mountains. We also have reports of Locust outposts, scattered all over the terrain outside of Ferrall, that are going to have to be dealt with if we are to protect the remaining citizens, here. Therefore, we have orders to deploy squads out into the uncharted territory to search for and eliminate the Locust outposts, and locate the Stranded settlements.” Hoffmann takes a few seconds to collect his thoughts as he looks over his shoulder to glance at the five women standing behind him.

“To accomplish this objective, we have allied ourselves with the Feral clans. They have volunteered to help guide the squads through the terrain, as they have extensive knowledge of the territory. With the Frost coming down hard on our asses, we must rely on their insight for the mission to be successful.”

Hoffmann takes a deep breath before he continues.

“Men, we are going to deploy the Ravens to the drop point in thirteen, hundred hours. Use this time wisely. Dismissed.”

Hoffman slowly steps off of the “platform” as he glances at the five women standing before him. He finally breaks the ice as he reluctantly speaks to them.

“Ok…which one of you can understand the words that are coming out of my mouth?”

They glare at him with startling eyes, peering through their warpaint, as they turn to each other and then they glanced over to the smallest of them.

“That…would be me, Colonel, “ the Feral on the far right speaks out as she steps forward to make her presence known, somewhat apprehensive as the crowd of Gears moves around them.

She was a little shorter than the others, although just as menacing.

“So what do I call you, Feral?” Hoffman turns his glance to her.

“My “birth” name is Raven McNight,”

“McKnight, huh,” Hoffmann responds in astonishment as he recalls several officers that went by that name, wondering if there was a correlation between the two, but dismisses it for the sake of the purpose of his conversation at the present.

He sighs, "I’ll keep it simple…how bout I just call you “Feral,” says Hoffman.

“Whatever will make you comfortable, Colonel.”

“It has nothing to do with comfort, ma'am.”

“Did you…need me for some reason?” she asks in annoyance.

“As a matter of fact, yes I do…Control,” Hoffman demands as he speaks on his com.

"Yes Colonel?" A female voice replies over the com.

“Have Sgt Fenix report to me please…ASAP!”

"Affirmative Colonel, control out,"

Chapter 2: Splitting Up
Raven sits by herself in a chair, outside of Col Hoffman’s, makeshift briefing room, as she hand sharpens a pencil with her “bowie” knife, occasionally looking up as she senses others walking by, and then goes back to her journal, ignoring the on looking Gears and recruits as they casually pass by Hoffman’s office.

It has been awhile since she has been within a crowd of people. She recants the days, almost weeks at a time, when she would survey along the territory surrounding Ferrall, alone, watching, waiting, and stealing. She has snuck around outposts, even forts, without being noticed, including this one. She looks up to look at the facility as she recalls it’s arrangement in vivid detail, only to look past the crowd, getting a glance at someone approaching directly to Hoffman’s door, but then goes back to her business as the Gear proceeds to the entrance of Hoffman’s office.

Sgt Fenix knocks on the door, for the most part, keeping to himself, but occasionally takes notice of Raven’s attire that closely resembles a Theron elit. He suddenly turns his attention to the door as he looks through the window to see Col Hoffman motioning him to come in.

Fenix steps in and shuts the door behind him, not in the best of moods but not feeling for the worst either. He wasn’t too crazy about their alliance with the Feral, but their other options where quickly thinning as the winter conditions worsened within just a few weeks. The Feral knew the territory pretty religiously while the COG satellites had difficulties just pin pointing their own outposts. All this technology and resources the COG have at their disposal, and they’re outfoxed by a bunch of primeval, eccentric women. What the hell where we thinking?

Hoffman takes a seat in his chair as he gestures Fenix to do the same.

“Have a seat, Sergeant…this may take several minutes.” Hoffmann sighs as he removes his cap and sets it on the desk while he rubs his head.

“How are your men, Sergeant?’

“Cold, tired…for the most part, cold.”

Hoffman lets out a light chuckle.

“Are they coping?”

“Depends,” Fenix replies matter-of-factly.

“On what, Sergeant?”

“Which one do want to hear about,”

“Well…I’ll go ahead and just cut the shit, Sergeant.”

Fenix looks up at Hoffman with anticipation.

“I’m going to reform Sigma One, so I’m putting Cole and Baird back to be deployed.”

Fenix starts to slump in his chair, frowning after hearing the news.

“I need some experienced Gears on this one, Fenix, we have way too many recruits. Plus, I need you for another objective for the same exact reason.”

“I take it we’re short.”

“That’s just scratching the surface, Sergeant…and on top of all this, I have to depend on those wild bitches to guide them out in uncompromising conditions.”

“The Feral, sir?”

“Unfortunately. Don’t get me wrong, I don’t underestimate their capabilities but these women have been amassing arms and intel from COG outposts for years, so needless to say, I don’t trust their alliance, but circumstances have pitted me between these Locust outposts and the Stranded insurgency and we need to act on this now before the Frost hits us even harder in the next few weeks. We can’t relocate the rest of the citizens to Vectus until some of this is resolved. It’s going to get worse before it gets better.”

“With all due respect sir, how can we be sure they know what their doing?”

“About six months ago, Gamma Ten came across a decimated Stranded settlement, south of here. During the investigation, Gamma was ambushed by some “mysterious guerillas.” There was only one survivor, out of six! We lost five, able-bodied men by a pack of vindictive bitches! The Stranded apparently lost fifteen rebels, including their leader. Other squads later found those Stranded rebels of that same camp, mutilated Sergeant!”

“Mutilated, as in,”

“The leader was found, hung from a post, ass end up, disemboweled, with his genitalia removed and apparently, shoved in his mouth! Now, granted, that was an isolated case, but the fact remains those bitches were able to squash fifteen armed men, relocate them and gut them, and then turned around to take out five, highly trained soldiers. We still have yet to figure out which “clan” was responsible!”

“What was the motive for their attack?”

“Well, apparently, the settlement was using Stranded women for profiteering, and well to make a long story short, they rounded up some ladies against their will for their operation. Obviously, the Feral found it to be debasing, and decided to wipe them out and take the women to amass their own numbers. Since then, they have been rivals over territory. Now why they attacked our men, was never known…not that it matters since it has been rumored that they may all be dead now, according to these renegades, they lost several clans since the Locusts have been spreading out recently, scavenging the territory.”

“Sigh…permission to speak freely…”

“Be my guest, Sergeant.”

“I believe this whole thing to be fubar sir…we ally ourselves with a faction that we don’t even fucking understand, we’re sending men out to quash the hostilities without any intel on the terrain except that from what we gather from these bitches, and now you break up my team to spread out the numbers of experienced Gears along with recruits who don’t know their ass from a hole in the ground, well sir, I see a list of bullshit directives that’s going to put a lot of unnecessary amount of resources and lives to waste!”

“Dually noted, Sergeant…but keep this in mind…I have over three thousand and counting, civilians to relocate to Vectus island. Our primary objective is to move them and our armories safely to our new place of refuge at all cost, but how can I do that Sergeant if I have Locusts and the Stranded, getting closer to testing and eventually penetrating our defenses?”

The recent events that took place at their outposts just outside of the fort have nearly caused a widespread panic among Jacinto’s remnant. Marcus, of all people, knew that the insurgencies where getting bolder and that it was not going to stop. He groaned, realizing that time was working against them. Shit, everything was working against them.

Although he was not happy about the situation, he knew that there really was no other option. It was going to be a long day for all of them. Marcus finally succumbed to Hoffman’s orders.

“Sigh…understood. You want me to bring in Baird and Cole, or do you want me to tell them?”

“It may be best if you tell them Sergeant. I am going to have to sit and talk to their linguist to iron out some details. Only one of the five, out there, can speak fluent Tyran, the rest have some crazy dialect, I can’t understand a word of it.”

“Shit…Understood. Was there anything else sir?”

“While we’re on the subject, I am going to assign a Feral guide with Sigma, so if you would, you tell Cpl Baird to keep his sassy flak to himself before he pisses off our only means of keeping friendly relations with the Feral.”

“Are you sure you want Baird to have that responsibility?”

“He’s an admirable soldier and I believe he can pull his foot out of his ass when shit hits the fan, but he needs to be thrown in the fire every now and then to redeem himself. He’s done it before, he can do it again…besides, I’m tired of them two running rowdy with idle hands, “dicking” around like two little boys who just discovered daddy’s firework and porn stash.”

Fenix laughs to himself as he sits back up in his chair.

“Your dismissed,” says Hoffman.

Sgt Fenix stands up from his chair as he proceeds to exit the room, before Hoffman stops him.

“Oh, and by the way, tell that little Feral girl in the front to come in here for me please.”

“Sigh, yes sir.”

Fenix steps out, leaving the door open as he reluctantly turns to Raven, still seated in the chair. She could tell right away that he decided he wasn’t going to like her. Hell, she could sense same vibe from other Gears, not to mention, Hoffman. This whole idea was sour to begin with.

Marcus finally motions her.

“The Colonel wants to debrief you,” he says in his low, rough voice.

“Right now?” she responds with sarcasm, not the least bit intimidated by his demeanor, or at least she attempted not to show it.

“Yea…now.”

Chapter 3: Two Peas In A Pod
“This so, sucks balls, I can’t even begin to tell how much sucking we are in for before someone finally realizes, oh hey, wait, this really does suck balls,” Damon Baird rants to Augustus Cole as he fiddles with the motor on Cole’s Lancer, trying to loosen up the chain on the saw bar while sitting on the floor with his tools placed in between his straddled legs.

The two sat in a makeshift locker room in their bottom fatigues and undershirts as their armor was laid out on the floor, “airing” out. The scent in the vicinity was typical for a men’s locker room, filled with aroma of stale air festering with the stench of soiled clothes that’s been sitting in a locker for a week. The atmosphere was rather warm as the window unit pushed out the cold air, leaving the musty, humid air inside.

Cole sits on a bench while fiddling with his Cog tags, ignoring Baird’s ranting as he watches him intensely removing the chain off of the drum to replace the worn teeth with newer one’s. Baird suddenly breaks his concentration.

“Shit, Cole, this is the third time I had to replace this…the hell are you cutting with this thing anyway, fucking boulders?”

“Man, them Locusts feel like it…” Cole says as he turns to peck Baird on the shoulder,”…oh hey, Marcus says he wanted to talk to you.”

“What for…oh, fuck, what the hell did I do this time?”

“You think you’re in trouble?”

“I’m always in trouble,” Baird starts to rant, again.

“I swear, you and Dom can go run amuck, doing all sorts of shit while I’m minding my own business and some how, some way, Marcus finds some implausible reason to blame me for it!”

“Hehe, that’s because if we mess up, we just say you did it.”

Baird drops his wrench as he sits up and turns to Cole.

“So that’s why I’m always in trouble…because of you fuckheads!”

“Nah, I think Marcus is still pissed for what you did to him on his birthday.”

“For what…oh…wait, you mean when I tipped him in the portable potty? Oh, c’mon, that was hilarious, even Dom was laughing his ass off on that one, and you were laughing so hard you nearly wet yourself.”

“No, I was laughin at the part when he came after you once he got out, heehee…I’d never seen two white boys run so fast! I’m just ticked that I missed yo ass beatin when he caught up to you”

“He didn’t beat my ass because he never caught me! He’s almost as slow as you are.”

“Yea, whatever…” Cole mused while Baird completed the maintenance on Cole’s Lancer.

“Sweet, I can’t wait to try this out,” Cole beams as he picks it up carefully, trying not to bump the bayonet on himself.

“You’ll need to run it a few times to get the grease going or else it will stiff up, especially in this weather…we can’t be running around with a stiffy now, can we.”

The two exchange laughter as they continue to maintenance the rest of their weapons, all the while, Sgt. Marcus Fenix walks into the room, after spending the past half hour looking for them, while carrying some of their laundry.

“So there you are,” Marcus bellows out as Cole chuckles even more.

“Uh oh, you busted now!”

“Oh, hi Marcus, I mean, sir,” Baird replies with a sarcastic grin.

“Dipshit,” Marcus scoffs softly, as he approaches the two, informing them,

“Listen up, Hoffman is going to put you two back on Sigma to be deployed out this afternoon.”

Baird starts to sulk. The idea was already starting to suck balls. Speaking of sucking…

“Sigh, with who else,” he moans.

“You’ll find out when you get to your Raven, but I do know that you will have a Feral guide in your group, so try not to piss her off, please.”

“Now what makes you think I would do such a thing like that?”

“Don’t even start to patronize me, Baird.”

“Yea, yea, I get it…follow the objective without making the Feral chick mad.”

“I mean it Baird…this is an opportunity to redress your sorry ass, so try not to fuck it up…and Cole, watch and make sure he doesn’t fuck it up.”

“You got it, Marcus,” says Cole as he slaps his big hand on Baird’s back while Marcus watches Baird cringe from the sting. For the most part, Marcus could normally count on them for whatever calamity may come their way. Hell, the two have saved his ass on more than one occasion. They all have walked into hell and back, cheating death more times than they could shake a stick at. It was a sobering notion to suggest that they were “breaking” up, again.

“So I take it you and Dom are going,” Baird grimaces, still flinching from the sting.

“We’re to be deployed after you guys…you’re going to be dropped off with nine other squads to spread out in pairs and comb the area.”

“So who are we pairing with?”

“Gamma Four…and your assigned Feral is going to guide you through the region…they have scouted the area earlier this month, locating Locust camps and Stranded settlements.”

Cole gets excited,

“Ah, sweet…we get to hang out with Gamma...”

“Whoopie…” Baird mutters sarcastically, while Cole tries to cheer him up.

“C’mon, Baird, it’ll be fun! We’ll get back out on the field, hang out with those Feral cuties, be back in time for supper…”

“Their not “cuties,” Cole, their a pack of ornery wenches…” Baird groans, "…did you ever hear what they did to Omega Five, a few years back?”

“What could a handful of little chickies do to an entire squad?”

“Control lost contact with them, and they were MIA for a week.”

“So where did they find em?”

“All over…a leg here, an arm there…it took the coroner a month to piece them together.”

“Oh,” Cole’s excitement dwindled down. If Marcus ever agreed with Baird on anything, the fact that their mission is going to depend on the insight of the Feral was unsettling at best. They are just as reliable as they are malicious. Not exactly the best combination for a couple of guys who for the most part can’t seem to keep their idle hands to themselves. Marcus attempts to prepare them a much as he can.

“I doubt you’ll be back in time for supper Cole, so grab some food before you leave” says Marcus while Cole pouts, “…and here…” Marcus sneers as he hands Cole his freshly laundered undergarments. He then turns to Baird with his clean undergarments and throws them at him,

“…change your damn underwear before you leave.”

Baird manages to dodge his undershirt, but gets face planted with his boxers, as Marcus shoots a satisfying grin.

“Hopefully…you should be back by dark. Now get your shit put together…they want you to report in an hour, ” Marcus informs them as the two change their clothes and put on their chest plates.

“Oh, and guys…” The two looked back up as Marcus’s expression turns solemn, "...be sure you come back alive…you hear me?”

“You know it,” Cole blasts.

“Yea…we hear ya.” Baird responds in a more serious tone.

“Good luck, fellas.”

Chapter 4: We Are Sigma…Again
Cole throws his gear into the Raven before he climbs up into it while the pilot and copilot do their routine, radio tests. He quickly realizes that the cabin was a bit warmer than the outside, as he shudders from the two air masses intertwining. Two other Gears are already sitting inside, as they wait anxiously for the rest of their squad mates to come on board. Cole finds a place to sit, opposite of the other two Gears in the cabin. One of them finally speaks out.

“Welcome back to Sigma…you must be Pvt. Cole.”

“Yes sir, in the flesh,” Cole responds with enthusiasm.

“I hear you we’re part of the Lightmass Offensive, with Delta squad.”

“Yea, that’s right, baby…we blew those bitches sky high, hehe.”

The other Gear started to beam with zeal.

“Holy shit, it’s really you…the Cole Train,” he bursts out.

“Yea, that’s right,”

The first Gear turns to the other,

“Ok…give him a break…I’m sure he hears that all the time,”

”Nah…it’s all good…everyone wants to see The Train, baby,” Cole grins, giving him a thumbs up.

The first Gear introduces himself.

“My name is Sgt. Milane…and this is Pvt. Sven Dunrich.”

“Yea, but everyone calls me Vin, or Vinny…it’s just easier,” says Sven, trying to break the ice.

“You got it, Vinny,” Cole recants while Milane continues,

“I understand that we have a technician with us,”

“Yea, Cpl. Baird…he’s loading up some equipment…he’ll be here, sir.”

“Great…we are also waiting for our Feral guide…her name is Raven McKnight, but everyone just calls her Feral. She should be with us shortly.”

“Sweet, can’t wait,” Cole gestures as he turns his head outside the chopper to see Baird making his way to the entrance.

“Hurry up Damon…time to get this show on the road,” Cole yells out.

“Yea, yea…working on it,” Baird responds as he tosses a medical box and his equipment into the cabin. He jumps in and picks up the med box to strap it down near the bottom of the hull. He then proceeds to take a seat next to Cole.

“Sorry I’m late, but somebody insisted that we take some additional medical supplies, and nobody else, but me, was apparently informed about it.” Baird griped as he tried to get comfortable, while Cole taps him on the shoulder.

“Oh…hey, this is Sgt. Milane and Pvt. Vinny. They’re on our team.”

“It’s a pleasure to meet you Corporal,” says Milane as Baird extends the same courtesy, trying to be nice.

“Likewise,” Baird gestures.

Sgt. Milane was rather cordial than most officers Baird has dealt with, not to mention younger. Although Milane looked rather young for an officer, he was not near as young as the rookie, Sven.

Sven still had a “baby face,” as his short, light brown hair was slicked up into a short faux-hawk, making him look even more “juvenile” while Milane appeared to be more professional as his dark hair was shaved close to his head, but dark enough to still give him a hairline.

Milane turns his head, looking out of the cabin.

“Here she comes.”

Cole leans out to peer over Baird as he sees someone approaching the Raven to what, appears to be wearing Locust dressings.

“What the…is that a Feral?” Cole blurts out while the other three turn to face the same direction, as Milane responds.

“Yep, that’s our Feral.”

Raven walks up to the chopper as she dismounts her equipment backpack and places it in the cabin while standing on the tips of her boots, trying to push it in. The three just sit and watch as the petite woman jumps up into the cabin, using the frame of the threshold to climb in. She attempts to catch her footing when Sgt Milane extends his hand to catch her arm, but she whirls around at him as she retreats her arm back, avoiding contact. Milane shrinks back in response to her reaction, as she proceeds to place her equipment bag next to everyone else’s. Feral then scans the cabin, looking for a place to sit, but finds most of the area taken. Sgt. Milane stands up to give her room, feeling the atmosphere around her to be antagonistic, but nevertheless motions her to have a seat. She looks around with her wide, icy blue eyes and then takes up Milane’s offer to sit down in his spot.

“Thank…you,” she hesitantly says, realizing she may have made everyone uncomfortable with her demeanor, so she tries to be as polite as she understands to be. Feral was not used to being around men, much less Gears, and she didn’t like flying, period. The others could tell that she was restless.

“Your, welcome,” says Milane, attempting to make her more comfortable, although it probably didn’t help. He tries to introduce the others to her,

“Just so you know, this is Pvt. Cole, Cpl. Baird…” Milane points as the two acknowledged his introduction,” …and sitting next to you is Pvt. Vinny Dunrich. We’re all part of Sigma squad.”

“Of…course,” she says shyly as she looks at the three individually and nods while she slowly slumps into her seat, trying to be discreet. She did not like being the center of attention.

As the five get settled, the gunners take their positions while the engine on the bird begins to roar.

“This is it,” Milane yells out over the noise, while Sven sits up against the cabin, trying not to encroach on Feral’s personal space.

Baird turns to Cole.

“Did you take that pill I gave you?”

“Yea…what you say it was suppose to do?”

“It’s suppose to help your nausea, so I won’t have to wipe your chuke off of my armor again.”

“Oh, yea!”

Milane grabs onto the handle as the rotors start to spin faster and louder. Feral becomes tense as she closes her eyes and grabs the edge of her seat. Her pale face began to flush in the cold air, accented by her short, black hair as she curled her lips in anxiety. Cole could see she was nervous, which made her look even “cuter.”

Cole nudges Baird with his arm as he quietly giggled.

“Heehee…she’s pretty, isn’t she.”

Baird rolls his eyes as he subtly responds,

“We’re not going there, Gus.”

Cole starts to laugh,

“Oh, and by the way, I’m supposed to remind you not to fuck this up.”

“Son of a bitch, am I going to have to listen to this crap during the entire mission,” Baird blurts out while Cole snickers.

“You bet your white ass!”

“Fuck,” Baird scowls.

In the cabin they can hear the pilot on the radio.

"Welcome ladies to KR Four-Three, and we will be taking off very shortly, if you have not already noticed but just so you know, my name is Cpt. Nigal Jonas and I will be your pilot today, along with my co-pilot, Lt. Samus Frank. Our gunners are Pvt. Devon Fargus and Cpl. Merl Jammacia, but we all just call him “Jimmie,”

Jimmie waves his hand as the Gears acknowledge back.

"And just so you know, if you have not read the passenger manual for this flight, I am required to inform you that this is a non-smoking craft and that if you are caught smoking, it better be because your ass is on fire, which brings me to also inform you if in the event, the cabin, or your ass, is on fire, the extinguisher is located to the back of the cabin, next to the red label that says “in case of an emergency.” Thank you for your audience and enjoy the flight."

“Yea, right,” Baird grumbles while the bird suddenly jolts, as it starts to lift, slowly from the ground.

“Let’s do this, Captian,” Fargus yells at the cockpit while Jimmie gives the cockpit crew a thumbs up. The bird lifts farther from the ground as it follows three other birds, ahead of their position, while four other Ravens begin to lift after them. The crew in the cabin can see the ground turn, feeling the cold air rush around them as aircraft picks up speed and forms in position along with the other birds.

Cole closes his eyes, trying not to look down.

“Ah, man…I hope this shit you gave me works.”

“Getting airsick soldier?” Milane notices, as Cole places his head in between his legs, while Baird rubs his hand on his back.

“Motion sickness, sir. I gave him something before we arrived to take the edge off…that, and I’m tired of cleaning up his barf.” Baird responds while Milane chuckles, looking over at Sven and Raven.

Sven looks out the cabin in awe, as he savors the moment of being in the sky, looking down since he doesn’t get to fly all that often. Raven, on the other hand continues to cling to the edge of her seat as her brow sits heavy over her deep, set eyes. She was not enjoying herself at all.

“Feral, here, doesn’t like to fly, either.” Milane informs the others as he grins, while Raven conveniently ignores him. Baird turned his gaze at the little woman, noticing her vaguely familiar attire that complimented her minuscule figure. She had oddly shaped shoulder and back armor, made of some dark hardy leather-like material. A piece of cloth, similar to that of a Kantus robe, hung below her waist like a loincloth as it dangles between her legs.

Baird couldn’t help to wonder how the Farel manage to get these dressings, much less custom them for their own personal use. He then notices right away a Boltok pistol in her left holster and a Gorgon pistol on her right, both strapped to the outside of her thighs. Although the rest of her leggings were unfamiliar, her boots, however, were definitely Gear material, although they were black in color rather than brown.

Cole carefully picks up his head as he slowly opens his eyes, taking a deep breath and then slowly exhaling.

“You alright, man,” Baird asks.

“I think so…I don’t feel too shitty,” Cole responds.

Shortly after Cole’s comment, the group feels a sudden bump, as the five jerk inside the cabin.

“Oh shit…I take that back!”

The craft shook violently as it suddenly, jolted again.

“Ok, now what the fuck was that?” Baird busted out, while Cole grabs his seat, holding on fast. Blast sounds become audible around the cabin as Sven looks out to find other birds taking evasive action.

“Ah crap…I hear gunfire,” Sven yells as Feral clenches the seat even tighter, next to him.

Milane turns his head to the gunners as they ready their chain guns, and then looks towards the cockpit. The radio begins to sound off.

"Hang on ladies…we got turbulence."

