Dead Gears of War

"Marcus, I'm having a hard time with the motion tracker. Stand still."

"I've got a problem standing still in a spaceship!"

That was Baird.

"Oh. Baird, stand still."

Baird stopped moving.

"Ok, IFF tags synced. Everything else is hostile."

"Copy. We're on a tram on the way to the bridge."

"See if you can find out how the ship mines without leaving the atmosphere."

"I've already got an idea how it does. Delta out."

USG Ishimura

Issac was back on the Flight Deck, and he saw a pair of damaged helicopters on the cargo deck.

"So that's how they got up here. Hammond, where are they?"

"On the bridge, and I'm locked inside the captain's nest! Little bastards know what they're doing; they locked me out of all the major systems!"

"Warning: Gravity Tethers engaging."

"Oh, fuck."

Issac had served on the Ishimura before, and knew this would get rough.

"How the hell did they activate the Gravity Tethers?"

"How do you think?"

Bridge: USG Ishimura

"Like I thought: Gravity Tethers."

The Ishimura was damaged, but it was still powerful enough to crack a planet open.

"Hoffman, Anya, drop the Hammer!"

"Theta Squad, drop the Hammer!"

Outside, the huge laser satellite system known as the Hammer of Dawn started firing at the exposed Hollow.

"Damned Grubs got what was coming to them."

"Good work, Delta! Put that thing back in place and start cracking the Hollow open, piece by piece!"

"We're on it, Colonel."

Slowly, the section of the planet that was lifted was lowered back in place.

"This is too easy! The Hammer and the Ishimura'll end this war!"

"Closing in on second target."

Dom smirked.

Maria was being avenged.

The Ishimura firing off her Gravity Tethers, and hauled up another piece of the planet.

"Omega Team, blast those Locust bastards!"

The Hammer fired again, roasting thousands of Locust.

"Now, that's payback."

The section was lowered, and the Ishimura moved on.

"Hey!"

A man appeared on a nearby screen.

"Stop activating the Gravity Tethers! They'll burn out at this rate!"

"Warning: Gravity Tether malfunction. Locking down access to Gravity Tether subsystem for the next 72 hours."

"What the fucking hell?"

ADS Cannon 201

"Never fuck with a Systems Engineer!"

Issac had served on the Ishimura, and knew all of her weaknesses.

The doors sucked, the gravplating was easy to damage, and the Gravity Tethers were old and if they were used more then once a month, they would overload.

As such, a few shots from an ADS cannon would disable it for at least 72 hours.

"Hammond, do you read? The Gravity Tethers are offline!"

"Good work, Issac!"

"Issac, I'm trying to lock them out of the major subsystems. What the hell? Issac, there's a war going on down there and they're using the Ishimura to end it!"

"Kendra, at the moment, all I want is Nicole's RIG number. You've got access. I want it. NOW!"

It was clear that Issac was royally pissed off, and tired of all the bullshit he'd been through.

"A-All right! Shit..."

Kendra's eyes widened slightly.

"Nicole Brennan, status...deceased. She's dead, Issac."

Normally, Issac would've broken down.

Not this time.

This time, he got pissed.

"I WILL KILL EVERY FUCKING ONE OF THOSE BASTARDS FOR THIS!"

Extremely pissed.

"Issac-"

He cut the RIGlink and walked off.

Bridge

"He WHAT?"

"The Gravity Tethers are offline. Bastard overloaded them. What's worse, we've got enemy contacts on board."

"Locust?"

"Warning: Hazardous Anomaly detected. Activating Quarantine."

A huge monster dropped down, clearly made from Locust and human remains.

"What the fuck is that thing?"

"Kill it!"

Lancers and Hammerbursts opened fire, but nothing could get through the thing's fucking hide!

Marcus through a Bolo Grenade at it, but did very little to kill it.

Then Baird discovered a new weapon: the Contact Beam.

He fired, and thought he killed it.

It was still alive.

Marcus took Baird's Lancer and revved the Chainsaw Bayonets.

He rushed it, and hacked off the arms.

"That took brute force to kill."

"Nice name. Brute. It works."

Then the man who appeared earlier ran in.

His posture clearly yelled 'You are all going to die and there's nothing you can do to stop it'.

"Do you fucking IDIOTS know what you've done