“Aw, shit…turbulence my ass, we’re being shot at,” Cole groans as the Raven tilts to the right, forcing the crew to lean as the bird bumps a few more times, more violently than earlier. Cole’s dark face starts to turn green as he places his hand over his mouth, while Baird looks at him in horror, trying to hang on while shifting his body away from Cole.

“Cole…don’t you do it, man…or I swear,” Baird warns as he tries to avoid the possibility of “comet vomit.”

Capt. Jonas turns over to face the gunners from the cockpit.

"Jimmie, Fargus, fire at those bitches!"

The gunners fire their chain guns while Milane peers out of the cabin to see a Reaver passing by.

“We got Reavers…shit,” Milane barks as he starts to make his way to the middle of the cabin and hangs on as the bird starts to shift to the left. They catch glimpses of the flying, mounted beasts, as their bird attempts to fire at them.

Looking down, they could see the fire blasts, coming from ground infantry as the other birds try to dodge them. Suddenly, they see one of the birds get pummeled on the top of its hull as smoke starts to seep from its rotor. The Raven slowly starts to drop as the blades fall apart and then gravity finally clutches it, pulling it down fast, crashing it to the ground.

“Oh shit, oh shit,” Sven panics while the others look out in shock. All of a sudden, they receive another strong jolt, but this time the warning signal, starts to sound off.

“Ohhh…That doesn’t sound good,” Milane grumbles, as the others second the notion while they can hear the pilot cussing over the radio.

"Fuck…our fuel pressure is wavering guys…your going to have to brace yourselves up because I’m dropping you, now!"

“Wait…were not at the drop zone yet,” Milane protests facing the cockpit.

"We’re not going to make it to the drop zone Sergeant. Get your men ready!"

“Fuck…alright, grab your gear.” Milane orders.

The men attempt to collect their gear, all the while the aircraft begins to tremor. They could feel the bird starting to drop as the warning light continues to flash.

Cole grabs on to the cabin wall, trying to brace himself as the bird drops in short bursts, getting closer to the ground, while Baird props his foot against the hull and pulls out his Lancer. Milane prostrates himself on the other wall as he too, pulls out his Lancer, carefully looking down, as they get closer to the tops of the trees.

"Ok folks, this is it. When I tell you to jump, you jump! Don’t hesitate, don’t think…just do it! I am going to drop this thing as low as I can but it will not stay stable for long…good luck Gears," the pilot announces, trying to keep the Raven steady.

The bird hits the tops of couple of trees on the way down, trying to dodge ground fire at the same time. The forest finally clears into what used to be a small town surrounded by boulders and meadows, covered in snow.

The bird slows down close to a hover, about fifteen feet from the ground, trying to keep the rotor moving as they feel the craft starting to idle.

"Go, go,go! Move out!"

“Shit, that’s a long fucking drop,” Sven complains.

“Get out, soldier,” Milane barks as he grabs Sven by his collar and pulls him towards the exit.

Baird goes over to the exit, grabs the side of the door and leaps out. Cole makes his way to the exit and looks down.

“Aw…shit,” he bellows, watching Baird make landfall as he jumps and rolls in the snow. Cole then jumps out, feeling the crisp air sting his bare arms as he hits the ground while gravity pulls him forward into a roll in the slushy snow.

The Raven continues to move forward, while Feral is the next to leap out of the craft, dropping down into a snow trampled grassy meadow.

“Shit, I’m not going to…” Sven panics while Milane cuts in.

“You’re jumping, now get your ass out!”

Milane pushes Sven out of the door, watching him plummet in the hay bales below. The Raven begins to teeter.

"Get out Sergeant, we’re going down!"

He could feel the Raven idle even more as the bird starts to shift on its side. Milane finally leaps out, blinded by the upheavaled snow stirred up from the churning blades above. Milane becomes blind by a bright white light as he slips in and out of consciousness.

Chapter 5: Trial By Fire
Baird runs over to Cole, helping him up from out of the snow.

“Shit, that’s cold, WHOO,” Cole blasts as he brushes off the snow from his armor.

“C’mon…get your ass moving, we need to find the others,” Baird persists as he lifts his goggles to his forehead and starts running with Cole following behind.

“Hey Baird…slow down man,” Cole complains, trying to keep up in the heavy snow, while he sees Baird prostrated up against a barn and runs up over to his position, catching his breath in the thin, cold air.

“Well…what took you so long,” Baird muses with a laugh.

“Jackass,” Cole mutters as he breathes heavily, supporting his weight with his hand up against the barn wall.

Baird looks around the corner as looks out into the meadow. He scans around, hoping to find the others, and then he sees Feral nearby trying to pull Sven out of a bale of hay.

“Hey…Cole…I found them.”

Baird quickly looks to see if it was clear and then suddenly darts off into the meadow.

“Hey, HEY…wait…shit,” Cole yells as he tries to follow Baird through the field.

Feral continues to pull Sven by the shoulders, while the rest of his body is still chest deep in snow and hay.

“Shit, I’m stuck,” Sven gripes, trying to wiggle out.

“Hold still, damnit,” Feral torts, trying to pull him out by his shoulder guards, but ends up slipping and losing her grip from the snow, falling backwards.

“DAMNIT,” she yells in frustration, only to suddenly whip around with her pistol in hand to the sound of someone running towards them, while still on the ground.

“NO…wait…it’s just one of our guys,” Sven blurts out as Baird makes his way towards them.

“Yea…friendlies…don’t shoot me please,” he scoffs. Feral groans as she puts her pistol down while Baird puts up his Lancer and extends his hand to help her up. She hesitates at first, but then cautiously accepts Baird’s civility as he lifts her up from the grass and snow.

“I…can’t…get him out,” she says as Baird turns to Sven.

“Alright kid…give me a minute,” he says to Sven as he grips him underneath his armpits and pulls. Cole comes panting in as he leans over to catch his breath.

“Ok…I made it…so what’s up?”

Cole looks over as he sees Baird trying to pull Sven out of the bale.

“Shit…what the hell, Vin,” Baird gripes as he struggles to pull Sven out. Feral climbs up on the hay bale and tries to push Sven from behind, but to no avail.

Baird looks up at Feral,

“Ok…on my count, you push, I’ll pull, got it,” he said.

“Yea, I got it,” says Feral as she braces herself on Baird’s count.

“Ready, one, two, three…”

The two manage to budge Sven at least a foot, but he stops suddenly as if he was caught on something.

“Aw, man…this sucks,” Sven whimpers while Baird releases him and wipes sweat from his face

“Aha, you see Cole…I told you this whole thing was going to suck balls, and it’s only been the first, fifteen minutes.”

“Let me try that,” says Cole as he wraps his arms underneath Sven’s and starts to pull. He manages to get part of the way but then something jerks Sven into a standstill.

“Aw…shit, he’s got to be caught on something,” Cole mutters while Baird grips one side of Sven’s armor while Cole grabs the other side and the two men slowly pull Sven out of the hay while Feral jumps back to give them room. She peers around the men as she catches a glimpse of something wrapped around his boot.

“Wait…I see what’s holding him down,” Feral blurts out as she runs over to take a look while the two hold on. She wiggles through the two Gears, up onto the hay bale to get a better look at Sven’s boots.

“Geez, Vin…you got a loading strap, wrapped around your boot…give me a minute,” Feral says as she pulls out her knife.

“Aw, man…I hate knives,” Sven whines as Cole and Baird, struggle to hold Sven out.

“Quit yer whining, boy,” Cole winces.

“Hurry…Feral,” Baird moans.

“I almost got it, Corporal,” she says as she finally cuts through the last nylon thread. As soon as she cut it through, the three Gears go flying backwards as Sven plows right into Cole and Cole collapses onto Baird, forming a pile of Gears.

“Oh…wow, that’s much better,” Sven relaxes while Cole groans.

“Vinny…your…crushing my jock, kid!”

“Oh…uh…sorry,” Sven quickly dismounts while Cole clutches his groin and cringes. Cole then feels a jab in the back as Baird yells out.

“Will you get the hell off me…please?”

“Sorry Damon…hold on,” Cole squirms as he rolls off of Baird.

Baird continues to lie in his spot, groaning as he takes a few deep breaths, watching the warm air seep from his mouth and nostrils. While the three slowly gather themselves up, Feral keeps a watch out, scanning the field for a few minutes and then leaps back down from the top of the hay bail.

“I believe Sgt. Milane may be further down, towards the town,” she says as she points in the town’s direction.

“Ugh…alright,” Baird winces as he slowly gets up. Cole helps him up while Sven pulls out his Gnasher shotgun, brushing the snow and hay off of it. Baird and Cole pull out their Lancers, brushing the grass and snow off the handles.

“Follow me,” Feral persists as she started to roadie run while the three Gears follow Feral to the other side of the white meadow. They roadie run through the frozen grass, feeling the snow and ice crushing beneath their feet, while Feral staggers in different directions, hiding her trail. She suddenly halts at a sitting, rusty bailer, just outside the thicket. The others make it to her position as they hide themselves behind the massive tractor, covered in snow and ice cycles.

“Do we even know that Milane got out of the Raven,” Cole speculates.

“I saw someone jump out of our Raven while it was still sky bound,” Feral replied.

“Well, whether he did or not, we still have to locate our ride…there might be survivors,” Baird informs him as they look around the bailer, scanning for Milane or Locusts. They could hear the fire fight from a distance as the sound of flying Raven’s was still in earshot, but it soon dissipated.

“Man…I hope the others get there ok,” Cole ponders.

“But what if they don’t make it…” Sven says.

“There is nothing we can do for them now…the Corporal is right, we must help those in our immediate vicinity,” Feral quietly responds.

“Do you even know where our bird went,” Baird asks.

“I know it went this direction, but I will have to get up high to tell you where it landed,” she acknowledges while Baird nods and moves into the thicket, slowly.

“Let’s go…keep an eye out, and keep it low,” Baird advises as the others march behind him.

They walk around the tall, conifer trees, stepping over bundles of pine needles and cones, mixed in with the snow. Feral gets ahead of the group, quietly as she wisps around the trees making faint noise with her feet on the snow covered ground. The scent of pinesap tainted the dry, crisp air, as flakes of snow fluttered around the forest, making visibility faint. Feral slows down her pace, taking larger steps over piles of forest foliage gathered in heaps on the ground.

Suddenly, Feral halted and then crawled behind a brush, while the others stopped in their tracks. Baird could tell that something spooked her, and motioned the others to drop down with his hand. They waited, watching Feral for a motion or a glance but she doesn’t move, keeping her hands on her pistols.

As they peered through the air ahead of them, they could softly hear footsteps, closing in their direction. They quietly ready their weapons, waiting for the moving presence to reveal itself behind the frosty curtain.

As the dark figure moved closer, they suddenly recognize the figure to be Milane. He carefully, stepped one foot at a time, peering through the dense air.

“Friendlies,” he spoke out, as Sven, Baird, and Cole stood up.

“Yea…friendlies,” Baird responded while Milane walked over to them.

“You guys made it, that’s a comfort,” Milane continued as he loaded up his Lancer.

“We didn’t know if you made it sir,” Sven stepped in as Milane addressed him.

“Barely…our bird managed to go a few more kilometers, but I lost sight of it before it went down.”

“We was looking for our ride, hoping to find you first,” Cole said.

“Well, thanks for looking for me, but I’m afraid you’ll have to turn back around…the Locusts are coming this way.”

“You’ve got to be kidding me,” Baird griped.

“I wish I was, Corporal…we need to move, now.”

Just as Sgt Milane finished speaking, an earsplitting thunderous voice, blasted through the woods.

“BOOM!”

“GET DOWN, NOW,” Baird hollered, as the men scattered in all directions. A loud explosion pierced through the trees, as the noise rang in their ears behind the debris of snow, pine needles, wood, and blood.

Oh God, someone got hit. Baird started to crawl on the ground, keeping his head down while trying to peer through the debris, still hovering in the air. He then looks up in front of him to see a massive figure, stepping around the trees up ahead as he hears that thunderous roar, again.

“BOOM!”

He quickly moves behind the tree as a shot rang out and pieces of branches and snow, scattered into the air. Baird flanks to the left of the massive creature as he rolls behind another tree, only to roll on top of a bloody,strewn corpse in the dense thicket.

Ugh…damn. At first he couldn’t tell who it was, but he knew it was a Gear. He pushed the distorted corpse over to see if he could find the COG tags, but the corpse was so mangled he couldn’t tell if the part was a torso or a leg.

“BOOM!”

Baird looks back to his right to find the colossal Locust, standing not too far from him, as he could feel the ground tremor beneath him with each step the beast took. He remained concealed behind the tree as the Boomer scanned for him, breathing heavily while his raspy breath gurgled in irritation.

“Over hear, sucka,” a voice rang out from a distance.

Cole…damnit, get down.

“BOOM!"

The beast roars as he fires his Boomshot towards Cole’s voice, distracting it from Baird’s position. Behind the thicket, Baird pulls out a Bolo grenade and proceeds to flank the Boomer from behind.

Baird could hear Cole taunting, as the Locust fixes his concentration in Cole’s direction.

“Haha…you missed…you can’t hit shit!”

The beast fires his Boomshot again.

“BOOM!”

Just after the Boomer launches his gun, Baird sneaks up behind the creature and plants the Bolo grenade on the Boomers rump.

“FRAG OUT!” Baird yells as he leaps into a nearby ditch behind another tree.

“Get down,” Cole busts out as the creature turns toward Baird’s position.

“BOOM?!”

Before the Locust could react, the grenade goes off, tearing up the brush around it while the Boomer let’s out a chilling scream, flailing it’s arms around the chaos. The Boomer’s rump was in bloody shambles as it tried to turn around on one functional leg.

As the beast turns around to fire another round at Baird, a shot rings out in the thicket as it echoes through the woods. The enormous brute let’s out a gurgling growl, dropping it’s Boomshot to the ground as its large body slumps down, laying motionless with it’s blood spurting into the white snow.

Baird carefully stands up, brushing the wood chips and debris off of his armor as he looks over the massive creature to find Feral stepping around it with Boltok pistol in hand, putting it back into her holster. She covers her nose and mouth with her hand, trying to block the stench coming from the Boomer’s fresh corpse.

“You alright, Corporal,” she asks.

“Yea…damn,” Baird gestures, trying not to inhale the stink.

“I didn’t realize how tough these one’s are…I thought the nade would have taken it out for sure…oh, and by the way, you’re welcome.”

Baird gives her a sour look while at the same time, trying not to inhale the stench.

Cole shouts out,

“Baird…you alright man?”

Baird could hear Cole from a distance as he shouts back, “Yea…is anyone with you?”

“I got Vinny with me!”

''Oh no…Milane. It got Milane.''

Baird turned around to locate the rest of the corpse. There were pieces scattered around the brush as he looks around, trying to make sense of the body parts. Feral steps down towards Baird’s position as she looks upon the bleak picture.

“Who is it,” she asks.

“I think it’s Milane, but I need to find his tags, just to be sure.”

“Are these it,” Raven lifts up her arm, holding a set of COG tags as Baird comes over to get a better look. She hands them over to Baird as she watches him analyzing them. She could tell from his expression that it was not good.

“Sigh…it’s Milane’s…fuck,” Baird mumbles, “…how well did you know him?”

“What do you mean, Corporal,” Feral stares at him in puzzlement.

“Well…it sounded as if he knew you so I figured you two…I don’t know, got to know each other?”

“Yea…during the debriefing, along with the Sergeant from Gamma, but that was only for twenty minutes…so, to answer your question, no I didn’t really know him,” she replied, rather vaguely.

“O…kay.” Baird looks in astonishment.

Cole and Sven carefully walk towards the Boomer’s blood trenched body, still pointing their guns at just as a precaution.

“You can relax guys, it’s dead,” Feral yells out, and then turns to Baird as he looks up at her.

“We need to go back,” Baird begins. “Boomers normally come in pairs…the other one will be close by, so we need to leave, now!”

She nods as Baird looks around to see Cole and Sven coming towards their position. They slow down as they get a glance of the sprawled body parts in the white snow.

“Aw, man…we’re fucked now,” Sven panics as Cole starts to shake his head.

“You were right Damon…this is starting to suck,” Cole groans looking at their bleak situation. They have only been on the ground for thirty minutes and they were misdropped, lost, and without their Sergeant.

Suddenly, they hear Feral coming down the ground from above, panting.

“You were right Corporal…another one is coming this way, we need to go!”

“Groan, I hate it when I’m right…get back to the barn, hurry!”

Feral and Cole take off back the other direction while Baird grabs Sven by the collar, pulling him forward.

“Move, Vinny, go, go, go!”

“BOOM!”

“Shit…not again!”

Baird and Sven hit the ground as fragments of wood and ice scatter a few meters to their right.

“FUCK,” Sven screams while Baird stands up and grabs Sven, pulling him up.

“Move your ass, Vinny,” Baird yells as the two dash through the woods, running back to the meadow, trying to keep their heads down.

Cole and Feral were already at the barn, waiting for Baird and Sven to come out of the woods. As they peer through the falling snow, they see Baird and Sven hauling ass through the meadow, motioning to the others to get away.

“Move, move…get back!” Baird hollers as he runs towards them. Suddenly, form the outside of the thicket, the massive Boomer peers through the brush, growling.

“BOOM!”

The beast fires blindly in their direction as the rocket passes them up several meters ahead of them.

Cole and Feral duck back behind the barn as Sven and Baird hit the ground, rolling a few times, kicking up the snow as they try to move quickly to the barn.

“SHIT!” Sven yells as Cole runs up to grab and yank him behind the barn, while Baird is crawling over as fast as his legs and hands will take him. The four were hunkered down behind the barn out of the Boomer’s sight.

“Now what the fuck do we do,” Cole rants as Baird crawls up the wall.

Feral turns to the others.

“I know a way out, but we’ll have to run towards the boarding houses further down over there,” Feral points behind them.

“How we going to get there without getting all blowed up.” Cole barks as they can hear the Boomer blindly looking for them.

“BOOM!”

“He’s having trouble seeing through the snow…I can run out and draw his fire away from the barn,” Feral again suggests.

“Hold on a minute…you mean, run back out into the meadow…you won’t last long, Feral,” Baird argues.

“I’m the faster runner…and I am also the smallest. He will have a harder time trying to see me than you guys. No offense, but you Gears stick out like a blinking, traffic cone…he’ll definitely see you.”

Baird was about to snap back but he caught himself as the beast roared out again.

“BOOM!”

Baird grimaced as the other Gears looked at him for direction, realizing he had nothing to at the moment to stand on but Feral’s suggestion. So he bites his tongue as he rubs his eyes then peers around the corner, seeing the Boomer walking around aimlessly in the snow.

“Ugh…alright…but you haul your ass back to the boarding houses, we’ll wait for you there.”

“Got it,” Feral acknowledges.

“I mean it Feral…you better be there within fifteen minutes.”

“OK…I heard you the first time!”

Before Baird could retort, Feral peers around the corner, then lightly darts off into the meadow while the Boomer continues to scan through the snow. Baird carefully watches the Boomer as she darts effortlessly through the meadow.

“What a bitch!” Baird mumbles to himself.

“Damn…she can move fast,” Cole notices while Baird snaps him into focus.

“Get ready, Gus…you too Vinny.”

Feral slows down out into the middle of the field when she slowly stands up, pulls out her Gorgon pistol and fires it at the Boomer.

The Boomer whips around to find Raven waving her arms as she braces herself for an assault.

“BOOM!”

The shot misses her by a few meters as she ducks down into the snow, trodden grass. As the Boomer turns and walks over to her direction, the Gears run out towards the boarding houses nearby.

“Man, I hope she knows what she’s doing.” Cole whispers.

“Yea…me too,” Sven agrees.

“Hurry up guys, we need to get over there to provide some cover,” Baird reminds them, trying to keep them focused to the buildings.

Raven continues to move across the meadow as the Boomer slowly scans the area, firing another blind shot.

“BOOM!”

The three can hear it roaring as they finally make their way to the first house.

“C’mon…over here,” Baird insists as they round up inside one of the houses facing the field. As they stroll into the back room, Baird takes his Lancer and knocks out a window.

“What are you doing, man,” Cole protests as Baird kicks out the rest of the glass still clinging to the window seal.

“Vin, I need your Longshot…hand it here,” Baird orders.

“Uh…sure,” Sven obliges as he grabs his Longshot from his back and hands it to Baird.

Baird quickly loads a round into the chamber as he sets it on the window seal, bringing his goggles over his eyes and starts to focus in on the large Boomer across the field.

“The snow is too thick Damon…you can’t get an accurate shot,” says Cole.

“Yes I can…just watch.”

The Boomer continues to fire blindly, while standing in the middle of the field, growling. Baird zeroes in on his head and then takes a shot.

The beast suddenly steps back as it shrieks hideously, banging its head with its Boomshot. Feral looked up see the irritated beast turn around as it snarled in fury.

Geez, they have a hard head.

“Aw, Baird…you just pissed it off,” Cole gripes.

“One more,” Baird says to himself as he loads in the next round. He aims again, carefully focusing on the beasts’ head.

“Just…hold still…for a sec.”

He could see the monster looking right at him as he peers into his scope, looking right in between it’s eyes.

Baird fires the round, right into the Boomer’s forehead as the skull collapses and brain matter splatters onto the snow. The rest of the body stands perfectly still while the rest of the pieces of its folded head rolls onto the shoulders. The corpse stands for a few more seconds as it slowly starts to lean and then topples onto the ground.

“Hehe, look at that,” Baird muses to himself as he pulls the Longshot back into the house.

“Yea, it’s cute how they fall,” Cole snickers as Baird hands the rifle back to Sven.

“Wow…I didn’t know you were a good shot, sir” Sven says in amazement while Baird pulls his goggles back onto his forehead.

“That’s just the tip of the iceberg, kid,” Baird responds while Cole rolls his eyes.

“Uh hu, now you dunnit, Vin…now your giving him a big head,” Cole whines while Baird turns to Cole and sticks out his tongue while he pulls out his Lancer.

Feral get up from the ground as she noticed the Boomer was lying headless on the white ground. She then makes her way towards the houses, running through the snow covered grass until she gets to the main road near the boarding houses as she slows down and starts to look for the three Gears. She scans the ground to look for their trail. They have feet the size of a bear, their trail should be here somewhere.

Seeing fresh footprints, she follows them inside a house since the door was already wide open. She walks inside carefully, trying not to make too much noise with her footsteps as she peers into a vacant room. Sighing, she turns around slowly and then was suddenly startled by the sound of a gun being cocked back.

She jumps back against the wall only to find the three Gears with their weapons ready, pointing at her. She whips her head to her right to find Baird two feet from her as he lowers his Lancer.

“Gotcha!”

She gives him a sour look and steps back glancing the other three with the same expression as they relax their weapons. She was not the least bit amused.

“What the hell, Corporal,” she hisses.

Oh, and by the way…you’re welcome,” Baird scoffs.

“For what?”

“Oh, for taking out the Boomer and saving your ass. You see, Feral, we’re not a bunch of clumsy, incompetent meatheads,” Baird scowls as he continues. “We’ve been pulling our weight through all of this shit for the past fifteen years, so don’t you think for a second that you got anything on us, that would deem inferior to the Feral, or anybody else for that matter.”

The Gears could feel the heaviness in the atmosphere as Feral’s expression turned spiteful. They waited for a moment to see if she would retaliate. Instead, she steps away, irate as she marches towards the door and nudges anything in her way, while the other two step out of her way, putting up their weapons.

“Damn…she looked peeved,” Cole notices.

“She’ll get over it,” Baird mutters. “I’m not putting up with that kind of crap!”

As the three marched out of the house, they could see Feral nearby, as they made their way towards her. They could tell she was still miffed, but Baird continued to move on as if nothing happened.

“We need to make contact…where can we go to get a clear signal,” Baird asks Feral. Without saying a word, she points toward another array of trees, just ahead as she turns around and starts to trek there.

“Heehee…she’s giving you the silent treatment,” Cole quietly snickers at Baird.

“Whatever, I don’t care,” Baird shrugs as he continues to follow her, keeping the established distance she put between them. She then stops to turn around as she yells out,

“This way!”

The Gears follow her lead as they head out of the boarding community.

Baird turns over to Cole,

“See…she won’t keep a grudge for long…we’ll all get along just fine.”

“Yea, like cats and dogs,” Cole snickers.

“Rowr…fft, fft,” Baird gestures while Cole start to laugh.

Chapter 6: Lost With A Broken Horse
“Gamma Four, can you hear me, come in.”

Baird attempts to make contact with the other squads.

Deep in a forest, what is left of Sigma squad sits in wait, hoping another squad may be nearby.

“Epsilon Six, can you read me, over.”

Cole and Sven stare, hoping Baird would get an answer, while Feral starts to climb down a tree she crawled up earlier to pin point their location.

“This is Sigma One, anybody, respond…shit!”

Baird finally gives up as he sighs looking around their location while Cole gripes.

“Man, where the fuck we at?”

Sven rubs the back of his neck, shaking off the snow as he mutters to himself.

“Man, I miss my hot showers.”

“Yea, I know what you mean,” Cole agrees.

Feral is seen, jumping form a nearby ledge, keeping her pace as she slows down and reunites with the group, brushing the snow off her shoulders.

“We’re at least six miles from our drop off point,” she says.

“Well that doesn’t make any sense, we should be in contact range,” Baird analyzes as he brushes snow from his equipment.

“Somebody should have made it to the drop off point, hell, there were eight Ravens, two Reavers couldn’t have taken them all down,”

“It may be the terrain,” Feral responds.

“Or they could be in trouble,” Cole adds in, getting antsy.

“Or maybe their just busy,” Sven jumps in while the others turn to look at him, “or…not…I’ll… shut up now,”

Baird turns to the others as he continues.

“At any rate, we need to first find our ride, just in case somebody might be alive.”

“I saw smoke nearby to the north, it’s just a kilometer or two,” Feral reports.

“Then that’s our objective…let’s go ladies,” says Baird as the others gather up their equipment, following Feral through the woods.

They move carefully around the tall, conifer trees, as the cool air entices the scent of sap and pinecones. Snow starts to fall again, floating down in the air, making the air dense.

“Damn, does it ever stop snowing…I can’t see shit in this, man…” Cole complains, “…how we suppose to make out Locusts in this,”

“I can see pretty good with these goggles,” Sven beams as he takes them off to lend it to Cole.

“They even have night vision, pretty awesome, huh?”

“Well it’s not night time Vinny, besides, they may be hiding in the snow, setting up an ambush…what good will those goggles be then?”

“I doubt that,” Feral remarks as she proceeds through the dense forest, making little noise while the Gears seem to brush up on everything, making a racket.

“If the Locust do find us, it will be because you guys make way to much noise…also, their visibility is just as bad as yours, if not worse.”

“You mean ours,” Baird attempts to correct her.

“No, I meant yours…I can see just fine.”

“Uh huh,” Baird mumbles to himself, not wanting to get into an argument at the present. Feral returns a cold glare as she moves slightly ahead of them. Baird quietly grumbled as he turned to Cole,

“I can already tell this is going to be a long fucking day.”

“Whatever you do, just don’t fuck it up,” Cole reminds him sarcastically.

Baird scowls, making childish gestures while quietly imitating Marcus,

“Whatever you do, don’t piss her off…whatever, fucking piss her off my ass…” Baird continues to inaudibly ramble while Cole conveniently ignores him.

The four continue to make their way around the outside of the town as they eventually approach a stream of black smoke, coming from the nearby distance.

“Wait…hey, do y’all smell that?” Sven blurts out as the scent of burning metal seeps into their nostrils.

“Shhh,…geez Sven…you’re the worst of the three,” Feral sneers from the top of a fallen tree nearby. Baird moves up to take a look as he could see the smoke smoldering in the woods just ahead of them.

“It may be our Raven, we’re getting close, so let’s pick up the pace, ladies” Baird persists as the other two begin to move faster, while trying to make less noise, but it doesn’t seem to make any difference. They were not near as subtle as Feral was.

They peer through the forest as they see a collapsed Raven, resting on its side over a fallen log while smoke rises from its chassis. The numbers on the side were clearly visible, KR, Forty-three.

“Shit, everyone is going to see this smoke if they haven’t already…we need to hurry this up,” Baird stammers as Cole begins to climb up on top to get inside the cabin. Sven follows behind, attempting to pull himself up by the frame until his foot slips from the snow on the metal. Cole quickly grabs him by his belt, before Sven falls off completely.

“Easy kid, I gotcha!”

“Whoe, thanks,” Sven says as he holds onto Cole’s massive arm while Cole pulls him into the cabin.

“Don’t mention it, kid…the “Train’s” always gotch yo back!”

Baird starts to make his way to the front of the bird and climbs up to the windshield to get a better look, but the smoke mixed with the cold air fogs the window, not to mention blood splatter.

That’s not a good sign. He attempts to wipe off the frost as he peers into the cockpit, and sees the pilot, impaled into the cockpit door, while the co-pilot was hanging from his seat, motionless. Damn.

“Cole, anyone alive in there,”

“Nah, Jimmie’s gone…Fargus too,” Cole yells from the cabin.

“I think Jonas is gone too…damnit, he’s got a door where his chest used to be...check Frank, just to be sure.”

Baird sees Cole through the windshield, as Cole tries to carefully climb into the cockpit. He looks around and as he looks upon Jonas’ mutilated corpse, he covers his nose from the nauseating stench.

“Ugh…damn, Damon, you guessed right…ugh,” Cole moves over to check on the co-pilot. As he moves, he notices a pile of what appears to be bowels, sprawled on the cockpit controls.

“Oh…shit…is he dead?” Sven peers over Cole, trying to retain himself from vomiting while getting a look at Frank, still strapped to his seat. Cole reaches over to check for a pulse, while trying to avoid inhaling the stink, reeking in the air. Cole’s face turns sour as he looks at Baird through the window and shakes his head.

“Ah, damnit to hell…you alright Cole?”

“Yea…I just need to get some air.”

“Alright,” Baird laments as he hung his head for a minute, rubbing his temples.

“This shit’s getting old,” he mumbles to himself as he starts to make his way down from the Raven. After nearly countless years of fighting Locusts, any potential hopes of reaching normality is nearly exhausted, when he can’t seem to meet comrades without finding them maimed shortly later on. Pictures of faces, people he knew, ran through his head, lost to one calamity or another. How much longer will Cole last? How much longer can he last, not to mention Sven, who’s just a kid.

Cole and Sven start to make their way out of the cabin when they see Feral walking along the side.

“Any survivors,” she yells out.

“Natta, their all dead,” Cole responds as Baird moves to join Feral as she turns to him,

“Then we need to detonate this craft,” said Feral.

“Wait…what,…did I just hear that right?,” Baird looks up in protest.

“Take out what you might need and then detonate it,” Feral presses on as she sees the look of disapproval in Baird’s expression.

“Look Corporal, you said so yourself, that smoke is going to draw attention to itself. The Stranded are going to find it and their going to salvage it for their own ammunitions. We can’t let them do that.”

“So we just blow it with everybody in it, I don’t think so!”

“Listen, there is a rocky ledge not far from hear near that mountain. We can take the bodies there for cremation.”

“Cremation?”

“We can’t bury them, the ground is too frozen, their graves will be shallow and the animals will dig them up…and even if we could, we don’t have the time.”

Baird turns away for a moment and sighs. He didn’t like it, but he knew she was right, but he wasn’t going to admit it. He stares at the chopper for a minute and then turns to Feral.

“How far is the ridge?”

“About a fifteen minute hike.”

Baird looks up at Cole and Sven, whom were apparently ease dropping on their conversation. Cole could tell that Baird was irritated, as he looked up at them.

“Get what you can, and get Jimmie, Fargus, and Frank out. We won’t be able to move Jonas, so you’ll have to get his cog tags. We’re going to blow it up,” says Baird.

“So what are we going to do about Jonas…we can’t leave him,” Cole protests.

“Damnit Gus, we don’t have a lot time to try and yank him out of that door…at least not on one piece.”

Cole turned to look toward the cockpit then dropped his gaze to the ground, as he muttered.

“Your right man,”

“Look Gus, I don’t like this either, alright…you may be right, the other squads might be in trouble, but we won’t know for sure until we find them, if we can. Use the tarp to cover him.”

“You got it,” Cole replies as he slaps Sven on the shoulder,

“C’mon kid, Let’s get this over with.”

Chapter 7: Funeral Pyre
The fire burned brightly in the winter air as the smell of burning pine branches accents the cremation’s aroma. The three Gears watch the last remnant of their fallen comrades, burning into the funeral pyre made of rocks and tree branches.

Raven watches from a nearby ledge and then turns away, looking out for anyone that might interrupt their eulogy. She can see the smoke coming from the fallen aircraft they detonated with explosives, earlier that afternoon.

The fire picks up the pace as the smoke begins to lift further in the air, giving the Gears a final closure. They we’re going to have to move before the fires draw Locust attention, if it hasn't already. They start to pick up their equipment as they turn to see Feral moving towards them.

“We got a problem,” she says.

“A problem, imagine that,” says Baird with a hint of sarcasm, but suddenly turns serious when Feral gives him a foul look.

He responds, “Alright Feral, what is it?”

“We have a snowstorm heading this direction,” she reports.

“Your shitting me,”

“Go see for yourself, Corporal,”

Baird steps around Raven as he proceeds up the ledge to where Raven was looking out and sure enough, a dark horizon in the distance moving closer to the valley ahead of them.

“Fuck!”

“What is it Baird,” Cole blurts out as Baird quickly jumps down from the ledge.

“We need to find shelter, and fast. Now I don’t suppose you have anything in mind that is preferably nearby.” Baird says as he turns to Raven.

“We follow the river to the Hurl Damn.”

“But that takes us away from the drop point, Feral, and away from our objective.”

“There is no shelter near the drop point, and even if there was, we wouldn’t make it there before the blizzard does. You said preferably nearby, and besides, there is a major Stranded settlement on the other side of mountain near the glacier lake…”

Baird lifts an eyebrow as Raven continues,

“The dam also has a long range radio…you may be able to contact command with it.”

Baird’s turns his eyes to Cole and Sven as if he was looking for any other suggestions, until he finally looked back at Raven,

“Well…I’m sold…how about you two?”

“Sweet, let’s go,” Sven busts out as Cole joins in,

“To the damn, baby.”

Raven quickly turns around as she starts to hike,

“Hurry, this way,”

The others start to follow as they climb up through the rocky ridge into another thicket, as a light wind startles the stagnant air, a precursor of things to come as the storm slowly moves closer, and closer.

Chapter 8: Head Deep
Is it bright where you are

Have the people changed

Does it make you happy you're so strange

And in your darkest hour

I hold secrets flame

We can watch the world devoured in it's pain.

Smashing Pumpkins

The Beginning is The End is The Beginning

Sigma squad continues to follow the winding frozen river from the woods nearby, as they trek through the trees, keeping their whereabouts invisible to whatever groups may be nearby.

Feral moves around the terrain like a cougar, carefully planting her feet lightly as she conceals her trail, while the husky Gears just plow through snow and foliage, leaving tracks that resemble a migration of sasquatches.

The wind picks up slightly as a cold breeze starts to ventilate the atmosphere. To pass the time, as well as take they’re mind off of the obnoxious cold, random conversation becomes inevitable.

“Shit, it’s getting cold,” said Cole.

“It’s been cold, what are you talking about,” Baird muses as he looks over his shoulder, getting a glimpse of Cole, rubbing his massive arms, even though he was wearing an extra fleeced fatigue under his armor that extended to his elbow.

“That wind is chillin my ass off,” Cole complains.

“I’ll say, it’s like a meat locker with a giant fan in it,” says Sven as he strategically takes routes where the trees block the wind from hitting him.

“C’mon wusses, a little cold won’t hurt ya,” Baird mocks.

"Yea, easy for someone who dives bare ass in glacier lakes,” Cole sneers back.

“You better believe it. I made a lot of money doing that.”

“How’d you do that sir?” Sven looks up in interest.

“Damn, Damon, you jumped in icy water on a bet…Marcus was right, you are bat-shit crazy!” Cole muses.

“I needed the money, besides, it’s not that bad…well, at least the first five minutes of it,” Baird says as he looks ahead trying to find Feral. He finally stops as he peers around the trees with Feral nowhere in sight, muttering to himself.

“Well…where the hell she go?”

“Right here Corporal.”

Baird whips around to find Feral perched on a fallen log, just beside them as the other two also turn to the sound of her subtle voice.

“Shit, Feral, don’t do that,” says Baird, taking his hand off his pistol, nesting in his holster, strapped to his thigh.

“Do what, Corporal?” Raven responds as she leaps from the log and rolls on the ground to ease the impact of the shock absorption, and uses her momentum to stand back up. She brushes the foliage and snow off of her arms while Baird stands nearby with his hands on his hips.

“Calling me Corporal. Don’t do that!”

“Well then, what would you like me to call you?” Feral responds with some sincerity in her expression as she adjusts the holsters strapped on her thighs.

“It’s Damon Baird. You can call me Baird…”

“Or Dickhead, or Jackass, oh, and Asshole,” Cole snorts, jumping into the conversation as Baird turns around, raising his arm and extends his middle finger while Sven tries to refrain himself from laughing.

“What did Marcus call you that one time…oh yea…Dipshit! That was a good one.” Cole snickers, followed by laughter while Sven gave up trying to save face at Baird’s expense.

“Ha ha ha. Yea, laugh it up, smartass,” Baird sneers.

Feral finally cuts in and breaks the ice.

“Sigh, so…Damon Baird it is. I don’t know if I should even attempt to use the other suggestions.”

“Give it time, baby…before you know it, you’ll be calling him a jackass too.” Cole responds.

“Uh huh,” Feral grunts as she turns to look at Baird, watching him roll his eyes.

“Anyway…” she continues, “…the area ahead appears to be clear up to the edge of the forest, but I wouldn’t let your guard down just yet.”

“Sure…whatever,” Baird mutters as she gives him a nod and continues to move ahead, leading them through the woods. The three pick up the pace, trying to keep up as they start to close the gap between them and Feral.

“Damn, are we getting any closer to this place?” Sven complains while trying to keep up. Baird intentionally bellows, sarcastically dragging his feet like a defiant child,

“Yea, are we there yet?”

“Almost,” Feral remarks as her face was still focused on the trail ahead of them, ignoring their sarcasm. Sven moves up hoping to pass the time by making conversation.

“So…Raven is it…or do you like to called Feral?”

Feral turned and looked at him with astonishment, never giving it a thought that a Gear would ask her about anything other than the mission at hand. But then again, I guess it would be natural for someone to ask another for his or her name.

“You call me whatever makes you comfortable, Vinny,” she responds, as the other two divert their ears, eavesdropping on the conversation.

“Yea, like psycho bitch,” Baird mutters to Cole while Cole tries his hardest not to laugh.

“You know, these ears do work,” Raven snorts as she keeps her head forward.

“Otay…” Baird retorts as he staggers sarcastically, “…at least we know she’s not broke!”

Cole begins to chuckle.

“Man, you really do need to mature,” Cole suggests while Baird gives him a sarcastic look.

“Then you need to stop laughing at me when I act immature.”

While trying to save face, Cole moves up closer to the front to walk beside Raven.

“So why did your folks name you after a chopper, anyway?” asks Cole.

Sven butts in from behind, trying to stay into the conversation.

“Yea, I hear people name their vehicles after chicks but I never heard of people naming their chicks after vehicles.”

Raven looks at the both of them with a burrowed look, as if she didn’t think the question was relevant. As she recants the words of her clan leader, an aged woman of insight, Raven remembers being told that her solitude is merely a temporary walk of life that will one day end. If Raven was to ever enter the right of passage for procreation, she must understand man’s plight. Yea, the epitome of idiocy, but she figures if she is ever going to maybe one day, reintegrate back into society, she’ll need to be more hospitable, especially when it concerns answering irrelevant questions.

“My…foster parents didn’t name me after the craft, they named me after the color of my hair…like a raven, the bird,” she says.

“So…wait, foster parents? So…you we’re adopted? I thought you we’re a Feral.” Cole buzzed, trying to make sense of it all.

“I am, I joined them later on.”

“But you’re not a natural born Feral?”

“My biological mother was a Feral, my foster parents eventually informed me,”

“And yo real daddy,”

“Don’t know…she didn’t get much of a look at him I guess,”

Cole looked perplexed as he tried to make sense of what Raven was telling him.

“You guess!?”

“She was raped Private,” Raven reveals coldly while Cole’s eyes widen as if she let a big cat out of the bag.

Raven continued, “...which…consequently, led to my conception. All I was told was that he was a soldier, so it would probably be safe to assume that he is most likely dead.”

“Oh…sooo,”

“And my real mother abandoned me shortly after birth, so I was adopted shortly later by a COG officer.”

“So your foster parents were citizens of Tyrus...now that explains why you can speak our language so fluently,” says Baird, putting the pieces together.

“Yes…you would be correct,” Raven responds, trying not to be impressed with Baird’s insight.

“Which means you probably grew up in a COG school, went to a COG church...”

“You got it.”

“So when did you become an official Feral?”

“When did you become a COG soldier?” Raven turns as she peers over her shoulder to see Baird exchanging glances with Cole as he grinned. Baird then sighs,

“I was nineteen…when I “volunteered.” Baird responds, signing quotation marks.

“Isn’t the recruitment age for a Gear seventeen? Why so late?” Raven responded as she turns to face him, walking backwards. Baird didn’t respond, instead he just smiled as he lifted his chin up, looking down at her. She then turns back around, looking forward.

“Ok, so when and why did you join the Feral?” Baird pressed on. Raven was silent for a few moments, wondering if she should even amuse him with an answer, but for whatever reason, she decided to entertain Baird’s curiosity.

“I ran away from home when I was fourteen.”

“So why did you run away?” Baird insisted, hoping to get into her head.

Raven suddenly came to a halt as she stood still, glancing at the ground, resting her left hands on her holsters. The others also stopped, wondering what she was doing. She then broke the awkward silence as she turned around to face him.

“Because, I refused to be bred like some horse, producing stallions for the cause. I ran away so the COG couldn’t take me to some “breeding farm” where young girls we’re being exploited, molested, and raped.”

The atmosphere suddenly went from friendly to tense, as accusations filled their heads of what truly went on at the “breeding camps.” Although the details of those incidents where still unclear, the truth eventually bled out, but how Raven knew about it at the age of fourteen was even more unclear. Raven continued,

“I hiked into mountains outside of Ephyra, where a Feral clan was just passing through, and I was taken in from there.”

Raven turned back around and picked up the pace, putting distance between her and the Gears, consequently ending the conversation.

“Damn…that was an earful,” Cole said quietly as he turned to glance at Baird.

Baird just shrugged his shoulders and continued forward, while Sven was just dumbstruck by the info overload, following the other two as best he could.

So much for their “friendly” chat.

They eventually catch up to Raven as they see her perched up on a boulder up ahead, looking out. As they move near the edge of the woods, the wind bristles through the branches, causing them to flap. Peering out onto the river ahead, the Gears look out into the scenery, only to find their destination, at last. Hurl Dam.

Chapter 9: Incident at Hurl Dam
Roadie running through a rough landscape, in the cold, filled with rocks, big rocks, in three feet of snow and ice, while dodging bullets at the same time was not listed anywhere in the fucking handbook, Sven griped to himself as he ran close behind Cole and Baird, trying to make sense of the commotion around him. He didn’t have the slightest idea where he was or where he was going, all that he did know that he was being shot at, right on the brink of an oncoming blizzard, and trying not to slip and fall on his already frozen ass.

The three find cover behind a bed of rocks, where Raven was already, impatiently waiting for them, while trying to ready her pistols.

“Damnit, you guys need to keep up!” she barks over the noise of the endless ricochet.

“It’s kinda hard to keep up, Feral when we’re carrying several pounds of armor and equipment, running in knee, deep snow, going up ON AN INCLINE!” Baird busts out while at the same time tries to keep his head down, his Lancer already in hand.

“DAMN, where did this shit come from,” Cole howls while checking his Lancer to make sure their was a full clip of ammo already loaded in it. Sven frantically loads his Longshot, trying to push the round in while his hands where shaking from the sudden adrenaline rush.

“I thought you were suppose to know where all the Locust outposts are, Feral,” Baird nagged.

“This was not here the last time I checked, Baird!”

“Oh, and how long ago was that…last year?”

“Well, ever since you eggheads dropped Jacinto into the abyss, the Locusts have scattered all over this area. They don’t stay in one spot for too long…and just so you know, it was two weeks ago!”

Suddenly they hear a shrilling growl, echoing from a distance.

“Aww, crap!” Baird huffs.

“Yea, we’ve heard that noise before,” Cole pouts, as he moves closer to Baird’s position. Raven peers around the snow, covered rocks as she gets a glimpse of the enemy,

“Grinders!”

“AW, shit…what do we do now?” Sven panics.

Raven quickly turns around to face the three Gears.

“There’s a trench over there…on the left. That may be your better destination for cover.”

Baird moves over to Raven as she points towards the location of the trench.

“And that place over there,” Baird points out, further from the trench, a fallen tree next to a boulder incline.

“Can you make that?”

“There’s a lot of crossfire between here and there, and my armor is too light to take that much contact…I’m not a bullet sponge,” Raven declares, and she was right. Her armor was not as resistant as the Gears, and was not designed to take direct contact, much less blunt force trauma. Baird looks up to analyze their position and then drops back down and turns to Raven.

“Alright, look…we can make it to the trench, if we haul ass. I’ll get Cole and Vin to provide cover fire, but once we get there, Cole and I can draw their fire, over there and then Vin can draw their fire from here so you can make it to the log.”

“Yea…wait…I’m staying here, by myself?” Sven gripes in horror.

“Look, Vin, we need your sniper cover here, do you understand?’ Baird looks Sven in the eye. He could see the kid was scared, he knows exactly what is being asked of him.

“Look kid, I know you haven’t had a lot of encounters like this, but it’s time to grow up, Vinny…this is what Gears do.”

As Baird continues to look at him, Sven starts to calm down and nods his head.

“Now, get your skinny ass up there, look through your scope and tell us what do you see?”

Sven moves up, carefully climbing on top of the side of the rock, kicking the snow off as he plants his rifle down, peering towards the Locust horde.

“Shit…ok…I see two Grinders…uh…some Bolters, Grenaiders…there’s another, a Cyclops maybe, I can’t tell, the Grinders are stirring up too much snow.”

“Get back here, Vin,” Baird calls out.

“On it.”

Sven climbs back down to their position.

“So, you got a plan Damon?” Cole inquires.

“Let’s just say I have a general idea, but we need to spread out…Grinders get confused with multiple targets. Feral, your coming with me,” Baird gestures to Raven.

She turns her head around to respond,

“Alright…wait, what?”

“You’re coming with me…”

“…now wait a damn minute,”

“Oh, for crying out loud, I know for a fact you can haul your tiny ass a pretty good ways without contact…and besides I’ll cover you along the way, so does that satisfy you?”

Raven gives him a scowl, but nods grudgingly while Baird turns to the others.

“Cole, stay here with Vin and give him cover…see if you can take out some of those Bolters.”

Baird proceeds to Raven’s position.

“Are you ready?”

“Wait,”

Raven, pulls out her Gorgon pistol with her left hand and her Boltok on her right. She puts in some fresh clips and nods.

“Ok, ready!”

“Ready Cole?”

“I gotcha back!”

“Let’s go!” Baird yells as Cole fires his Lancer towards the Locusts nearby. Baird and Raven quickly dart off toward the trench as Raven moves ahead of Baird while he points his Lancer and fires toward the Locusts. Raven quickly leaps into the trench, through the snow with Baird not to far behind, quickly rolling in, and moving up right next to Raven. Baird shakes the snow off of his head and goggles while Feral rubs it out of her hair

Cole and Sven continue to exchange gunfire, pitting the Locusts close to the frozen river just up ahead. The Grinders continued to open fire from a distance behind the frontline. Sven moves his scope and takes a shot at a Bolter close by, literally lobotomizing his head completely off the rest of its standing body. The headless, upright corpse starts to slowly slump down as blood from the main artery on what used to be it’s neck, continues to spray blood while it spouts all over the white snow.

“Oh yea, eat it!” Sven busts out with more confidence.

“Good shot, kid!” Cole complements Sven as he loads in a new clip and returns fire, all the while taking out a Grenadier nearby, knocking him backwards as he bellows.

“WHOO, yea, I got enough for all of y’all!”

Sven continues to take out the frontline, one at time.

“Damn, its like shooting ducks at the carnival,” Sven said.

“Yea, them Grubs ain’t too bright,” Cole recants, as he fires off his Lancer.

At the trench, Baird quickly reloads while Raven pulls out a couple of Nape grenades.

“You alright,” he inquires as Raven prostrates herself against the trench wall.

“Yes, I’m fine…just...trying to get myself together here.”

“Ok, it’s Gus’s turn!”

Baird turns his attention back to the pile of boulders where Cole and Sven are waiting.

“You ready, Cole?”

“You know me, the Cole Train is always ready, WHOO!”

Baird rolls his eyes.

“Yea, whatever, ready…GO!”

As Baird turns toward the locusts to return fire, Cole jumps out, darting to Baird and Raven’s location, while Sven continues one by one, executing retreating Locusts.

Baird continues to fire as he takes out another Grenadier, and then drops back down to reload his Lancer, while Raven, in his place fires her Gorgon pistol in short, abrupt bursts. Cole finally rolls into them with his pack slammed to the wall next to Raven.

“WHOO, yea…that's what I'm talking about, so now what?” Cole persists, impatiently waiting to get back into the game. Baird turns to Raven as she hands him her Nape grenades.

“These are Nape grenades…they have about a five to eight foot radius, and they’ll burn up to fifteen minutes,” says Raven to Baird as he nods. and replies,

“Alright, wait for my signal…Cole we need to provide cover fire for Feral so she can move, you got it?”

“Yea I hear ya baby…just gimme a go,”

“Ready Feral,…go!”

Raven dashes through the snow, almost on all fours, to the broken down log nearby. She leaps and summersaults under the log, brushing up against the boulder, right next to it. She looks back over to Cole and Baird and nods.

“That a girl,” Baird mutters in a low voice, “…she made it.”

As most of the locusts on the front line we’re picked off, the Grinders begin to move in as the growling voices of the Grenadier before them yells at them to attack.

“Grind…” the Grinders taunt, hideously laughing as they slowly moved forward, firing their weapons in Cole and Baird’s position.

“Shit, they just keep firing…don’t those things ever run out of bullets?” Baird fumes as he looks over to Sven, waiting for Baird to give him the nod.

“Ok Cole, you got it?” Baird hands him one of Raven’s special nades.

“You mean towards the Grinders,” Cole asks.

“Yes…on my signal,”

“But…these things aren’t going take em’ Grinders out, are they?”

“We’re going to find out, Cole.”

“Wait…these aren’t frags!”

“I know that Gus…just throw it…and don’t miss please!”

Baird nods to Sven as he points his Longshot towards the two Grinders moving towards the trench. He shoots one directly into the head as the overwhelming beast shrieks in fury from the bullet, ricocheting against its helmet, toppling it off it’s thick head. The Grinder moves his attention to Sven as he peers over to the bed of rocks.

“Grind…” the monstrous sized Locust bellows as he proceeds to fire his Mulcher toward Sven, while Sven quickly takes cover behind the boulder, feeling the rock, chip fragments raining on his head.

“Holy crap…” Sven yells as he covers his head with arms, dodging the oncoming shards.

On the other side of the two Grinders, Raven peers over the log as she points her Boltok pistol and shoots the other Grinder in the head, popping off his helmet, following a burst of shots from her Gorgon pistol. The brute then fixates his attention to Raven as he turns his body into her direction.

“Grind…”

“Here it comes,” she mutters to herself as she quickly dislodges from the log, down to the ground and wraps her arms around her head as the wood chips scatter in all directions.

With the two Grinders shooting in opposite directions, Baird and Cole get ready for the final assault.

“Alright Cole, NOW!” Baird blasts as the two swing their Nape nades towards the Grinders. The nades bounce across the slushy ground, as they continue to roll right under the Grinders feet. The two stop firing as they turn their heads back to Cole and Baird and then they glanced each other.

“Grind?”

Suddenly, the nades burst into flames, splashing napalm in the air underneath the Grinders feet, scorching their legs. The burly beasts squeal like a pack of wild boars, flailing their enormous arms, only making matters worse for them as it just feeds more oxygen to the flames.

“Yea, it’s just like jock itch, only hotter,” Baird hollers while Cole stands up to taunt some more,

“Haha, burn bitches, burn!”

Suddenly, a foul stench scents the air as it spreads across the trench.

“Aw DAMN…that’s NASTY,” Cole whines as he quickly covers his nose.

The shrieking sobers down as the two beasts topple to the ground, still burning.

“Fuck that stinks…VINNY, you alright?” Baird yells out towards the rock bed.

Sven tries to pull himself out of a pile of snow and rock chips as he steps up into view.

“Yea...holy cow…what the hell is that smell?”

Cole turns to Baird, still covering his mouth,

“Shit, Damon, the fire is still going…where did she get those things? They not standard Gear equipment!”

“The Feral apparently can make their own arms. Those were definitely home-made.” Baird replies, as he tries to keep a straight face despite the overwhelming odor of the napalm still burning the Locust carcass.

Baird turns his attention to the log as he covers his mouth, trying to filter out the stench of burning Locust flesh.

“Feral, you alright,” he yells out. No response.

Cole and Baird start to walk around the pile of blazing Grinders, making their way to the log.

“Feral…hey Raven, you there,” Baird calls out again, but no response. Cole picks up the pace, keeping his hand over his mouth, trying to peer though the thick smoke, coming from the burning carcasses.

“Feral, you alright…say somethin baby,” Cole starts to worry as he presses on through the smoke. He took a liking to Raven, despite that she was kind of a cold hermit, but then again, he liked all chicks. Maybe she’ll eventually come out of her shell, but he wouldn’t leave it up to Damon to help him with that, he’s just as solitary as she is.

Cole steps out of the smoke towards the log when suddenly, he hears a gurgling voice as he whips around to find a Grenadier about ready to launch his Gnasher shotgun directly at him. But before Cole could even raise his Lancer,suddenly, a loud shot rings out, as the Grenadier’s head explodes off his body and tumbles into the snow. Cole steps back in awe as he looks around, only to find Raven, standing from behind from where the Grenadier stood. She quickly swung the Boltok pistol back into her holster after shooting the Grenadier’s head off.

“I’m fine...thanks for asking,” she responds matter-of-factly as Cole just stands there in shock. Baird comes running through the smoke, coughing, with his shotgun in hand.

“Hey…damnit Feral, don’t scare us like that again. You just shaved two years off of Cole’s life expectancy…” says Baird as he turns to Cole.

“Gus…hey, man…you alright,” trying to snap Cole out of the moment.

“I just saw an angel man…I thought it was coming for me,” Cole admitted, sobering up from what just happened. Baird slaps him on the shoulder and then turns around to see Sven, staggering his way to them.

“You ok Vinny?”

Sven makes his way through the mess, covering his mouth while his goggles were still over his eyes.

“Geez, this place reeks, can we get out of here?” Sven rants.

“Yea man, let’s get out of here…damn, that shit is still burnin,” Cole agrees, while Baird nods his head, then looks toward Raven as she signals,

“C’mon, this way…hurry! The wind is getting bad.”

As the three load up their gear, they quickly make way to the place where the Locusts were camping.

“Wait, Feral, we need to check the bodies. Look for ammo!” Baird shouts as he begins to rummage one of the Bolters for paraphernalia. Raven halts as she waits for the Gears, searching the area for ammunition. She turns to look up at the sky as the clouds thicken and air takes a nasty turn. C’mon guys, you need to haul ass.

Suddenly, gusts of wind thrust through the air, nearly knocking Raven off her feet. She quickly braces herself against a boulder, while Sven runs up next to her, also bracing with the boulder, while placing his hand over his face, trying to protect himself from the flying snow, stinging his face.

“Hurry Baird, we need to move now,” Raven shouts.

“Alright, I’m coming,” Baird responds as he takes a piece from a Grenadiers nap pack and shoves it under his breastplate. He gets up and runs towards the others as they make their way up to the dam entrance, trying to stay afoot in the sudden gusts of wind.

They hike to the side of a cliff, to find a metal door, lodged into the rock. Raven runs toward it and latches to the handle to try and open it, but she couldn’t budge it. The wind was too strong for her to hold her footing and opening it. Baird runs up towards her as he steps in to turn the handle, but it would not move.

“Oh fuck this!” Baird stammers as he pulls Raven away from the door, pulling out his Lancer. He revs up the chainsaw a couple times before he plows into the door’s mechanism, then pulls back after he successfully cuts through and kicks the door open.

“Get inside,” Baird yells over the whistling wind, as Cole and Sven follow Raven into the entrance. Baird is the last to go in as he grabs the door and slams it shut behind them.

Chapter 10: Warm Winter Night
Growing up it all seems so one-sided

Opinions all provided

The future pre-decided

Detached and subdivided

In the mass production zone

Nowhere is the dreamer or the misfit so alone

Subdivisions

Rush

The stale, musty air unsettles as noise of clambering echoes down a hallway inside what apparently was at one time a kitchen. Cole rummaged into the pantry, as he pulled out cans, checking for expiration dates and content while Sven was on the other side of the room, pulling out pots and pans, placing them on the counter as he stacked them one on top of the other.

“No…no…no…shit, all they got here is spam and some funky looking beans,” Cole complained as he continued to search through the canned food, looking for the day’s grub.

“Let me know what ya find, I got a big pot and some little ones,” Sven says as he continues to stack them on the counter.

Cole sighed as he looked at their bleak menu. Spam…and beans, ugh. Cole moves away from the door and opens up another pantry and starts to rummage through some bags of flour. As he shoves them aside, he accidentally pushes one off the shelf. As it plops on the concrete floor, it busts open and little roaches suddenly scatter from inside the bag, while Cole shrieks, jumping up onto the countertop.

The yelp startles Sven, as he quickly jumps up from the bottom cupboard, bumping his head on the cabinet door above him and accidentally knocks the stack of pots onto the floor.

From clear across the hallway, Baird sits on the floor in the communication control room as he tries to salvage the wiring from the radio consol to an outlet that has long been corroded. He pulls out a clump of tangled wires, half of them looked as if rats have been having a field day, chewing on them. He starts to cuss under his breath as he begins to untangle the mess, when he hears a scream and the clamoring of banging kitchen utensils down the hall.

“What the hell was that?” he looks up, trying to quickly untangle himself from the mess as he pushes the chair and console platform with his feet so he could get up and run to the commotion. He darted outside the room, hitting the wall as he braces himself from slipping on the tiled floor as he runs to the kitchen. He barges into the room with shotgun in hand, yelling,

“What is it?”

He starts to scan the room, only to find Cole standing on the counter, hugging the pantry shelves with one hand as he waves a broom in the other, while Sven was fumbling on the floor with the pans.

“SHOO…little bastards…those things are nasty,” Cole blurts out while Sven tries to grasp his equilibrium, clutching his head with his hand.

“Aw…aw man, does anybody have any ice…I think I have a knot on my head,” Sven whines.

Baird stands there as he drops his shotgun to his side.

“I come running all the way down the fucking hallway, thinking something bad just happened and you two are screaming like a bunch of school girls over some fucking cockroaches?”

“BEHIND YOU,” Cole shouts, as Baird whips around to find an eight, inch, grotesque cockroach, right behind him, prostrated on the wall.

“SHIT,” Baird blurts out as he grabs the shotgun and fires a round at it.

“Shit yea, shoot it Baird,” Cole hollers, while Baird jumps back from the ugly thing, realizing he missed as the giant bug suddenly leaps from the wall to the center island of the kitchen, next to Baird.

“Fuck, get away from me,” he yells while he takes another shot at it. Sven runs over to the corner next to Cole as he puts his hands on his ears, cringing from the shotgun blast.

Baird missed it again as it jumps and flies over to where Cole and Sven are cowering.

“Damnit, Baird…you missed it, again,” Cole yelled out as Baird was swinging his gun at the thing until all hell brakes loose when it jumps away from Baird and lands on Cole’s leg.

“SHIT…GET IT OFF, GET IT OFF,” Cole screams as he starts shaking his leg, nearly falling off the edge of the counter while Sven squeals, running over to Baird and bracing himself on his shoulder.

“Will you get the fuck off of me,” Baird yells at Sven still clinging to his armor, as he tries to push him off. Cole finally loses his footing as he grabs the top shelf to keep from falling, but he was just to heavy for the shelf to brace his weight, so it snapped in two as Cole comes crashing down, taking the other shelves below it, with him.

As Baird tries to push Sven off of him, he steps on one of the pots on the floor and loses his footing as it slides right out from under him, sending his legs flying up in the air, taking Sven down with him as they both go crashing on the floor.

Meanwhile, further down into the basement of the facility, where the bathrooms are located, Raven sits on the toilet, reading from a pile of magazines next to the sink that was left there some ten years earlier. She puts the magazine down while finishing her business and proceeds to pull up her pants when she suddenly heard what she thought sounded like gunshots. She quickly grabs one of her holsters and pulls out her Boltok pistol as she races to the stairs, still holding her pants up with her other hand as she tries to make her way to the commotion. She dashes into hallway while trying to button up her fatigues at the same time, when she suddenly hears the uproar coming from the kitchen nearby. She darts into the kitchen with gun ready, only to find Sven sprawled on top of Baird, lying on the floor in an unflattering position, while Cole was buried underneath a large pile of boxes, shelving, and food cans. She stood back in puzzlement as she lowers her pistol and places it on the counter next to the door.

“What happened?” she demanded as she could hear Baird moaning below.

“Sven…will you please…get your ass out of my face and get the fuck off of me…your crushing my balls.”

“Oh…ok…on it,” Sven cringes as he tries to prop himself on his hands and feet, lifting his weight off of Baird. Suddenly, Baird folds like a piece of paper into the fetal position on his side as he groans, clutching his groin.

“Ugh…sir, my head is spinning…” Sven comments as he shakes his head, trying to lift himself up, using the countertop.

“Shut up, Vin…my whole body is aching…no thanks to you, groan,” Baird moans.

Cole starts to move, slowly as he lifts some of the debris from his head and back, looking around at the rest of the mess the three just made.

“Damn…did we get it?”

“Get WHAT…what the hell where you shooting at?” Raven stammered as she puts her hands on her hips, trying to make sense of the menagerie.

“Grr…I think I…got it,” Baird cringed, still curled up on the floor, still clutching his balls.

“What…did…you…get?” Raven articulated impatiently.

“It was the motherfucker of all cockroaches,” Sven started to explain while Raven just glared at him with a sour expression, wondering if he was still loopy from falling on his head.

“I swear…it to be about this big!” he lifted his hands trying to justify the means, as Raven rolls her eyes and throws her hands in the air.

“You guys we’re shooting at fucking cockroaches…what’s the matter with you people, somebody could have gotten hurt!”

Baird slowly looks up at her, still curled on the floor.

“Are you still here?” he muses.

She scoffs at him as she picks up her pistol and quickly storms out of the kitchen back to the bathroom, cussing under her breath as she stammered.

Cole looked up from the floor and just so happened to see some cans of chili that were shoved underneath the counter. His face beamed as he yelled,

“Hey, guys…looks like we got some grub…and it’s the good stuff too.”

“Great…you get it started…I’m going back to the control room,” Baird grunted as he finally stood up, grabbed his shotgun and started limping back down the hallway.

Raven was back in the basement, picking up the rest of her gear where she had left it in the bathroom. She puts her belt and holsters back on and proceeds out of the bathroom. As she comes into the hallway, she walks past the control room to find Baird fiddling with the radio. Although she has never used the radio before, surely it must be in some working order, everything else here was working OK. Maybe there was more damage to the facility than she remembered the last time she stayed for a couple of nights. She steps in to see Baird’s progress.

“Is it working?” she asks, after she simmered for fifteen minutes from her spat earlier.

“Just about…but only one of the generators is working right,” he replied.

Baird shifts his position to get more situated, cringing from the pain in his groin that Sven fell on earlier.

“I know…when the Locust came, I believe they shut off the other generators, leaving the emergency one on. Over time, they started to corrode, with the exception of that one. But it has its limits…it will only switch on for no longer than about two hours.” Raven recalls, as she bends down to where Baird is working.

“Well that’s no surprise. The filters have not been properly maintained in who knows how long…when did you say it was deserted?” Baird asks.

“At least five years…maybe a little longer, according to the daily technical logs in the other room over there…” Raven points out as she gestures toward a storage room on the right of the control room as she continues,

“…but to put plainly, I don’t think they did alot of maintenance before they abandoned the facility. I think they just made up entries in the log to make it look like they were doing their job.”

“Yea…well all the wiring here is a big fucking rats nest…I just spent almost thirty minutes trying to find the damn cable to the radio, and don’t even get me started with the modem cable…and it’s supposed to be wireless!”

“Well a lot of the radio equipment here was hardly updated…” Raven moves in and kneels over to see Baird groaning under the mass of wires. Raven finally had to ask,

“…sigh, do you need help?”

“What, no…I mean…shit, uh, is there spare equipment in storage room?”

“Yes, why?”

“I just need a few wires to router these ones. They’ve been chewed up.”

“I’ll see what I can find,” Raven says as she gets up and goes to the room to look around for a spare computer console. She spots one in the corner and moves around the storage boxes to pick it up. She holds it in both arms as she moves to the doorway into the control room. She suddenly realizes that she has not seen Cole or Sven in a while.

“Hey, where are Cole and Sven?”

“Why do you wanna know?”

“Just in case they start shooting at the damn rats!”

Baird chuckled as he answers her question,

“Cole found cans of chili underneath the counter, so their making it in the laboratory.”

“The laboratory?”

“Yea.”

Raven hands Baird the spare console as he proceeds to take it apart. Raven moves over to sit in a chair nearby, rubbing her temples.

“Should I even ask as to why their fixing chili on bunsen burners, when they could be using the stovetop.” “No, you shouldn’t.”

“Ok, really, what were you guys doing in the kitchen?”

“Don’t ask that either.”

“Well what the hell can I ask you, Damon?”

Baird was silent for a moment while he continued to disassemble the consol. Raven continues as she breaks the silence,

“Are you going to start shooting at the sugar ants in the bathroom, because if you are, please let me know ahead of time so I won’t have to go in there!”

Baird groaned for a moment, she’s not going to let this one down.

“Yea yea, you just keep rubbing more salt in the wound,” Baird grumbled while Raven continued.

“Damn right I am…you guys nearly scared the crap out of me…literally!”

“For real?”

“I was in the bathroom when I heard you guys…doing whatever it was you were doing.”

“You’ll get over it,’ Baird sneered as he continued, “…is they’re anything else you want to ask?”

“Ok, so why did you volunteer to join the COG at the age of nineteen instead of seventeen?”

Baird was kind of surprised that Raven remembered their conversation from earlier when he declined to answer it. But instead of rebuffing her, he went ahead to satisfy her curiosity.

“I was an intern for technical engineering, but when I needed additional funds to work on my degree, I was given the option to either volunteer or I would have to pay for school on my own, and it just kinda went down hill from there.”

“So you actually went to a college?”

“More like a tech institute.”

“You interned for two years?”

“One and a half years.”

“One…wait, when did you graduate high school?”

“Sixteen.”

“How did you accomplish that, I thought you had to complete certain courses prior for graduation?”

“I finished my junior and senior requirements early. Then I went to work for a year as an apprentice for auto mechanics and engineering, so I got a head start.”

Baird looked up at Raven as he could see the perplexed expression on her burrowed, blue eyes. He couldn’t tell if she was amazed or envious, or maybe both.

“I was dedicated, what else can I say…that, and it kept me busy,” he shrugged and went back to work.

“Besides, how do you know about high school, you never completed it,” he conveniently mentions.

“Are you calling me a stupid dropout,” Raven snides.

“Did I say that you were?”

“It sounded like you insinuated it.”

For someone who didn’t finish school, she was pretty sharp. This only tempted Baird to pick at her brain even more. Hell, she was doing it to him.

“It sounds like you have a superiority complex.”

Raven instantly changes the subject.

“Do you even like being a soldier?”

“Do you like being a Feral?”

“I became a Feral as a means to an end.”

“Well, there you go.”

“So you do believe in the COG cause.”

“I believe in the cause, working together for the sake of humanity, but that doesn’t necessarily mean that I blindly agree with all of their decisions.”

“For the sake of humanity…and this is coming from a guy who doesn’t like being around people…I find that amusing.”

Baird pauses in annoyance, and then replies with sarcasm.

“Oh, so I amuse you…well, I guess I should be glad that I’m useful for something…seriously, do you actually believe that I concur with everything the COG does?”

“Do you really believe that I agree with everything the Feral does?”

“Sigh, so you don’t like being a Feral, do you.”

“I didn’t say that.”

“Then what are you saying, Raven? You don’t like the COG and you don’t like the Feral, what the hell do you like?”

“It doesn’t matter what I like, because this world will never let me be what I am.”

“And what is that?”

Raven pauses for a moment while Baird notices the silence and peers over his workstation. He sensed that she either didn’t have an answer to that question, or she did, she just didn’t want to answer it.

He can only guess that she was wedged into two worlds that won’t let her fit in, therefore defiance, is her only means of self-expression, while her true identity is suspended somewhere in limbo. Is it any wonder she’s so pessimistic. He decides to change the subject.

“Is there anything else you would like to ask?”

“Like what?”

“Well, you can ask me if the radio is working.”

“Oh really…wait, it’s working?”

Raven gets out of the chair and moves over to the radio consol, while Baird lifts himself up off the floor from under the consol.

“Yea…I just need to get the tower online,” he said.

“You can do that by turning on the main breaker,” Raven mentions as she hovers over the control panel.

“Where is the breaker,” Baird asks.

Raven replies, “In the basement…I can get it while you get the signal started in the meantime. You should be able to access the transmission frequency from here”

“Got it.”

Raven goes out of the room to the basement entrance as she makes her way to the stairs to the breaker box.

For a recluse, she’s quite resourceful, Baird ponders, which only made him even more suspicious. He sensed that she knows more than what she’s letting on, and he intended to somehow find out.

In the basement, Raven opens up the door to find six, color coded handles, labeled for each of the stations in the compound. She pulls the one marked, com tower. After she pulls it, the lights flicker throughout the complex. Cole and Sven where still cooking in the laboratory when suddenly they looked up towards the commotion of electrical impulses fluttering through the florescent light bulbs above. “What the hell was that all about?” says Cole while Sven tries to keep the burners lit.

In the control room, Baird finally makes progress in opening contact to the outside world. Raven walks back in the room.

“Can you call command,” she asks.

“Working on that now…Come in control, do you read…this is Sigma one, do you read?”

The speakers go static while Baird attempts to change the frequency to get a better signal. He tries to make contact again.

“Control, this is Sigma one, please respond…anybody, respond.”

The static starts to clear as a faint voice seeps into the transmission.

“Please repeat, your signal is weak.”

“Hello Sigma one, please respond…”

“It’s Anya,” Baird murmurs to Raven as she anticipates commands’ response.

“Control, this is Sigma one, can you read us?”

“We can now…Cpl Baird, is that you?”

“Affirmative.”

''“We’ve been trying to find you since your bird went down. Other squads were deployed after we lost all but four Ravens. Alpha One has been attempting to locate the missing squads…who is with you?”''

“Pvt. Augustus Cole, Pvt. Sven Dunrich, and Raven McNight. Our Sergeant, Milane, is KIA.”

“…Understood…what is your present location?”

“We are at Hurl Dam. It is the only way we can make contact at this time. A snowstorm is in our vicinity and I do not know how long we can stay here. Over.”

''“Understood Baird. As of now, we only know of three squads that are proceeding to their objective, so for now, Colonel Hoffmann orders you to take charge of Sigma, and that you are to proceed from the damn when weather permits. What is your present destination?”''

“We will wait until the storm passes to proceed to go through an electrical conduit that runs through the mountain. It is rumored that there may be a major Stranded settlement somewhere on the other side, but we need to go investigate it to be sure.”

''“Understood. Have you made contact with other squads?”''

“Negative, for whatever reason, we cannot make contact. Does command have a green light? Over.”

''“Hold on Sigma…yes, proceed to your objective. The other squads are scattered and they're having the same problem you’re having. Try and reestablish contact when you can. Good Luck, Corporal.”''

“Sure thing…thanks Anya.”

“And Damon…be careful.”

“Affirmative to that…also, have you heard from Sgt Fenix or Alpha one?”

“Hold on Corporal…”

Suddenly the speakers go static, while Baird tries to keep the connection.

“C’mon, c’mon, don’t do this to me now…control, can you read me, over.”

Raven goes out of the room to peer out a small window as she sees the storm picking up the pace as the wind starts to bellow around the outside of the complex.

“Control, this is Cpl. Baird, can you here me?”

Nothing but static can be heard through the speakers. Raven comes back into the room as she reports to Baird.

“The storm is probably the cause, we need to get moving into the conduit before the power goes out too.”

“Shit…alright. Go get Cole and Sven, tell them what’s up.” “Alright."

Raven makes her way around the hall into the laboratory as she sees Cole and Sven stuffing their faces with a bowl of chili and some rolls they found in the freezer nearby.

“Hey, Feral, look what we got,” Cole blurts as he holds out a bowl filled with rolls.

“We got to pack up and go guys. The facility is going to lose power soon,” she says.

“But we just got here, and we have all of this food,” Sven wines as he tries to stuff it all in his mouth before they have to leave.

“Well…take the burners with you, they run on gas…and take the pot, there should be a lid for it…but we need to go, now!” Raven insisted as the two start to gather up their equipment and food, heading down to the basement and into the electrical corridor that leads to the conduit.

On the way, Raven stops next to a storage room in the corridor and props it open as she goes in and rummages through the ammunition and supplies stored in it. Cole turns his head around the corner to see what is inside.

“Ah,damn…where did all of this shit come from?”

“Grab some ammo and flares...here,” Raven hands Cole a couple of flares as he takes them and puts them in his pack. He steps in to pick up some rounds for his Lancer, while Raven gathers up a couple of Nape grenades. Sven also steps in to take a look around.

“Wow, it must be my birthday, look at all this stuff, man,”

“Yea, I wonder how it got here,” Cole wonders as Sven helps himself to some rifle rounds.

After Baird finishes up in the communication room, he gathers up his stuff and makes his way to the basement and into the corridor where he finds the rest of his squad rummaging the supply room as if it was a yard sale.

“What…who…where did all this shit come from?”

Raven ignores Baird’s suspicion as she hands him some Lancer rounds and a handful of flares.

“We’ll need these to make our way through the conduit.” Raven says as Baird takes them and puts them in his pack. He quickly notices a pile of geobots in the corner, along with some other technical equipment and enough chemicals to make several widespread bombs that could take out an entire block. ''Where did she get all of this? The COG doesn’t hand this stuff out just to anyone, much less a pack of guerrilla bitches.''

The lights start to flicker as Raven grabs some flashlights and hands them to Baird and Sven.

“Alright, we need to move,” says Baird as he steps out of the room and makes way towards the conduit entrance. The others follow as they light up a couple of flares.

They step down to the ground as they peer into a large, dark corridor, while the electrical channels run along the ceiling of the corridor. The air suddenly starts to get cold.

“Ah, what the hell is this? Why is it getting cold in here?” Cole complains.

“The corridor leads out to the mountain. There is no facility on the other side so it would only be natural that the temperature will eventually conform with whatever the temperature is outside,” Raven explains as she moves forward with a flashlight.

“Which means it’s going to drop below freezing in here, real soon,” Baird adds as he turns to Raven, hoping she had an alternative to walking through a freezing corridor with no power or light.

“There is a utility room ahead. It’s not completely insulated but it’s better than nothing. We can stay in there,” Raven acknowledges to Baird’s concern.

“Yea, you see Baird, Feral takes care of us…we got grub, we got some light…hey, what else do they have at the room?” Cole muses.

“There is one bathroom with a sink and toilet…and plenty of blankets and pillows,” Raven reassures the group as they continue to walk in almost complete darkness, if it weren’t for the flares.

“Hehe, sounds like heaven to me,” Cole relishes as he slaps Baird on the back, while Baird returns a punch in the arm. Sven picks up the pace next to Baird.

“So what do we do when we get there…I mean…how long are we going to wait out this storm,” Sven asks.

“How the hell should I know… eat your food, take a shit, go beat off if you need to, I don’t care,” Baird scoffs.

Raven notices that the group was getting pretty weary and tired, especially Baird. He seemed already pretty battle hardened to begin with, but he spent the first part of this day jumping out of a falling helicopter and running around in the cold weather, getting shot at. How would anyone feel after all that?

Cole on the other hand, was always full of optimism, ready to take on anything as if he literally eats adrenaline for breakfast. Raven found the pair rather amusing since one seems to compliment the other.

“There it is, up ahead,” Raven points out as they raise the flare to the metal door.

“Get this bad boy open, it’s getting cold out here,” says Cole as he starts to turn the lever to activate the bolt mechanism. The door cranks open as stale air quickly ventilates out through the opening.

“Wow, this thing must have been closed for awhile,” Sven notices as Cole and Baird pull the heavy door to open it further.

“Get in, Vin,” Baird orders while Sven goes though, followed by Raven, who turns on the switch in the room to activate the lights. Baird goes in followed by Cole as they start to close the door, and lock it behind them.

“Alright Sven, get the burners out man, lets eat some grub,” Cole suggests as Sven puts down the pot and pulls out the burners on a table and turns them on.

“Hey, hand me some rolls willya,” says Baird as Cole pulls out two and hands them to him. Baird takes a seat next to Cole as he stuffs one of rolls in his mouth.

“Not bad, huh,” Cole grins as he watches Baird nodding his head while trying to chow it down. Feral steps over and around the space, hogging Gears as she helps herself to the chili and scoops it up out of the pot with a coffee cup.

“That’s it, baby, take what you need…you look like you could use a meal,” says Cole as Raven takes a roll from the pot and then takes a seat on the floor, propping herself against the wall.

“Are you saying I’m too skinny, Private?” Raven responds, before she sips her cup.

“I’m just sayin, you been working all day hiking and saving our hides, you could use a good meal…oh, and you can just call me Cole, or Gus, or the Cole Train,”

“Or shitbag, or numbnuts,” Baird adds in while Cole kicks him in the leg.

“Cole Train…I don’t get it,” says Raven in confusion.

“You never heard of the Cole Train?” Sven blurts out in shock, along with everyone else in the room, especially Cole.

“Should I have,” Raven admits as she found little grounds to be even remotely impressed.

''She actually doesn’t know who Cole is. This was absurd, everyone knows the Cole Train, right?''

Baird starts to chuckle while trying not to spit his food out at the same time.

“You mean to tell us…that…you don’t watch thrashball…and that you don’t know who the Cole Train is…this is priceless,” Baird continues to laugh, as he looks at Cole who seems to be dumbfounded by Raven’s response. Raven rolls her eyes as she breaks the ice.

“Actually, I did watch thrashball with my dad…when I was seven. But whatever the circumstances may be, Cole it is…and speaking of meals, you eat like a damn horse!”

“Yea, that’s me, baby…my momma always used to tell me that she would go broke just fixin my breakfast.”

Raven could tell he never missed a meal. The guy was built like the native snowbison bull, stout and strong. She could see how some Feral would find him to be potential for good breeding. Many Feral breeders picked men of impressive “genetics” when they have the choice. She see how he would be a potential, but he wouldn’t be her first choice. But he is sweet, I’ll give him that.

“Yep, I could eat all day if I wanted to.”

“In it that the truth, “ Baird mumbled as he stuffed the last bit of his meal in his mouth. He stands up and starts to strap off his chest plate.

“Hey Cole, give me a hand, willya?”

“Sure thing,” Cole says as he gets up to take off his armor.

While Cole helped Baird to remove his armor, Feral couldn’t help but to wonder what hormones the COG were feeding these guys. Although Baird was not quite as massive as Cole, his physique was not at anyway lacking either. She knew that Gears were men of such quality and had to be in terrific shape, although her impression of Damon, as far as genetics was concerned, was prospective, but the Feral would most likely remove his tongue to silence his flak.

Sven, on the other hand, was slightly smaller than Damon, maybe a couple of inches shorter, but still just as potential as any other competent soldier, if only he wasn’t such a dits. Then again, his youth was the most practical, from a breeding perspective, since some breeders prefer younger males, especially the juvenile females. The Feral seem to frown upon senior males mating with their younger stock. Raven gets up to go to another room to pullout pillows and a blanket. She brings them back and throws them on the icy floor. Though the air was not near as cold as the corridor, it was still a bit chilly inside the utility room.

As Cole goes to cleanup in the bathroom, the other two try to settle down for the night, gathering the pillows and propping them on the floor while attempting to get comfortable. Raven walks over Baird’s sprawled legs as she finds a spot against the wall and starts to dismount her holsters on her thighs. She then takes off her chest gear, leaving on her combat fatigues and loincloth. She sits down rubbing her arms to stay warm, even though she was for the most part, fully clothed.

“Cold?” Baird teases.

“No Baird…I’m just hugging myself,”

“Smartass,"

“Yea, well it takes one to know one, doesn’t it.”

Baird rolls his eyes at her as she huddles down, reclining on the wall while leaning against a pillow. Sven also huddles down against the wall, after he dislodges his breastplate and lays it down next to his Longshot.

“Dang, can it get any colder in here?” Sven complains.

“Well, Vin, since it’s below freezing outside, I would say, yea…it’s going to get colder.” Baird scoffs as he takes his goggles off his head and shuffles his blond hair with his hand. He turns to look at Raven, still huddled against the wall and suddenly notices that Cole was right, she was kind of tiny. She couldn’t be more than five foot, five inches tall and probably weighed no more than one hundred, twenty-five pounds, literally less than half of what they where. How did she ever survive in this on her own? The lights inside the room start to flicker while the three look up, wondering how long they have before the power goes out completely. Baird sets up a flashlight just in case as the three try to get comfortable on the cold, concrete floor.

Sven tries to prop himself with three pillows as he strategically places them around his core to keep him warm, but it doesn’t seem to be working for him.

“Ugh, this sucks…can’t we use the burners for heat?”

“No Vin, we don’t want to die from carbon monoxide poisoning.” Raven responds, slightly shivering as she pulls up her legs and wraps them with her arms, curling up on the floor.

It was so pitiful, Baird just couldn’t take it anymore.

“Sigh, alright…Feral, come over here.”

“What do you want, now,” she turned over and looked at him in puzzlement.

“Your not going to stay warm sitting up against a wall, Vinny’s not going to stay warm humping the pillow, and I’m sure as hell not going to be getting much sleep trying to keep my balls from shriveling into peanuts so come over here…you too Vinny.”

“Oh…uh…ok sir,” Sven obeys as he moves over and sits next to Baird.

“C’mon Feral, you too…we’re going to have to huddle.”

“Uh, I don’t like that idea, so…no,” she stares at Baird with a bitter expression.

“Look…just…sandwich yourself between Vinny and I, so we can keep each other warm…it’s the only way, and I seriously doubt this storm is going to pass us during the night.”

Raven continues to give him a blank stare. Baird rolls his eyes as he continues,

“I’m not asking you to marry me or anything like that…just…cooperate with us for a change instead of isolating yourself all the time…We’re supposed to work as a team, so why don't you start acting like it!”

Even though she found the idea to be appalling, she new he was right. So she reluctantly, started to make her way to the two Gears as she carefully began to sit down between Sven and Baird, while Baird opens up some blankets and places them on the floor underneath them.

“Ok, put your back to me, and Vinny, you put your back to Feral,”

“Ok sir,”

“And stop that sir crap, there’s no formalities here, kid.”

“Oh…sorry sir…I mean, ugh…I think I’ll go to sleep now.”

“Good…that means you can shut up now,” Baird griped as Raven attempts to make herself comfortable between the two men. As she nestled her backside closer to Baird, Sven would cuddle closer to Raven, with the back of his head, resting against her chest while Baird rested his chin right above her head. After they all finally get comfortable, the plan seemed to work as they thawed out from the crisp, cold air. This wasn’t so bad after all.

Baird let’s out a sigh as he props his head on his pillow, feeling Raven’s soft, hair nestled under his chin and her back brushed up against his torso. For a petite thing, she was pretty warm and cozy, but he didn’t dare to think any more of it beyond just that. But he couldn’t help to wonder if she thought of the same thing, which may be the reason why she was so reluctant before he swayed her to the idea. So he decides to break the awkward moment,

“This doesn’t mean we’re engaged or anything like that,” he says as Raven begins to chuckle.

“Was that a laugh?” Baird muses.

Raven takes in a deep breath and slowly exhales as she warms up next to him.

“Yes, Damon…it was a laugh,”

“And I was beginning to think you hated me,”

“For what?”

“Oh I don’t know…for being a “dick,” I guess.”

“You can only be what you are, Damon.”

“Yea, a dick, right?”

“No…just being Damon,”

Her answer catches him by surprise and was at loss for words when he suddenly heard stomping on the floor. Oh no!

“Ooo, oo, I want to cuddle too, move over, baby,” says Cole as he drops his pillow next to Baird and proceeds to cuddle up next to him. “Hey, hey, hey, easy Gus…shit!” Baird protests all the while Cole wraps his big arm around both Baird and Raven, pulling them closer to him. Raven could feel the squeeze from Cole’s massive brace, just meshing her tight into Baird’s sternum.

“Ok, knock it off, man,” Baird barks.

“But you’re so nice and warm, baby,” Cole nuzzles in closer.

“Hey, don’t you call me baby when you got your arm around me…the matter with you?” Baird sneers as he jabs his elbow into Cole’s ribs, pushing him back.

“Seriously…Cole…could you loosen up a bit…please?” Raven cringes, trying get past Cole’s hand, around her waist. He knew he kind of overdid it, but hey, at least he got to cop a feel, so he loosens up his grip. Sven shuffles back up to Raven as he puts a couple of pillows underneath his arm and curls into the fetal position. He sighs as he drifts to sleep, nuzzled between the pillows and Raven’s body heat.

Cole throws a blanket over himself and Baird, while Raven covers herself with Baird’s arm and Sven’s backside. Despite the awkward arrangement, all four finally huddled together for the night, feeding off each other’s warmth as they try to get some sleep.

“Hey, Damon,” Cole whispers.

“What is it, Gus?”

“I love you man.”

“Keep this up and I’ll shove my foot up your ass.”

“…Oooo, that sounds kinda kinky, heehee.” “Oh, shut up…”

Raven let’s out a slight snicker, amused by Damon’s homophobia.

The lights flicker again until the power finally went out, leaving nothing but the flashlight as their only source of illumination. As the four “cuddle” for the cold evening, Baird let’s out a sigh and starts to rant,

“…and just so you’re wondering… Cole, and you too Vinny,” Baird begins to inform them.

“This…does not, get out…ever.”

Chapter 11: A Cold Day in Hades
Back and forth you wander

through your mind

winter's passing over

but it won’t find you

Take what you can

change the seasons

Isolate yourself and

you will find

there’s no rhyme or reason

that it won’t find you

And I will find you

although I wonder

If I will climb through

this rock I'm under

I'm turning the page for something new

I'm finding my way through life in bloom

Seasons

Veer Union

A sense of warmth, creeps over Damon as he moans, cradled in the bliss of the body heat like an infant in utero. Stirring while half asleep, he peers with bleary eyes into the partial lit room they took refuge for the night away from the bitter cold, raging out in the wilderness that inevitably leaked into the corridor. The strategy he compromised worked as he was finally able to get some decent sleep despite they were on a concrete floor. Fortunately, between the pillows and each other, the night was much more comfortable than he anticipated.

Suddenly, an abrupt noise splits between the audio of the buzzing coming from the breaker box in the other room and Sven snoring, obnoxiously. Damon twitches from the audible bang, coming from inside the conduit.

Still groggy, Baird rubs his eyes while yawning as he tries to look around, stirring between the mass of bodies, nuzzled against his. As he moved slightly, he turns his bleary gaze down next to his torso as he quickly realized Sven, instead of Raven, was snuggled up against his chest. Repulsed as he shuddered, he pushes Cole’s massive, arm off of him and shoves Sven away, not fazing Sven at the least, whom was still snoring.

Uhg, he gripes as he gets up to brush the male, koodies off.

On top of the male “bonding,” along with the chilled, nip air and the sudden noise coming from conduit, it was not a bright morning. Or was it morning? Baird pulls out his watch from his pack as he looks at the time. Crap…it’s morning…that means we have to go out in this shitty weather. He carefully walks around, stepping over the two Gears as he starts to casually, kick Cole. He wasn’t going make any effort to bend over and touch him to wake him up.

“Cole…Cole, c’mon man, get up.”

Cole begins to stir as he opens up his eyes and let’s out an enormous yawn.

“Shit…what time is it?”

“It’s eight.”

“Already…damn.” Cole snorts, as he slowly gets up. Baird walks over to Sven, still snoring, and starts to kick him too.

“C’mon…get up shitbag,”

Baird kicks him a few more times, but Sven just continues to lie there, still fast asleep.

“Damn, that boy is a heavy sleeper.” Cole chuckles while Baird walks over to the table, grabs a cup and proceeds to the bathroom sink. He fills the cup with water and then steps back into the room as he makes his way over to Sven and dumps the water on his head. Sven, suddenly screams as he fidgets on the ground.

“Fuck, that’s cold…" he yells.

Cole starts to laugh.

“Good morning, sleepyhead.”

“Geez, warn me next time," Sven groans as he slowly crawls over to a chair and lifts himself in it, using the blanket to wipe the water on his head.

“We need to get going. I heard something from outside…where in the hell is Feral?” Baird notices as the other two just look at each other and shrugged.

“Alright…just, grab your gear…and take a blanket or two.”

“You got it,” says Cole.

“Sure,” Sven yawns, gradually picking up his rifle.

The three Gears put their armor back on and load up their weapons while they gather up the unused flares and flashlights. As they gather up their supplies, Baird notices that one of the flashlights is missing.

“Ok, I am going to take a wild guess that Feral went out of the utility room.” Baird mentions as he finishes loading up his gear.

“Maybe…whoe, wait…do you think she left us?” Cole ponders.

“Sigh, how the hell should I know, Gus, I just work here.”

“Well, we need to go find her.”

“Whoe, wait…who’s this we stuff?”

Cole gives a Baird a conspicuous glare.

“Whaaat?” Baird scorns, as Cole retains his demeanor. Baird finally gives in.

“Ugh…fine, we’ll go out and find her…shit.” Baird groans while Cole starts to grin.

“Oh c’mon man, you can’t tell me you wouldn’t want a piece of that.”

Baird rubs his sinuses between his eyes in annoyance.

“I try not to think about it, now damnit, Cole…fuck, now I’ve got that in my head, thanks a lot, asshole!”

“Heehee…I was right!”

“Does that mean we’re going outside?” says Sven in between yawns. Baird turns to give Sven a look of pure sarcasm.

“No Vinny, we’re just going to sit here and sing campfire songs all day long until our balls freeze up and fall off,”

“Ew, that’s not cool,”

Baird begins to gesture his irritation.

“YES VIN…WE ARE GOING OUTSIDE!”

Baird stomps over to the door as he yanks it open and storms out into the corridor.

“Uh, I guess he isn’t a morning person,” Sven mutters.

“Nah, he’s like that all the time…twenty-four, seven,” says Cole.

“Great.”

Sven and Cole follow Baird out into the corridor. Baird lights up a flare, while Sven turns on a flashlight, moving around the lit area circumference as they look around. The corridor was otherwise, pitch black and for the most part, quiet.

“Maybe she went back to the dam.” Sven mumbled, waiting for another scolding from Baird.

“Sigh, that may be a possibility…shit, I really don’t want to have to go back there,” Baird remorse’s.

“Shit, me neither,” Cole adds as he shifts his chest plate into place.

Suddenly, a faint noise breaks the silence as the three Gears turn their heads to the same direction down the corridor to where the noise originated, from. Baird carefully lifts up the flare as he steps ahead of them, trying to extend their visibility. He yells out,

“Feral…is that you?”

There was no response. Baird called out again.

“Ok, Feral, if it’s joke it’s getting old.”

Again, no response but the same noise startled them again as it was closer than the first time they heard it. Baird slowly moves his hand onto his pistol in his holster as he slowly takes a few more steps forward, with the other two behind him, getting their weapons ready. The three try to peer in the dark as far as the light would let them, but nothing was in site.

“Maybe it’s the wind,” Sven speculates out loud.

“No, it’s not the fucking wind, Vinny,” Baird retorts quietly.

“Wait…did you here that,” Cole whispers.

“Yea…it’s getting closer,” Baird responds as he slowly pulls out his pistol, while the other three take a few steps back behind Baird. He turns his head over his shoulder to see them stepping back.

“Ok, what the fuck guys…get your asses up here!”

But before they could respond, a sudden snarling, low crawling beast jumps out of the dark, advancing at Baird.

“WRETCH,” Cole blurts out while Damon tries to melee the beast off of him.

“SHIT, get off me,” Baird hollers as he melee’s the beast again and again, until he shoved it away and then shot at it until it laid motionless. He carefully walked over and kicked it a few times to see if it was dead. The wretch didn’t move.

“Son of bitch…there’s bound to be more, we need to move in,” Baird commanded.

“You mean we have to go after them,” Sven griped.

“If we don’t, they’ll just keep coming at us in the dark…ah damnit.”

“You think…they got Feral.” Cole worried.

“Sigh, we’re going to find out, Cole.”

Baird took out his Lancer and then threw his flare down the corridor to expand their visibility. Just as the flare stopped moving, more wretches started to climb out from the darkness and started making their way to the Gears.

“Oh, shit,” Sven squeeled as he tightened his shotgun in his hand.

“Get em,” Baird roared as the three began to fire at them from a few meters away.

“WHOO, yea, bring it,” Cole busts out, as he marches into the fray, swinging his massive arms on top of them.

“Oh, you want some more if this?”

Cole starts to fire his Gnasher while Sven melee’s with his.

“Yea, suck it down,” Sven gets into the moment as more charge in. Sven then takes out two more with his shotgun.

Baird quickly puts up the melee handle on his Lancer as he revs up the chainsaw bayonet. As a wretch darts in his direction, he plummets the mechanism into the snarling beast as the blood and entrails scatter all around, blinding the other wretches near it. Pulling the Lancer back after he sawed it in half, he kicks another with his boot while meleeing another with the Lancer, using the teeth of the saw to hack it.

Nearby, Cole decimates several others with his shotgun, leaving a mangled mess on the ground while some more continue to keep coming.

“Damn…we got some more closing in,” Cole yells out as Sven and Baird brace themselves for another assault.

As they make their way into the light, Cole and Sven step behind while Baird fires his Lancer, taking out a few before they move in closer.

Baird revs up the bayonet and starts to cut into the crowd, while Sven melees with his Gnasher, swinging his shotgun, knocking off a few heads. Cole stomps on a few as he swings his shotgun, sending one flying across the floor of mangled masses.

After Damon finishes cutting through a few more, the assault comes to a halt as they look around, trying to find any more live one’s. “WOOT…that was awesome,” says Sven, amazed with himself.

“Hehe, you know it,” Cole adds as he kicks a few out of the way.

Baird steps around the garbled cadavers, to pick up the burning flare he threw out in front of them.

As the three try to make their way out of the pile of wretch carcasses, they suddenly here a faint voice coming from a distance. They turn to see someone coming, holding a light as it started to come closer.

“Guys, is that you?”

They instantly recognize it to be Raven, moving towards them out of the darkness, panting as if she had been running for awhile. “Damn, baby…you can’t just be walkin out on us like dat,” Cole scolded as Baird joined in.

“Cole’s right, damnit Feral, we were thinking the worst.”

“Wait a sec…we were thinking the worst...or was it you that was thinking the worst,” Raven responded, while still catching her breath. He instantly changes the subject,

“You can’t keep leaving us in the dark, Rav. How the hell are we suppose to follow you if you’re always a mile ahead of us?”

“Well, first off, I thought you would still be asleep, and second, I had to check and clear the corridor. Everybody else was looking for shelter from the storm and this corridor was a perfect candidate.”

“Yea, well you missed a few.”

“These must have been the ones who took off. There was quite a handful of them earlier, we’ll be passing them up here shortly.” “What do you mean, a handful?”

“Sigh, you’ll see Baird…this way, I'll escort you to the exit.”

Raven turns around to continue down the corridor while the others followed, keeping their weapons ready. Raven turns over her shoulder, “Oh, by the way, the storm has dissipated.”

“It’s still pretty fucking cold.” Baird grumbled as he observed the warm air bursting form his mouth as he griped. Cole pulled out the blanket and wrapped it around his arms while Sven placed his sniper goggles in his pack to keep the frost off of them. Baird took out a torn bed sheet and wrapped it around his neck, using it as a scarf.

The three noticed that Raven had some additional attire as well, including a velvet scarf, wrapped around her head and neck, with the long fringes hanging down her back. She also had some tied pieces of cloth around her upper thighs, above her holsters, and around her chest. As they continue to move forward, they notice a fowl stench mixed with the familiar stench of wretches, as they pass by their burnt corpses, apparently slaughtered by Raven, earlier that morning.

“Geez, that reeks,” Sven groans as he covers his nose.

“Yea…those wretches are pretty nasty, but this smells worse” Cole commented as they carefully walk around the corpses, trying not to get any smelly bowls on their boots.

“Ah, crap, Feral…you used your napalm grenades, didn’t you,” Baird complained with his hand over his mouth and nose, “…so that’s what that noise was, shit!”

“You heard that?”

“Uh, yea…those nades make loud noises, especially in a conduit. It’s the perfect conductor…shit, it fucking stinks! Did you have to use them?”

“Well, I couldn’t have well killed them all with just two pistols, now could I…so yes, I had to use the nades. They have a lot more splash damage for the job, but it did scare some away and apparently made their way back to you guys. I was trying to find them earlier but I couldn't see too well in here.”

“Ah, baby, it idn’t nuttin we couldn’t handle, right Baird,” said Cole, nudging Baird at the same time.

“Yea, whatever…” Baird groaned while he continued, “…ah, damn…this shit’s never coming out of my fatigues…look at this!”

Baird rants as he tries to brush off the entrails from the back of his legs and buttocks, which was splattered from their recent spat.

“Hey, Feral…come over here and help me get this off since your primarily responsible for this,” Baird gestures.

“What...I’m not going to touch your ass…get one of your men to help you,” Raven responds with an “as if,” expression.

“I’ll do it,” Sven volunteers.

“Touch me Vinny, and I’ll shoot you,” Baird warns as he attempts to brush his back, while walking at the same time.

“Don’t worry, baby…I’ll come and clean yo white ass,” Cole joins in as he approaches Baird and proceeds to wipe off the entrails.

“Hey…quite that!”

Baird shoos Cole off, while Cole backs off, laughing.

“Yea, laugh at this, asshole,” Baird sneers, as he gives Cole the middle finger.

“Oh, you know you love me, don’t deny it…you shoulda heard what he whispered in my ear last night,” Cole nudges Raven with his elbow, while he chuckles.

“Ok…that’s it,” Baird fumes as he turns around, but before he could do anything, Sven yells out, “Hey, is that light up ahead?”

All four turn their attention towards the conduit exit.

“What…wait…I think the kid’s right,” Cole admits while Baird turns right around peering out. He starts to rant some more,

“Holy shit…we are actually coming to the light at the end of the fucking tunnel! Imagine that!”

Baird quickly moves up to the front while Raven races behind him.

“Wait, Damon…not so fast.”

Baird slows down.

“What the hell for?”

“We don’t know what’s at the exit.”

“You just said you came from up there, and it was clear!”

“That was over two hours ago, Damon. Besides, what’s the hurry?”

“I’m tired of this conduit…it’s dark and fucking cold in here.”

“Well, it’s lit and fucking cold, out there.”

“At least it’s not dark!”

“So you’re scared of the dark?”

“No I’m not scared of the dark, and that’s not the fucking point,”

“So what is the point…that you’re just so, damn cranky in the morning, right?”

“I’m cranky all the time, haven’t you figured that out by now, der!”

“Oh, so I guess this is just all part of your charm,”

“Damn right, so quit jinxing it!”

As the two continue to bicker back and forth, Cole and Sven look on in amazement, wondering how the two have not yet managed to strangle one another. Cole starts to share his thoughts out loud,

“Heehee, if you didn’t know any better, you would thinks they was married,” Cole snickers as he nudges Sven, who is trying not to laugh, but starts to snicker anyway.

“I heard that, Cole!” Baird blasts, looking over his shoulder.

“Heard, what…what did he say,” Feral demanded while Cole and Baird respond in unison,

“Nothing!”

“Agh,” Raven miffs as she quickly storms forward, separating herself from the Gears as far as her short legs can take her.

“Thank God…she’s going away,” Baird snorts as he moves forward, trying to keep the distance Raven had already established between them.

As they get closer to the end of the corridor, their eyes begin flinch from the bright, winter light, reflecting from the ice and snow. They were walking on the snow that was blown in from the storm before they even got close to the exit.

“Damn…look at all this white shit,” Cole looks in amazement.

“Geez, how strong did the wind have to be to blow all this in here,” Sven ponders as they trudge through snow, getting deeper the closer they get to the exit.

“It’s clear…come on out,” Raven announced from the top of the snow hill just outside the exit.

“Shit, it’s getting deeper,” Baird gripes as he rotates his pelvis to pull his legs through the mess, bringing his knees up and over the hip, deep snow. Cole and Sven struggle to do the same, slowing their pace as they pull themselves through the white mess and finally out into the open, outside of the conduit on the other side of the mountain.

“Wow, look at that lake,” Sven points out while the others turn to look at the massive body of water as he continued,

“After what blew in last night, I bet it’s frozen solid.”

“It will have to if we intend to cross it,” says Baird while he sees Raven slowly coming towards them. She trudges through the snow, trying to regroup with them while talking at the same time.

“We will have to go around the lake,” she informs them.

“Now why did I have a feeling you were going to say that,” Baird moaned as he rubs his eyes, shielding them from the bright light. He then brings his goggles over his eyes.

“The Stranded settlement is somewhere on the other side, but it is too far into the day to go investigate without being seen.”

“So we going to check them out at night,” says Cole.

“Early morning, actually,” Raven turns to Cole.

“But why so late,” Cole asks.

“Well, the alcohol usually hits them about one in the morning…”

“And they will probably sleep in until hangover time, later that afternoon,” Baird jumps in while Raven finishes.

“Correct…they will most likely be coherent for the rest of the day until after nightfall,” she says.

“Do they have outposts nearby,” Baird asks, trying to map the area in his head while Raven responds,

“On the other side of the lake they do, the last time I checked. Therefore, if we go around, we can flank them undetected, unless they send out their scouts, but there’s a lot of cover in the woods that we can use to our advantage if we take the route I’m suggesting.”

Damon narrows his brow in suspicion as he looks at Raven. She finally gives in.

“Sigh…there’s also a secret supply stash between here and our destination, but again, we have to go around the lake.”

“Uh huh…just as I suspected,” Baird mutters as he adjusts his Lancer and shotgun, and starts to make his way towards the snow covered countryside ahead.

“Ok kiddies…through the mountain, around the lake, to grandmother’s house, we go…”

Intermission I
APC’s carrying additional recruits make their way into Fort Block to be stationed and reformed into new squads as the officers make arrangements to keep them on their toes, assigning them with a multitude of petty projects.

Anya watches from the comm. station, seeing all the fresh faces, overshadowing the veteran one’s, which are now dwindling next to nothing. She looks out while waiting to hear from Delta, whom was dropped a few hours after the first deployment of the Farrall Offensive and later picked up before the snowstorm came through. They were deployed the following morning to scan for the whereabouts of their lost squads. With six squads unaccounted for, one that is lost off the mark, only four made it to the drop zone, but even then, only three made it back to Fort Block. Out of five of the Feral that they had assigned to the squads, only three returned. Like so many missions before, the race to salvage what is left of Jacinto has left them with little to go by while their outposts are still being harassed, picking at their defenses by either the Locusts or the Stranded, they where not entirely sure who it was as of yet.

Although they found the Stranded settlements, by the time they got to them, they were already abandoned, as if they knew they were coming. Their Feral allies were able to regroup and guide the rest of the squads safely back to be picked up, but they lost one bird out of three on the way back. They took out a handful of Locust outposts along the way but there were many still unaccounted for. It didn’t take long to realize the mission was a near failure.

As Anya looks over her consol, she tries to enhance the satellite picture of the valley that was taken a month ago, but to no avail could she get an accurate reading of the land. What is wrong with the radar on this thing? She makes a rough diagram of Sigma’s last contact, the only contact she has received from any of the lost squads as the others remained mute. She rests her head on her hand, waiting in anticipation, hoping to hear something from someone when the radio suddenly began to sound off in between the static transmissions.

Anya reaches over the consol in anticipation,

“Hello, this is control, do you read?”

She alters the frequency to get a better signal as the static slowly began to fade and she could hear voices again.

“This is control, do you read?”

''“Roger that, control. This is Delta, come in.”''

“Oh, thank God, Affirmative Delta, I read you loud and clear,"

“We have searched through the wooded plain and we found a down Raven along the way…it has been completely destroyed but we were able to salvage part of a serial number,"

“Go ahead, Delta…”

"The partial number is XY78469…there’s more but it is not readable, can you get record on it,"

“Affirmative, Sergeant, I am searching the KR inventory now…”

Anya waits as she watches her terminal search through a laundry list of countless sequences of serial numbers of every single King Raven that was ever manufactured, even though only a few remain that are active. The computer finally isolated a class of King Raven’s, assigned by their assembly codes from a factory long desecrated from when the Locusts attacked their key manufacturing plants.

The list dwindled further into a handful of possible serial numbers, many of which were already destroyed prior before Operation Hollow. The computer screen came to a halt as it listed four possibilities of presently active Raven’s.

“Ok, Delta, I have four possibilities, but it may take a few minutes to narrow it down,”

“Understood, control,”

Anya started with the first, looking at it’s combat history and the pilots, co-pilots assigned to the bird throughout it’s career. She moved onto the next as she again, reviewed its records, searching for anything that may have any relation to Operation Farrall, and sure enough, KR-four, three.

“Ok Delta, I have found the King Raven in question…KR-43, and…oh God, Marcus…that’s Sigma’s bird.”

…Affirmative control…when was their last contact?

“Their last contact was shortly before he snowstorm, yesterday evening from Hurl Dam.”

''“Hurl Dam? But that’s off of the route to the drop zone, what the hell are they doing over at the dam?”''

“They probably had to find cover from the storm, and according to Corporal Baird, they have reason to suspect that there was a Stranded settlement near the glacier lake up north.”

“So it’s possible that we deployed our men the wrong way.”

“It is the pending theory, Sergeant.”

“Shit…Understood…have you received any contact from Sigma since then?”

“Negative Sergeant…Baird mentioned that he couldn’t contact the other squads…there have been reports that the radios are not functioning properly, they may still be having communication problems.”

“Understood control, so where do we go from here?”

“Report back to Fort Block, we may have some updates on the schematics, according to the Feral scout team.” “The Feral?”

“Affirmative Sergeant…we have accumulated some more Feral that have been displaced recently, and three of them speak fluent Tyran. They have claim to have some updates on the locations of the insurgencies.”

“Roger that control…we’re in route now.”

Chapter 12: Just Another Day in Paradise
We all have something that digs at us,

At least we dig each other

So when weakness turns my ego up

I know you'll count on the me from yesterday

If I turn into another

Dig me up from under what is covering

The better part of me

Incubus

Dig

The storm left behind a winter wonderland as the terrain was glistening in white, filling the air of its sweet winter aroma. It was as if the storm cleansed the sky, pushing away the stale air further towards the oceanfront, near Ferrall.

Baird’s pupils finally contracted to adjust to the bright light, as he lifts his goggles from his eyes to get a better look at the terrain. Ahead of him, he could see Cole and Sven making friendly conversation with their Feral guide, Raven, as they trek into the knee-deep snow, around a large glacier lake east of the rolling valley.

He scratches his head with a leaflet in hand, the one he managed to pocket in his armor when they we’re searching the Locusts back at the damn for ammunition. Reading the lettering, some of which he was able to decipher, the paper apparently was a “psalm” of sorts, chanting about “seducing,” or “charming” the beasts of the Hollow with song. Beyond that, Baird could only guess that it was some religious documentation, but why it was in the possession of a peon Bolter was what confused Baird the most. The meaning evaded him for the time being as he stopped for a moment to put it back in his leg pack and continues to relish on his thoughts as he follows behind the others.

This is the most at peace he has ever been in awhile, to have a moment to appreciate the beauty in nature without just catching small glances while running for his life. Although he does not drop his guard completely, as he continues to look around, he can finally breathe at ease for the moment, pondering their current situation. For the most part, Cole was right, Feral has been taking care of them, which kind of comes to a surprise since she has long insinuated that she prefers isolation, rather than “hanging” out with anybody, much less a handful of male twats. ''Why hasn’t she left us? She could have abandoned us easily, leaving us to rot in this shit.'' Although he had his theories, the answer continued to elude him. Baird shakes the thought out of his head as he starts to eavesdrop on the others’ conversation, listening to Sven ramble on about his experiences in highschool that most guys usually had to go through to enter the ultimate right of passage, otherwise better known as puberty.

“Anyway…I knew this one girl, back in highschool,” Sven begins his story before Cole interrupts.

“Hehe, you knew girls in highschool?”

Baird laughs to himself.

Oh geez, they’re talking about girls.

Sven tried to continue as if he didn’t catch on to Cole’s gag. Actually, it probably really did go over his head, but nevertheless, Baird could tell Raven was trying to be polite while Sven rambled on.

“Yea, and this chick was hot too! I mean, she was skimpin in this one outfit…I could tell she wasn’t wearing much underneath…”

Raven interrupts,

“Uh, ok, you’re going to have to define “hot,” for me,” Raven suggests as her remark caught Sven completely off guard.

“Well…uh…gee, I guess I would have to say…ah, crap…what was I going to say?”

Good one Vinny, that was smooth, Baird says to himself.

Cole starts to laugh.

“Here…let me help you out, Vin,” Cole cuts in while Baird moans.

Oh, God, here it comes. “What he means is the kinda chick that can make a man stand up straight by just walking by, you know,”

Raven just glared at him, trying to figure out where Cole was going with this. Baird could tell she wasn’t the least bit impressed, but she attempted to be polite by letting Cole ramble on.

“Don’t get me wrong, most chicks are not bad looking, and then there are others that are “hot,” the kind that made you sweat from just looking at em!”

“Uh huh,” Raven acknowledged, not making any attempt to see from his point of view. How could she? She wasn’t a guy, so how does she know what the hell makes a guy “sweat” in the presence of a “hot” girl?

“I mean the one’s that have, nice, juicy, taataa’s, those sour, pout lips, and the kind of ass that you just want to go, uh!”

Cole tries to imitate his gesture by holding his massive hands in front of him as if he was going to grab something. Raven rolls her eyes as she quickly realizes that this was going nowhere.

“You know…ok, I take it back…we need stop and move onto something else,” she says.

Baird jumps into the conversation from behind.

“Yea, Cole’s getting a hard on just talking about it,” Baird chuckles while Cole turns around,

“Hey, since when did you decide to contribute to the conversation?”

The other two were surprised by Baird’s entrance since he was pretty much to himself for almost an hour.

“The minute somebody brought up the topic about “chicks.”

“Shit, Damon, what do you know about chicks…in fact, when was the last time you had a G.F.?”

“Well gee, Cole, since I spend most of my time, getting shot at, running around in Locust fortresses, crawling around inside giant worms, oh, and almost the entire time, I’m spending doing all this, saving your ass! So needless to say, it’s been awhile!”

“Yea, whatever! You haven’t had any boon since…damn…it has been awhile!”

“Shut up Cole, you haven’t been getting any either!”

Cole was about to respond but then he realized that Baird was right. Neither one of them had any romantic, social dealings with the female type in probably longer than they would really want to admit. It was, for the most part, against policy to fraternize with female officers, not to mention most all other females where relocated to “breeding camps,” which made such social interaction limited.

This brought Baird to question as to how the Feral reproduced. He had heard of stories of Gears coming across Feral camps, but they usually ended in a catastrophe. He has only heard of one incident where a soldier was coerced to impregnate a “breeder,” and live to tell about it. “So…what about you Feral,” says Cole, trying to keep the conversation going to pass the time.

“About…what,” she replied.

“Ya know…got a man somewhere that we don’t know about?”

“Hey yea, you go out and get some?” Sven tinkered with the thought. Perv!

Raven chuckles in amusement.

“Are you kidding, please, the Feral are very strict about keeping our animal drives in check and breeding outside of the matriarch’s counsel…besides, you Gears are pretty clueless concerning the female psyche…no offense.”

“Wait…counsel…is that what you chicks “call” it,” Baird looks up in curiosity.

“Every Feral has a set of guidelines that she is required to follow concerning her advances. To deviate from those guidelines would end up in excommunication, or sometimes termination,” said Raven.

“Gee Feral…you run away to avoid being “bred” like a horse, only to end up with a faction that dictates your sex life, or else! I’m having a hard time seeing the difference here…and you’re calling us clueless?”

Baird continued to pick at her brain, gathering mental notes on how the Feral functioned as a culture, since most of the COG’s intel on the Feral was modest at best, but doing it without offending her at the same time was not something he did very well. Raven continued,

“The “breeding camps” were exploiting the women for purposes other than just “breeding,” Baird. The COG new damn well that some of the facilities was being run by pedophiles, and yet they didn’t do anything about until it was too late. We knew about it because some of those girls managed to run away, and the Feral picked them up.”

The conversation took a turn that only Baird could entertain, trying to get in the last word,

“Look, I’m not saying that nothing unethical was going on, but your accusing the COG of running people’s lives without merit, while the Feral are practically doing the same exact thing. Your being kinda hypocritical, Raven!”

“There’s a difference in deciding something for the better welfare of the community, and then there is just plain, jane, dictatorship.”

“Oh, and how’s that?”

“Do you really think Chairman Prescott is in all of this for the sake of “saving humanity?”

“What do think he’s doing it for?”

“Well what do men of power always want…more power, and how can he help it? He was born into power, his family, the Prescott “dynasty.” What else can he be…he pretends to participate as a soldier to boost up his ranks and then wiggled his way into politics effortlessly, all the while, using the policies of his predecessors during the Pendulum Wars to wipe out settlements, confiscate weapons of mass destruction and obliterate almost all of what was left of Sera’s resources, I mean seriously, do I need to go on?”

“It’s amazing what people have to do when their back is up against the wall, Feral, especially when we got a race of “beings,” whose only intent is to wipe us clean off the planet! Like any other leader, he had to make difficult decisions…it’s not like he had a lot of other convenient choices.”

“Do you really believe that, Damon? I find it hard to believe that you, a frequent delinquent, accept things at face value, especially someone with a countless history of insubordination for pissing off authority figures!”

Well that caught Baird off guard. Even Cole and Sven turned to her in shock. She continued, perched on her high horse.

“Yes, gentlemen…I know about your personnel profiles…I reviewed them before we left. Don’t think I was going to jump into something without doing my homework. And as far as the COG are concerned, I was raised, reciting the “Octus Canon,” every damn morning before school started. My “dad” would take me to his base to show me how the Gears work, like taking your kids to work day and would attempt to orient me into the regime. So to answer the question that I know has been lingering in the back of your head, Baird, no, I’m not just some dumb cunt who so happens to have some “beef” with the COG.”

“Well shit, Feral, excuse me for being clueless that you didn’t have any personal issues regarding the COG.”

“I don’t!”

“Uh huh…so seriously, who are you banging?”

“What the hell kind of question was that?”

“I don’t know, ask Cole, he’s the one who wanted to know,” Baird grins while Cole was trying to catch up from the previous topic to the next.

“Oh, sorry Gus, we’re talking about sex now” Baird starts to snicker while Cole gives him a dirty look.

“Yea, very funny, jackass!”

“Cmon, I’m just sticking out for ya…so anyway, Feral, what is your “present” breeding status?”

“What breeding status?”

“Are you single, or do you have someone you see regularly, are you still a virgin,…”

“Are we seriously having this discussion right now?”

“Uh…yea!”

Cole and Sven just glare in interest, waiting to see what she says next.

“Alright, Damon, I’m not going to give you the satisfaction of answering that question for the sake of your own personal amusement.” “So you are a virgin.”

“Does it really matter if I am or not?”

“Not really, I’m just trying to get a rise out of ya.”

“Cole’s right, you are a jackass!”

“Hehe, told ya, baby! Hey, Vinny…you owe me ten bucks!” says Cole while Baird sneers back.

“Oh, so you can hack into our computer network and somehow access our personnel files, which is classified, by the way, and now suddenly you take offense when we ask you about your love life, bullshit!”

Raven starts to snicker at Damon’s defiance.

“Well, that sounds more like a personal problem, Baird.”

“Damn right, especially when I’m taking some flak from someone who’s never had any cock!”

Well that did it.

“Alright, that’s it! This conversation’s over.” Raven storms off, putting distance between them as fast as she can, moving in knee, deep snow. The three watch as she huffs away, cussing under her breath.

“Damnit Baird, I thought Marcus told you not to piss her off,” Cole starts to rant at Baird, reminding him, again about the mission at hand.

But it’s too much fun!

“We seriously need to work on your “talking to girls,” skills,” Cole continues to rant, realizing Baird just ruined their chance to maybe somewhat bond.

“Geez yea…we were trying to get her to open up, ya know,” Sven butts in.

“We’re not here to pick up chicks, guys,” Baird reminds them without any regret.

Sven groans, thinking back when he had some rather sweet interactions with girls, wondering if he will ever have the opportunity to do it again. “This bites…will we ever get back to normal…you know, when we could pick up chicks?”

“Sigh…maybe one day kid, we just got to keep our head in the game for now,” Cole mutters, thinking back in the day when he had women, jumping through fire hoops, just to say “hi” to him. But it’s been fifteen years they have been fighting the Locusts, how much more longer will it be before they can even say things will be back to normal?

Damon kept to himself as he trudged on, trying not to let Raven get too far ahead, or she’ll abandon them for sure. Memories of his past, begin to subconsciously, surface as he revisited his own “social” experience with women, which, needless to say was few in between. When he did, it was anything but positive which may have contributed to his “cynical” attitude, especially when it concerned girls. Although he is most likely capable of producing offspring, he avoids settling down as if it was the plague. To say the least, he was content living the rest of his existence as a “childless” bachelor.

As he watches ahead, Raven continues to storm through the snow, wondering how long she’s going to hold a grudge now. Considering he’s been harassing her consciousness since touchdown, she seems to be tolerating Baird, especially since most people would normally, take an instant dislike to him. But then again, maybe it’s because she’s stuck with him and she has to tolerate him. Or maybe she’s just saving her “rants,” and all of her frustrations to shove down his throat all at once, for later. Oh that’s going to be fun!

He then realized something Dom told him once, and that was few in between, about how he dealt with Maria when she got mad at him for whatever reason and she wouldn’t talk to him for days. Although Damon was never one to take any advice from Dom, however he did agreed that no man knows, no wrath, more loathing than a woman scorned. So something is going to have to give, before wrath bites Sigma squad in the ass.

''Shit. I’m going to have to kiss her ass, or kiss and make up, hmm…what would be the lesser of the two evils?'' In any case, he knew if he didn’t somehow reconcile, he would never hear the end of it from Marcus, or Hoffmann for that matter, and then Dom will rub it in his face. Fucktard.

“Sigh…wait back here guys…I’m going to have to go and patch this,” Baird loathes as he picks up the pace, while Cole yells out,

“Hey…if you kiss and make up, I want details…remember…bros before hos!” Cole and Sven start to snicker as Baird waves his hand with his back still facing them.

“You think he’s really going to do it,” Sven ponders.

“Shit, knowing Baird…I bet you another ten bucks she’ll punch him in the face before he even thinks of laying a smooch on her,” Cole snickers.

“You’re on!”

The two clamp fists, knuckle to knuckle as they turn to look ahead, watching Baird climb up through the deep snow.

Baird tries to catch up as Raven keeps her pace steady, not realizing that he was trying to close in their distance. Shit, does this chick ever get tired of hiking?

He manages to get into audio range as he calls out.

“Feral…hey…wait!”

“What for? I thought I told you…”

“Yea, yea, yea, I heard you the first time.”

Feral then stops in her pace to allow Baird to catch up, noticing the other two where still pretty far behind.

“Oh, I see you left your “motley crew” in the ditch…where they boring you with useless “guy stuff?”

Baird flashes a sarcastic grin and then slumps back to his usual facial demeanor.

“No, that’s not why I sprinted all the way up here.”

“I’ll say, you sure keep up better than Cole. He really needs to do more steady cardio and less weights.”

“I know…I think his thrashball training has him brainwashed.”

Feral let’s out a chuckle as she continues to walk forward along with Baird.

“Ok, so are you still pissed at me,” he asks.

“Maybe.”

“I suppose that’s an honest answer…look, ok, I know I said something…”

Here it goes,

“…that was insensitive…”

“Wait, are you actually apologizing…do I need to record this?”

“C’mon, gimme a break,”

“You, don’t apologize to anyone, much less a bitchy Feral…ok, what are you really trying to do?”

“Seriously, are you going to let me finish?”

“Relax, Baird…I’m not going to abandon the team, or drop y’all like a hat and leave y’all to fend for yourselves…”

“And why wouldn’t you?”

“What do mean, why wouldn’t I?”

“Well, all we ever seem to do is to slow you down and piss you off,”

“Cole doesn’t piss me off, Vinny normally doesn’t piss me off,

“All right, all right, I get it, it’s all me,”

“No, that’s not it either.”

“Then what is it…why do you stick around?”

“The same reason I agreed to come to the COG in the first place.”

“And what’s that?”

“It doesn’t matter right now, what does matter is that I take you guys safely around the terrain to the Stranded rebel camps until the mission is complete.”

“Well, as you noticed, we strayed off that course a long time ago,” Baird groaned, trying to make sense of things that he really couldn’t confirm and that annoyed him. But at least he lives to still bitch about it.

“So, you’re really not going to abandon us, huh?”

“Just you.”

“Oh…alright…at least we cleared that up.”

Raven gives him a sarcastic look and then starts to laugh.

“Oh c’mon, I was just joking, at you’re expense of course, but still…you do really need to lighten up, Damon.”

“Yea…I get that a lot on my psych evaluation that I am required to attend, once a year…that and piss in a cup.”

Raven laughs at Baird’s gesture as he talks. She continues the conversation.

“I know they did health check ups, but psych evaluations…that must be new.”

“They started it almost ten years ago.”

“Well then I guess you must be ok…they haven’t declared you insane.”

“Nope…at least, not yet.”

“So what else do they violate you with?”

“The usual…they put a queue tip up the shaft to check for urinal infections, STD’s, anal probes,”

“Geez, Damon, seriously?”

“Well, when the time is right, I guess, they want to make sure our plumbing is working properly, and safely. There’s no point in the use if we’re shooting, infected blanks.”

“They check your sperm count, too? I mean…what for if you guys don’t find the time to…well…procreate, especially when they have regulations on fraternization?”

“Well that’s funny because I was going to ask you the same.”

“What do you mean?”

“I don’t understand why your…superiors…have to dictate your sex life to produce offspring…I mean, why not just go out, find some sucker, woo him to get you knocked up and then leave his sorry ass, return to your “camp” and live happily ever after with your little brat?”

“Ok, I’m not exactly sure what they taught you back in highschool, or, what your personal experience is, concerning the concept, but there is both a philosophy and science to human reproduction.”

“Uh…are…are you for real…because I never would have put sex in the same bracket as quantum physics.”

Raven gives him a sour look while Baird catches on to her expression.

“Sigh…go on…” he let’s her continue,

“Look…and this is assuming you have performed coitus before,”

“Yes, I have, moving along…”

“Every woman has a season where she is more “fertile,” than others, during the cycle.”

“Cycle…as in every twenty eight days?”

“Well, that, and once every year…out of four seasons, or quarters.”

“And you either fall into one of those four categories, during the year and month,”

“Precisely…depending on the time of her birth, will dictate her biological clock, in reference to the seasonal terrestrial clock, Bloom, Brume, Thaw, or Frost.”

“I thought women can get pregnant all year round?”

“Most normally can, it’s just that during their estrus is when they are, I guess, much more susceptible to conception.”

“Ok…so, what terms do you use for the monthly cycle?”

“We use Sera’s elements…water, fire, soil, and air, to label the phase of the month”

“Have you ever, “witnessed,” the results of this so called rhythm method?”

“As a matter of fact, I have. The Feral have successfully managed to assist women, who have been labeled barren, to producing, healthy offspring.”

“Really?”

“I know what you’re thinking, but as I have mentioned to you before,”

“Yea, yea, not one girl is going to be the same as another,”

“And on top of all this, some females are much more sensitive to their timing, while others are not. For some reason, they do not have the ability to breed all year round, therefore, if they do not mate within that brief time frame, any other attempt will be unsuccessful. I have reason to believe that the “breeding farms” dismissed some women as infertile, when, in fact, they have a capable system, its just finicky. Now, why that is, I am not entirely sure…that information was not oriented to me at the time of my own evaluation.”

“Wait, you’ve been briefed on your “custom” fertility rate?”

“All of us have. We have all been cultured, and trained to be productive. It’s just that the “breeders,” have been conditioned extensively to seduce and mate, while say, my training, has been basic. They have found me to be…of more value elsewhere.”

“Should I even ask, as to how, they…demonstrate, or…um…”

“Do you really want to hear this?”

“Sigh, not really,”

“Besides, I told Cole and Sven about it…I’m sure you’ll hear it from them.”

“You what?! Shit, Feral, now I’m never going to hear the end of this!”

“Your welcome!”

“I can’t believe you’ve been telling them how to…”

“Give it rest, Damon…besides, the only things I told them are probably stuff they already had some knowledge on from reading the material on the bathroom walls.”

“Uh huh…so scouting and hacking is more up your ally than…uh…ah, hell, I’ll just say it, fucking.”

“I …don’t know…”

“And you’re…ok with that?”

“…Not really…”

Raven looks away as she, subconsciously meditates to herself while the mood turns awkward for both of them. Baird was carefully putting the pieces together from what Raven has since revealed to him and the puzzle quickly became a riddle, begging to be solved. His boredom turned into fascination as he decided to press on at plucking at the layers surrounding her psyche, trying to gather as much information about the Feral that she is willing to reveal. Something productive better come out of this since I had to be the one to fucking apologize!

“Um…so…which season are you?”

Raven looks up in astonishment but her expression subsides when she realized he wasn’t being derisive. Believing he may have hit a sore spot, Baird tries to change the mood,

“Look, you don’t have to answer if you don’t feel comfortable…”

“Frost…and…fire.” She blurts out without missing a beat as she catches him in mid sentence. He pauses for a moment as he looked at her with a perplexed expression, on the brink having to ask the question that is smoldering in the back of his mind.

“You mean to tell me…that you are presently… in your more fertile time of your clock?”

“In the year…the Frost is my fertile season…but not in month.”

“Should I even ask when that is going to hit?”

“No…you probably shouldn’t.”

“Ah, crap…ok, I’m going to ask this anyway, for the sake of everyone’s sanity…I mean just in case you …go off your rocker,”

“Oh, for peat sake, Baird, I’m not going to go on a rampage.”

“Like hell you’re not…you’re going to be “in heat” Raven! That’s enough to drive any guy nuts, much less three.”

“Then, maybe, it would be best that you don’t know!”

Baird groans as he shuts his trap before it gets him into trouble again, and then it finally dawns on him,

“Hey, are we there yet?”

“Almost.”

“Define almost.”

“Well, you see that forest over there, between the lake and that mountain?”

Raven points in the direction as Baird turns to get a look.

“Yea…is that…where the settlement is?”

“No…I told you, there’s a place where we keep armaments and supplies, not terribly far from the settlement location.”

“Sigh…how far from our destination?”

“About three miles.”

“Ugh…that means we have to hike some more.”

“There is a place we can go to for shelter…and food.”

“Where’s that?”

“In the woods…concealed.”

“For real?!”

Baird beamed in interest. The idea of warmth and food sounded even more, sweet to his ears.

“Don’t get ahead of yourself Baird…we still need to investigate the area over there.”

Raven points to a section of the forest that is lingering out in the valley not too far ahead.

“Alright, now why do we…wait a minute,” Baird suddenly halts as he looks back to look past Cole and Sven, whom were still somewhat behind, but catching up. He looked further down, evaluating their trail in the snow as the breeze slips past them, brushing along their heads. His internal instincts begin to creep onto his conscience that only familiar soldiers can comprehend.

“We’re being tracked, aren’t we,” he says after he hesitated.

“Inevitably...yes,” Raven responds.

“Fuck…and we left them a nice trail for them to follow.”

“Which is why I suggested going the other direction.”

Baird lifts his arms and yells out,

“Guys…get up here, hurry!”

Cole and Sven pick up the pace as they push through the snow.

“Agh…it’s like walking in that pool of plastic balls they had at Wonderworld,” Sven recants his childhood memories, when his older sister would throw him in the pool of balls, and then she would jump in to help him stabilize in the awkward environment.

“Oh, yea…I remember that place,” Cole thinks back memory lane when his mom took him there for his sixth birthday. He was excited because he was actually tall enough to ride some of the bigger rides.

“Will ya hurry up,” Baird blasts out, impatiently.

“We’re moving as fast we can, Baird,” Cole blasts back, trying to pick his feet up higher, over the snow.

The two finally catch up, panting as they finally come to a stop, and take a breather. The wind begins to pick up, lifting snow from the top layer, brushing it against their legs.

“Ah, c’mon…another storm,” Sven gripes as Raven steps down from a hill to rejoin them.

“We need to go into the forest…I saw something in there as I was scanning it,” she says.

Cole turned to Raven, while still panting.

“Like…what?”

“I’m not sure, but either way, the wind is getting stronger and the forest may be our only means of protection right now,” says Raven as she turns to point.

“And how’s that?”

Baird turns to Cole and Sven.

“We may have someone tracking us.”

“Oh…oh, you got to be shittin me,” Cole blurts out.

“The wind can cover some of our trail that we left out here and those woods will conceal us from here on out, but we got to move, now!” Baird settled it as he turns and starts his way towards the forest.

“C’mon Cole…Sven,” Raven recants as she helps Sven on his feet, moving him forward as Cole follows close behind the two.

As they move, the overcast sky starts to take a turn as snow begins to fall, sprinkling the air as the breeze brushes the flakes across the valley, hiding their tracks.

Chapter 13: The Hunters
The air thickens with snow as the wind pushes through the terrain, over the lake and mountains. The woods acted as a shield while Sigma squad, moves around the trees to an open area in the forest.

Raven is perched on a fallen tree as she points at an area that looked like it was recently demolished, with trees knocked down and brush torn to shreds. It was obvious that something came through it lately.

“Look…see it,” Raven gestures.

The others peer through the trees to see what appears to be, bare corpses, lying in the snow out in the open area.

“Sigh…we’re going to have to check this out,” Baird laments, wondering if the bodies may be that of other displaced squads. The three move carefully, into the area, as the snowflakes begin to accumulate on their armor.

“Damn Feral, how did you know this was here,” Cole asked.

“I noticed some of the trees from the distance were broken down…” Raven explained, “…and they weren’t like that a few weeks ago, so something had to have happened here…I originally thought it may have been another fallen Raven.”

“Well, the direction of the fallen trees doesn’t suggest a crash site...” Baird observed.

Raven hops down to join them while Cole and Baird move forward to get a closer look at the bodies. They were strewn about, half of them faced down as their skin was almost as pale as the snow around them, making the blue veins even more noticeable. Raven looks around as she proceeds to join them, with Sven not far behind.

Baird kneels down to brush the falling snow from one, almost, naked body that is facing down. He presses his hand against the bare back, searching for contusions and then grabs the stiff arm.

“Ugh…it’s hard to know how long he’s been in rigor, the cold accelerates the process,” Baird groans, realizing that the weather was going to make it harder for them to calculate how long they have been deceased.

“Then that means we don’t know how long they been dead,” Cole mutters as he looks around at the others, scattered in the vicinity.

“Well, they couldn’t have been here no longer than early this morning, otherwise they would have been buried by the storm last night,” Raven notices as she begins to investigate the torn shrubs on the outskirts of the area.

“Hey Cole…help me lift this one, willya,” Baird asks.

“You got it, baby!”

They gently lift the solid corpse as they turn it over, finally realizing who he was.

“Ah, damn…” Cole moans while Baird drops his head in dismay.

“Who is it,” Raven asks as she reunites with them.

“He’s one of ours,” Baird grumbles while Raven steps around the two to take a closer look. The body for the most part was intact with the exception of a bullet entrance to the skull, fracturing the bones around it. Almost all his attire with the exception of his underwear was gone.

“He’s been stripped…they all have…which means the Stranded probably got here before we did,” said Raven.

“Say, what,” Cole bellows in resentment.

“They have been accumulating armor and weapons for some time now. I have seen them out on patrol on horseback, stripping armaments, but I can’t tell you if they were responsible for their deaths,” said Raven.

Baird lifted his head as he spoke.

“Maybe so, but I doubt the Locusts did this either.”

“How can you tell,” Raven asks.

“Because they’re, for the most part, intact...that, and Locusts don't take the armor.”

Sven walks around, getting an eyeful of a bizarre situation, one he has never seen before. The climate around him felt psychologically cold, as if the place itself had a mind of it’s own. If only the trees could talk.

“So which squad are they,” Sven asks.

“It’s Gamma Four…I recognize the name on these tags,” Baird responds.

“Ah, shit...man…that means Harley’s with em,” Cole mutters as he steps around to take a look at the other corpses.

“Who’s Harley,” says Sven.

“Sergeant Brell Harley, is Gamma’s squad leader,” Baird answers as he gets up to help Cole look for the Sergeant’s body. Sven joins in, helping Baird brush the oncoming snow on another corpse nearby.

“Guys, try not to move them too much. If we disturb the bodies, someone will know for sure that we came through here.” Raven reminded them. “And don’t remove the tags,” Baird jumped in.

“How are we suppose to report them back to headquarters,” Cole complains.

“I’ll write their names down…but Raven’s right. If we’re being tracked, they’ll know for sure that we came through here if we tamper with them too much.”

“Do you think the Stranded are the one’s tracking us,” Sven wonders.

“I’m not sure, but Stranded scouts have been known to come near this area, especially at this time of day.” Raven responds as she looks up to peer outside the forest.

The three Gears continue to look and take names, but could not find Gamma’s squad leader among them. The snow began to lightly collect on the corpses, while Sven brushes off the snow accumulating on his shoulder plates.

Silent and surreal it all was, as if the place they were standing on was subtly screaming at them to look deep into their eyes, and listen to their tale. Everything about this place was off.

Raven turns back onto the edge of the wooded area to get a better look out in the empty, white valley.

“Did Sgt. Harley survive, maybe,” says Sven.

“With his squad all strewn out like this and leaving the tags, not likely…man, this makes no sense,” Cole stands up to brush the snow off of his armor.

“Geez, if they were shot down here, then where did their attackers go, I don’t see any trails,” Sven notices, looking around.

Baird sits still, kneeling down as he drifts into thought, while the other two turn to look at him. They could tell he was in deep thought, deciphering the code written all over the area.

“Uh oh…Baird’s thinking…that can’t be good,” Cole notices.

Baird suddenly stands back up as he writes down the last name in his journal, and then puts his journal back into his pack.

“I bet you ten bucks these guys were dumped here. They must have died elsewhere, and for whatever reason, they were relocated and dumped here,” “How you figure that,” Cole looks in curiosity.

“Look around, Gus…there’s no blood on the ground…they have been stripped…and as Vinny pointed out, there’s no tracks suggesting a firefight, much less someone stripping them down of all their armor. It would be logical to assume that they where shot down and disrobed elsewhere, then carefully dumped here while the snow must have covered their tracks, which means they had to have been here at least since sometime early this morning to give time for the snow to accumulate.”

Before Baird could finish his sentence, Raven moves back into the area as she cuts in,

“…and this area was demolished by some heavy artillery, I suspect by grinders, maybe a troika. If they we’re killed here, they would not have been intact, as Baird mentioned earlier…besides, their bullet wounds suggest smaller rounds.” Raven continues as she drops some marred twigs, she found hanging from the brush, twisted into pieces. The bark on the surrounding trees, were also stripped, all on one side. Raven then climbed back into the wooded area to look outside.

“Smaller rounds, as in…” Sven said while Baird finished,

“Lancer rounds…or Hammerburst, maybe even a pistol, but she’s right, the wounds indicate rapid fire but not the size from a Troika or Mulcher.”

“So you think this was set up,” Cole started to put the pieces together as he sees Baird nod.

“It’s a possibility, and I believe the Stranded may be involved,” says Baird.

“So what’s up with the fallen trees if they were taken out elsewhere,” Cole asks, trying to make sense of the scene.

“I’m guessing that they intentionally shot all this down to make it look like a fire fight…and then dumped the corpses here.”

“Well then we need to go over there and take them out before they ambush any more squads.”

“That’s not our directive, Cole…and on top of that, who knows what arms they have amassed in the past few months. Shit, we know now they have at least four Lancers, some Gnashers, maybe a Longshot,” Baird says.

Cole thought for a moment and then he responded, “The Stranded are not that strategic…and even if it was the Stranded, why would they go through all this trouble just to set this up?”

“Maybe their hunting down the other squads for more ammunitions, I don’t know for sure Gus, I’m just speculating.”

“We can’t let this go, man…command needs to know about this, if what you say is right.”

“We’re not going to let this go, Gus…but we need to get to the side of that mountain and wait until early morning.”

Raven moves back to their position.

“And we need to do it real soon guys…I just saw some Stranded on horseback in the distance, and I think they're coming this way,” Raven announced as she joined them from looking out the woods.

“Well shit…that sure raises some red flags now, don’t it,” Baird griped. “No kiddin,” Cole agreed.

“We got to take them out, if they did this, they’ll kill us for sure and take our stuff,” says Sven.

“No…if we take them out, they can’t report back to the settlement, and then they’ll definitely know your position,” says Raven as she turns to point in another direction.

“Go this way…the thicket is too thick for the horses to follow effectively, and it will cover your trail. It will lead to the side of the mountain.”

“But what about the mess we made here, Feral…they’re going to figure out for sure that these bodies were tampered,” says Baird.

“I can take care of it, I’ve done this countless times before…you just take Sven, Cole and go…hurry!”

“Feral, are you sure? ”

“Look, Baird, you’re just going to have to trust me on this, have I let you down yet?”

“For all I know, you could be just buying your time,”

“Sigh…well then Corporal, I guess you’re just going to have to make a difficult decision now, aren’t you.”

Baird gave Raven a suspicious look, realizing that she just turned his words against him from their previous argument. But what choice did they have? If they stayed and fought the Stranded off, which wouldn’t be much of a fight, but whoever sent them will know for sure their most recent position, and that was the last thing they wanted to do, especially if any of the other squads fell into the same trap.

Raven gets impatient,

“We’re running out of time, just…I’ll meet you on the side of the mountain later, I promise…Cole you heard me, right?”

“Yea, I heard ya baby…c’mon, Damon…we’ll worry about all dis later,” Cole insists. Baird growls for a moment to himself as he pulls out his Gnasher and starts to move towards the thicket ahead.

“Let’s move,” Baird says while Cole follows behind, gesturing to Sven,

“C’mon, Vinny…we need to go!”

“Alright…comin!”

The three Gears begin to make their way into the woods, trying to keep their trail concealed as much as they can, hoping the falling snow will help cover their tracks.

Raven quickly pulls off a shallow branch from one of the conifer trees, using the bristles on the branch to level the snow around the area and around the bodies, hoping the snow will accumulate on top of them. Brushing the footprints left by her comrades, she dusts some of the snow from the branches of the trees back onto the bodies as she scatters foliage around some makeshift, possum tracks. She climbs back up on a fallen tree, walking on it towards the wooded area and climbs into a shrub as she pulls out her Gorgon pistol, checking to see if it’s loaded. Raven has done this, numerous times, almost as if she has the Stranded down to a science since she has observed their behaviors for awhile and found they seldom change. They are simple people, not soldiers like the Gears, or malicious monsters, like the Locusts. It’s few in between that she has come across a Stranded that went beyond just trying to survive, but this circumstance was different. If Baird was right, then this settlement may be a force to reckon with, it would be a deadly combination of both the Locusts and Gears. This rebellion is tactful, and that can be dangerous for both the Feral and the Gears.

She sits and waits patiently for the horseback riders to make their way into the area. Then, she’ll know for sure if it was them whom set all this up. Pretty clever, for a Stranded…Cole was right, it’s not like them to take the time to be this tactical. Raven has seen Stranded ransack Gear equipment, rummaging in collapsed Centaurs, or fallen Ravens, but they normally just take only what they can carry, like ammo, medical supplies, and radio equipment. Only lately, has she witnessed groups of them stripping a down Raven, almost to the bone, taking the armor plates and even the console. For what purpose, however, is yet to be seen.

In the distance, she can hear the horses snorting, clopping through the snow. The beasts we’re huge, weighing at least a ton while massing in some articulate armor and headdresses. They had a generous amount of feathering on their wide feet, while their manes where cropped and hair scruffy. They adapted well in the bitter cold. She can see five of them, lingering outside the woods, peering in, as two of the Stranded begin to dismount.

''This is definitely a scouting team. They are way too organized just to be a handful of vagabonds simply passing through.''

She could see clearly that some of them were armed with Lancers. One of them, still on horseback, actually had Gear armor, scratched and gray, but functional armor nevertheless. It almost resembles the recon armor, but not the latest manufactured all-purpose, blue armor that she has been seeing more often among the Gears.

The two men walk slowly and carefully into the woods, scanning the area. What they were scanning for is the more appropriate question. Are they looking for Locusts, or are they looking for Gears? And then it suddenly dawned on her; they have been listening to our radio transmissions…damnit…why didn’t I figure this earlier? Did Baird ever consider their transmissions to be jeopardized? Well it’s too late now…if, and when, I get out of this, that is the first thing I am going to have to address.

One of the men began to enter the open area, while the other followed shortly, behind. The first one was rather tall and slender, not near as bulky as a trained Gear. This was the common physical appearance of the Stranded, especially when there is a shortage of food. Most of these guys would go for days without eating, spreading out their meals so they would not run out too quickly, they had no other choice.

He wore the typical garb, of mostly ragged, layers of garments to protect them from the cold since most of them had little body fat. He carried a shotgun in his hands as he looked around the area, searching for something that apparently was eluding him. As he started to relax, he stood up straight and swung the shotgun strap on his shoulder.

The other man, however, was almost the opposite. He was bigger, not near as big as Cole, but roughly the size of someone between Cole and Baird. He was not a typical scrawny Stranded. He moved into the area, cautiously as he carefully scanned the vicinity, even though his partner had already done it for him. This one is a professional!

He wore a heavy pea coat that hung below his pelvis, while wearing Gear boots and leg fatigues, with a Lancer strapped under his arm. His movements were similar to that of Cole and Baird, precautious yet authoritative, maybe arrogant. ''Oh God…this guy is a Gear. There is no other explanation.''

His head was wrapped with a scarf, hooded over his head, leaving only the lower portion of his clean-shaved face to be somewhat visible. His brow was heavily shadowed, peering through the black scarf, draped over his forehead. He wasn’t walking around aimlessly like the other one was. He was definitely searching for something specific.

The other Stranded started to talk as he nearly stumbled over a body, mixed in the snow on the ground.

“I…I, don’t…see nothin,” the scrawny one jittered, as if he was literally in fear of the other. I didn’t blame him, the big one was very intimidating.

“Shut up and keep a look out…” the other barks, in a low, grinding voice. He kneels over to one of the corpses as he carefully brushes the snow off, glaring at it, as if he smelled something out of place. Shit…he’s going to figure this out.

Still glaring at the body, he mumbles,

“The tags are still here…”

“Well…maybe nobody came by after all, or maybe they did come, but were in a hurry.”

“It’s not like a Gear to leave the tags…unless they’ve caught on to us.”

“No way…how would they know that,” the scrawny one shivered in between words.

“Well, they managed to figure out our location…explain that one to me,” the big one barked, his glare turning to the other with a demeanor of suspicion.

The other Stranded didn’t dare respond. The icy glare from the big one was piercing through him, chaining the scrawny one to his side as he continued to lecture,

“We have the Jammer, that should have shielded us from the satellite…and those electromagnetic impulses should have taken out their communications, but some how some way, they know where we are!”

So that’s why the COG had difficulty finding them…and I bet that’s why Baird was having a hard time contacting command.

He continued to contemplate to himself, still staring at the body. He slowly stood up and proceeded to another. He bent down, again, brushing the snow off, as he tilts his head, staring at it.

A chill ran down Raven’s spine as he was much closer to her position, hovering over the corpse nearby, studying it without breaking his concentration as he picked his head up and slowly looked over his shoulder behind him, peering in her direction.

Even though she was well camouflaged in the brush and snow, Raven almost forgot to breathe, sitting perfectly still, nervously, as she could see his bright pale eyes while she peered through the thicket, trying not to even blink. He turned back around, staring back down at the corpse, with his brow looming over his blue eyes. She could tell he sensed something wasn’t right.

“This body was tampered with…” he said while the other Stranded turned around as if he was startled. The other man responded,

“Maybe an…animal messed with it.”

“Maybe,” the big one growled, scanning the area to look for any trails that may have been left behind. He shifted his head, as if he was finding a scent in the breeze that blew past them.

“Or, it could have been a Feral.”

Oh God…he knows about us.

The Feral seldom reveal their identity to anyone, at least not without purpose, or at least that’s how Raven understood it. Could the Stranded actually be responsible for the missing clans?

It was said that the Locusts ambushed and killed Raven’s clan, while she was out, doing her recon work. She came across two of her sisters whom said they found the clan, completely annihilated. With the Frost coming down on them, it was decided that in order to protect the other clans, an alliance to the COG had to be made. It has been imminent for quite some time, especially after the Lightmass Offensive. ''But what if it really wasn’t the Locusts? What if it was the Stranded after all?''

Considering the amount of lost, the idea of the Stranded being involved was unheard of, since they normally lack even basic resources, much less the means to form a militia. Maybe we were wrong.

“Oh shit…we need to get back! You know where there is one, there’s more to follow…” the other man starts to panic.

“Relax Gil…if a Feral found this, she probably assumed it was the Locusts who did it…and even if she doesn’t, I doubt the Feral are going to go out of their way to raid our fortress. They know better than that. They can’t handle the troikas, their armor is too weak.”

He slowly stood back up as he scanned around one last time.

“But your right Gil…we need to get back. Those Gear bastards are out there somewhere. It’s only a matter of time they come knocking on our door, and then we’ll be ready for them…and if they don’t, the winter will slay em. Without food and supply, they won’t last out here on there own, out of contact from central command. Now let’s go…leave the bodies, we’ll check them in the morning.”

He proceeds to step out of the area, while Gil follows close behind, reuniting with the others on horseback. They climb back into the saddles, turned the beasts around and galloped away.

Raven carefully moves out of the shrub, moving backwards as she starts to move in the other direction, following the squad’s, more than faint trail. The breeze picks up as it shakes the stems around the thicket, brushing along her armor. The events unfold in her head as she recites the scene over and over again, trying to see if there was anything she may have missed. It was too important, and she knew this was going to change everything they were set out to do.

Things were taking a turn, realizing that they may have been blind all this time, both the COG and the Feral.

Chapter: 14 Detour
Trying to forget

We’re falling right through

Lying to forget

We’re raising our truth

Lacuna Coil

Our truth

Gus baby, you need your hat…you can’t go out in that without keeping your head warm.

A six year old, Augustus Cole groaned, feeling the time delay between being stuck in the house all day from the white, snowball fight, bliss. As with most little boys, time cannot be wasted trying to put on a bunch of “winter” attire before jumping out into the freezing enigma that awaits them to be explored.

“Aw, c’mon mom. I’m not going to get sick,” he moaned as his mother walked over to him to fasten his hat on his earflap beanie, snug on his head.

“That’s exactly right…you are not going to get sick, if you keep your head warm…do you understand me?”

His mother gave him a scolding look as he nodded.

“Yes ma’am…” he muttered out as she finished wrapping the crochet scarf around his neck and checked the buttons on his coat. After she finished, she kneels down to him, laying a kiss on his exposed cheek.

“I only want what’s best for you baby…you know that,” she said solemnly as he looked up and she gave him a smile, while he flashed one back, giving her a hug. She lets him go, as she looks him in the eye,

“Now you be careful…and you will be back in this house by six o’clock, do you understand…unless you don’t want your supper?”

“I don’t want to miss supper.”

“Then you’ll be back here by six, right?”

“Right!”

“Ok…now go out and play nice!”

“I will, momma…bye!”

“Bye, baby!”

His mother waves as he darts out the door into the snow, covered wonderland, teaming up with his friends down the street.

Since Gus was four years old, his mother was practically raising him by herself, taking on the multitasks that single parents often have to do for the welfare of their children. His dad had disappeared, along with forty-three other men, who worked out on the Imulsion drilling, fields. With the war becoming closer to home, a lot of kids have lost a father, or a brother, sometimes even a mother. Gus could remember two of his friends whom lost family members a year later from when he lost his daddy. It was sadly starting to become the norm as he grew up in school, along with every other kid who lives with a single parent or grandparent.

But his mother would always wake him up in the morning while she got herself ready for work, and him ready for school. She would always make sure he had his shoes on right with his shirt tucked in and his teeth brushed, while she kissed him before she dropped him off to school. His bond with her was beyond price.

Like many, she worked hard, but she always had him in mind when she would help him with his homework or take him to his games, followed with a homemade meal. She did the best she could not to let her circumstances get her down. She always told him,

“You make the best of what you have…the good Lord will never leave you with just nothing…everything he gives you is for a reason.” She supported his internship at school to play “thrashball,” making an effort to come to some of his games when she could get off of work early enough to watch her son play. She was impressed by his intensity as his talent eventually helped pave his way through college, where he was eventually employed to the “thrashball” profession. As he moved up into the big leagues, however, he started to lose contact with his mother as the games took him away from home. He often sent her money to help pay bills back home, but she often refused it, sending him letters stating how proud she was, to see him become the man he grew up to be. That was all she ever wanted from him.

If only momma could see me now.

Cole was trudging through the snow, trying to bring his knees up to keep the snow from dampening the rest of his fatigues. They we’re already soaked around the knees.

He wrapped his head and arms in the blanket he took from the conduit station, while he trekked around the trees, occasionally looking back to see if Feral was coming.

All three were getting dreary, as the snow started to soak into their pants from all the hiking. Sven had a pillow tied to his lower back, which offered some warmth, but his lower thighs were screaming at him. He kept moving his legs up just to keep them warm, but it did nothing to settle the hunger pains and his aching legs.

Baird still had the torn sheet wrapped around his neck and another around his waist, trying to make sense of where they where actually going. Nobody else seemed to know where they where going, but him. He finally halts as they come to a rocky ridge, inside the forest that probably stood down twenty feet, as they peered over to see the rocky bottom below.

“Ok…we need to take a breather,” Baird announced as he plopped along the side of a boulder, slumping into the snow. At this point, his pants were already soaked so it didn’t matter anymore if he sat in snow or not.

“I heard that,” Cole agreed as he too, descended to the ground, laying out with his limbs sprawled in all directions. Sven finally came up to join them as he panted in between breaths from climbing.

“Oh, good…a break!”

He too plopped down, leaning his back against a tree.

The three sat and waited, wondering what may have happened back where they found what was left of Gamma four. It was a sobering encounter, considering they had no contact with command. So they were literally on their own, out in the wilderness, during the Frost, without shelter, without food, and without their guide. The situation couldn’t be any more dismal, although nobody dared to say it.

Cole groaned as he tried to pass the time, hoping that Feral would catch up to them, but in the back of his head, he was worried, and Baird could tell that he was worried.

“Relax, Cole…she’s a big girl…well, not literally, but…you know what I mean.”

“Yea…I just still can’t help it…that we left her behind, alone.”

“Cole, she’s been wondering in the wilderness, alone, for weeks at a time. She knows this area like the back of her hand.”

“Maybe she had to take a detour…ya know…to lead the Stranded away from our trail,” said Sven, sharing his thoughts openly.

“Sigh…maybe,” Cole ponders.

“Do you think we’ll ever get back…I mean…back to headquarters?”

“Yea kid…we’ll make it…you’ll see,” says Cole a he starts to wonder, does he really believe that? He tries to find something else to talk about to lighten the mood, making the best of what they did have, and right now, it was each other.

“So…Damon…what did you say to Feral?”

“Huh…what?”

“What did you say to her, man?”

“We didn’t kiss and make up, if that’s what you were wanting to know. You can give Vin his ten bucks back.”

“Ok, so what were y’all talking about?”

“Sigh, nothing.”

“What?! Nothing, my ass! You guys were talking, non-stop for almost an hour…Sven would know, he timed it!”

“What…you actually timed it… for real?”

“Yea, I mean it was seventy one minutes,” Sven said, despite it lacked Baird’s point.

“Look…we just talked about the Feral’s breeding theories”

“So you were talking about sex,” Cole blurted out.

“Not really, she was just explaining to me how the Feral ordain their “fertile” periods,” Baird responded.

“Ew…y’all were talking about periods,” Sven cringed as Baird turned to him and sneered,.

“Seasonal periods, not menstrual periods, you dumbass!”

Cole blurted back in the conversation.

“So did she tell you about what they teach?”

“Teach?”

“Yea…like some sex ed class…how they stroke it,”

“No, Cole…we didn’t talk “techniques,” can’t imaging what the hell for,”

“Ah cmon! It was some good stuff! She was talking about shit I never knew…and I know quite a bit, I mean…”

“Ok, Cole, I believe you, we can stop right there,”

“Oh c’mon, baby…everyone can use some pointers, even Vinny learned some stuff…”

“Yea, I can’t wait try some of it,” Vinny joined in with a gitty expression while Baird retorted,

“Oh yea, great Cole, now you soiled his virgin mind with all that crap!”

“I didn’t tell him…I showed him,” Cole beamed.

“You…wait…what? How’d you…”

“I used your pin-up drawings in your journal.”

Baird’s expression turned into irritation.

“Damnit Cole, you were rummaging through my shit again!”

“Hey, quite leaving your shit behind when you go out to take a shit!”

Sven jumps in,

“I never knew you could draw like that…those were some hot chicks…I especially like the one with big knockers, holding a blowtorch…”

“Oh, great, Cole…now you ruined his virgin eyes too?”

“Hey, I’m not a virg…”

“Shut up, Vin,” Baird stops him in mid sentence.

“Ah, give the kid a break! It’s been awhile since he’s seen some nice ass…hey, remember when Tanner talked you into drawing him that one chick,”

“What chick?”

“Ya know, that one waitress from the bar,”

“Oh, yea…I remember now.”

“Was she hot,” Sven asked as Cole nodded,

“Whoe yea…she was hot, wasn’t she Baird…” Cole lightly kicked Baird’s foot as he continued, “…he would know, he drew her.”

“Yea, Cole I did…thanks for reminding me,” Baird muttered while he rubbed his arms, trying to stay warm.

“Hey, you went along with it willingly, don’t say you regret it now, white boy.”

“I’m not implying anything…besides, Tanner was the one who had a big crush on her.”

“Yea, he did…may he rest in peace,” Cole said solemnly.

The three sit quietly, contemplating about the events that have taken place in their military careers, reflecting the times of tribulation, and wondering where will they go from here? But despite the past and the bitter cold, Cole decides to break the ice of their gloom for a second round of useless, men’s locker room chitchat.

“So, Damon…did you frisk her?”

“What…who?”

“You know…that chick you drew,”

“What, no, I didn’t frisk her, she just…willingly took off her clothes to let me sketch her, especially when I told her that it was for Tanner,”

“Uh huh…”

“Ah damn…she actually did that, man, I really need to change my strategy,” Sven whimpered.

“Yea…Baird’s all good about strategy, hehe,” Cole chuckles.

“I didn’t bang her, for crying out loud, Cole…ok, I’ll admit, she was kinda playful,”

“Uh huh…so what stopped you,”

“Are you kidding me, you know Tanner would’ve been pissed about it, besides, I didn’t feel like picking up a disease,”

“What, you didn’t know where she’d been,”

“No, I knew exactly where’d she been…that’s what was so scary,”

“Yea, I guess you got a point there,” Cole pondered and then continued, “…so, when are you gonna draw Feral?”

“Oh, oh now I get it, you just couldn’t resist, could you…you had to bring that up!”

“Damn right, baby…no point in leaving any blank spaces in yo journal, when you could be fillin it up…so when can we see some artistic pics of Feral?”

“Damnit Cole, I’m gonna start hiding my journal from you,”

“Damn…you already drew some stuff on Feral…how’d I miss that?”

“I didn’t…and even if I did, it’s none of your fucking business.”

“Aha, so you did!”

“Sigh…you know what, fuck you,” Baird turns to Sven, “…and fuck you too!”

“Ah, c’mon baby, it’s all good…everybody likes your artwork…I especially like the one you did of Marcus banging Any,…”

“Shit, Cole, what else have you…”

Before Baird could finish, the three look up to find Raven standing above them with her arms crossed, and her brow lowered, glooming at them. It was apparent she was eavesdropping for some time.

The mood quickly turned awkward as the three sat in silence, waiting for a scolding, as if mom caught them with their pants down, pissing in the yard. Instead, Raven simply strolled down next to the ledge as she looked down and them turned to them,

“We need to talk.”

Baird sighs as he starts to explain.

“Yea…we figured that. Look, we just…”

“Not about your “male,” gossip,” she said, exasperated.

“Oh…well, while we’re somewhat on topic, yea we do need to talk. We’re cold, we’re hungry…we’re cold,”

“Yes, Damon, I know,”

“Did he mention that we we’re cold…and hungry,” Cole continued for Baird while the three look at her with a dreary look. As she stared at them, she could tell they were uncomfortable and fatigued, not to mention famished.

“Sigh…listen, for a moment…please…and I promise I will take you to some food.”

The three slump further into their places as they look drearily up at her. Considering she hasn’t let them down yet, they figured they could spare some time to give her their audience, despite their unpleasant dilemma.

“Ok…look…I found out for sure that the Stranded, did, in fact, set up those bodies back there,”

“Shit, man” Cole blurts out as he shakes his head in disgust.

“I also…found out…that they have been eavesdropping on our radio conversations to control.”

Baird quickly looks up as he starts to ponder back to what all was said during those contacts. He then turns to Raven,

“They’ve been monitoring our communications…which means, they knew we were coming, and, any contact from here on out is going to expose the other squads, not to mention, ourselves…all further communications from this point on will be compromised.”

“…I’m afraid so,” answers Raven.

“Son of a bitch…”

“It gets worse, Damon.”

“How can it get any worse, Feral?”

“They…possibly…have some former Gears working with them.”

The three looked up, appalled by what Raven just revealed to them. She could feel the concentrated glares as she decided to sit in her place, grasping the inevitable unpleasantries.

Baird’s brow begins to sit heavy over his blue eyes as if he was demanding her full attention.

“Are you sure,” he says sternly.

“They were wearing some of the Gear fatigues and armor…and they moved like you guys do…they were not typical Stranded, that’s for sure….which might explain the new strategies they used to hunt down Gamma four.”

Cole stares at the ground as he curls his lip, processing Raven’s words, while he starts to talk, not moving his attention from the ground.

“That explains why they set up Gamma…they were waitin for us.”

Raven sighs, "That seems to be the better theory, but they definitely know, that we know, where they are located,” Raven says as she starts to rub her forehead, still trying to unwrap her head from the image of the large man, who was leading the party.

“Well shit…that changes our plans, big time,” Baird says as he slowly sits up, trying to get comfortable, but it did nothing to relieve his cold joints. Forgetting the fact the older he gets, the longer it takes to warm up and stretch his muscles. He realizes that he is going to have to get these guys to some food and warmth here, pretty soon. That was their current, and only objective. He looks up at Feral,

“First thing’s first, we need to go someplace where we can eat and get warm…preferably somewhere that we will not be found, before the freezing temperatures kick our ass.”

“It’s not horribly far…we can get there by dark.”

Baird nods his head as he carefully gets up and motions the others to get up as well.

“But what are we going to do afterwards” Cole stammers impatiently, suddenly forgetting that he was cold and hungry.

“I don’t know yet, Gus…we’ll figure this out after some grub, ok,” says Baird, trying to get Cole focused on the problem at hand.

“We can’t stay out here after dark…it’s not feasible.”

Cole looks to his side as if he was going to say something, but instead he nodded his head as he coldly gathers his gear. He knew Baird was right. There was nothing they could do at the moment, but relocate before nightfall. The idea of potentially freezing to death was not at the top of anyone’s list.

Sven gathered himself up, as Baird helped him up on his feet. Raven stepped back up towards where they just came, as she motioned to them.

“This way.”

As they departed to follow Raven to their next shelter for the night, it started to snow.

Damon’s Journal Entry #1
Baird here,

It’s been nearly two days since we landed, oh wait I’m sorry, crashed, for a mission that was supposed to take only till dusk. Well, somehow, somewhere, we fucked that up royally.

As much as I was able to gather within the past few days, when Cole and Vinny are not bugging me about shit I could care less to talk about, I have been monitoring our Feral “guide,” Raven in hopes that maybe we can get a little better understanding of the Feral and how they have managed to function as a somewhat separate culture. Now, I have not been able to observe their language since Raven has seldom used it, but she speaks our language rather well, which I later found that she was actually integrated into COG society before she ran off and joined the Feral; a little tidbit I had to pick her brain to get, but with some perseverance I was able to manage it. Yay me.

Needless to say, apparently they have some sort of caste “structure,” broken down into what I believe to be two major groups. First we have those similar to Raven, who do reconnaissance work, spying, hacking, busting balls, the usual, and then there are the “breeders,” to put literally are specifically “trained,” yea you heard me right, to seduce and mate with whoever they find, I guess “worthy” to lay pipe with, all under the guidance or leadership of a “matriarch,” or “reverend mother,” whom supercedes above the “right of passage” for mating and procreation.

According to Raven, after I had to drag my ass and apologize to her just so I could get her to talk to me, (don’t ask why) majority of the Feral have had some basic training on “breeding,” techniques. As I am trying to keep a straight face while writing this, please pardon the following jargon as I attempt to orient this to my own understanding of the topic. Besides, we can always edit later.

Now what one can find anything about sex that requires training was for the most part beyond me. I had always assumed that it was “wham bam, thank you ma'am,” until Raven mentioned the methods they use to inevitably turn a man on to the point his load blows all the way to the moon. Anyway, the Feral have amassed some sort of techniques on pleasuring, enticing the male by multiple means, and let me tell you, there was shit I found out that made me shudder. Things that they can do with their hands, feet, mouth, breasts, buttocks (don’t ask because I didn’t), legs, nose (wtf) and of course the vaginal fly trap.

Now, being inevitably the man that I am, you would think I would find the conversation rather alluring, but I shit you not when I say that it was pretty disturbing. These women can be malicious! They make S&M look like kiddie play, and on top of that, they take this business pretty seriously, almost as if it was a religion.

But moving along from the sex ed category, Raven has proven to be more resourceful than we give her credit for, hence the reason most of Sigma squad is still alive. Apparently, we have been trekking into her assigned territory, which crosshatches into other Feral “scouts’” along the mountain border and coast. She has amassed supplies, including food, shelter, and ammunitions for quite some time, stashing it away in “secret” locations, some of which is pretty well hidden. I believe she uses these places to stay at weeks at a time, carefully rationing her supplies, including medical and hygiene supplies. These chicks really take care of themselves, I mean, I’ve seen Raven use her toothbrush on the road several occasions using some “homemade” toothpaste and peroxide mouthwash. She probably uses the river, when it’s not frozen, to bathe, otherwise, she has found access to some old wells with a water heater, powered by a fuel generator. Needless to say, she doesn’t stink!

Now whether this is relevant, I am not sure, but it has been difficult to tell how old Raven really is because the Feral have found some means to keep them looking young. I found out that Raven is actually twenty-seven years of age, but she looks as if she’s nineteen, and apparently from what I gathered when I was conversing to her about it, they use some means of detoxification and natural ointments to keep their skin protected from the elements. Whatever it is they’re doing or using to keep them looking young, they could make a fortune patenting it.

Anyway, obviously she has been spying on us for quite some time, longer than I expected, so I would put money on the fact that these chicks are not by any means ignorant of what’s going on between us and the Locusts, as well as the Stranded. I can only guess though is that they are losing territory and their natural resources to the Locusts, Stranded, and probably us. This may be the contributing factor as to why they’re attacking Gears, but this is just speculation.

I also have reason to believe that she has been hacking into our network in the past few years, maybe longer, especially since she has access to computer terminals in some places where they are still connected to Jacinto’s mainframe. Now I do not know as of yet how much of our intel she has gathered but I bet she has a whole network of “classified” information somewhere in that little riddle of a head of hers that as of now has managed to keep from me, imagine that. But whatever the case, we seriously need to upgrade our security system on command's terminal, because obviously it’s not working.

When and if we return to headquarters, I would strongly suggest to command to invest into the further development of Feral and COG ties. The last thing we need is for these bitches to go medieval on our ass!

But on a more observational note, if these chicks have a more advanced means of reproducing as Raven claims them to be, then perhaps the COG needs to rethink it’s present “breeding” strategy other than just throwing all the women in the barn and hoping for the best.

Author's Notes
As I was pondering the idea for a potential story sometime around December of 08, I immediately decided to focus on the two established characters, Augustus Cole and Damon Baird, simply because there really wasn’t alot of material detailing their adventures as comrades in arms.

After extensive research on their characters, I found the two rather entertaining and decided to write a story that was adventurous while suspenseful but humorous. Although the story is somewhat light-hearted, there are still looming characteristics that are familiar in the GoW universe, and that includes tragedy, loss, and angst. As the characters begin to interact during their long excursion, they begin to realize something about themselves and each other that they would have not normally gone out of their way to find. As a result, they are forced to reckon with the baggage that each carries individually and what makes them who they are.

In the midst of their venture, a dark plot swells in the sequence of events that will eventually rear it’s ugly head in the end of all things that makes “Snowblind.”

Characters

Damon Baird - better known as a “professional asshole,” is literally a skeptic, and a foil of often his own demise. But despite his cynical attitude, he makes up with his astuteness.

Augustus Cole – is the epitome of adrenaline. Charismatic and “charming,’ he is Baird’s opposite, often searching the bright side of things, rather than negative.

Sven Dunrich – is as wet behind the ears as they come. Sven (Vinny) was transferred to Sigma squad by his own commander, Captain Milane of Epsilon, to give the rook some more experience out in the field, that and Epsilon was getting “tired” of his noobness and found the transfer an easy way to get rid of him. Often the butt of Cole and Baird’s musings, Sven is for the most part easy going, displaying “juvenile” tendencies. But during his venture with Sigma, he discovers his own confidence in his abilities, as he has often had to use them to keep them alive.

Raven McNight (Feral) – is a person of contrast in a world very gray. She has a distinct sense of right and wrong, often displaying defiance when situations call otherwise. Being the only, reliable, linguist at the time, she grudgingly volunteers to lead the squads, Sigma One and Gamma Four through the terrain in hopes to annihilate the Locust threat that has decimated her clans. At first, she has little trust in the Gears but tries to make the best of the situation as she understands to be. Despite her COG upbringing as a child, she runs away from home to avoid being subjected to the “Fortification Act” which forced the young women, at the time, to be relocated to “breeding” facilities. After her escape, she is picked up by the Feral and “reborn” into their kata. With a history of dabbling in chemistry, making explosives, and hacking into computer files, Raven has proven to be most resourceful to the Feral, making her an elusive thorn to the COG, until recently.

''I will update this section periodically. Any feedback concerning the story, characters, or whathaveyou is appreciated.''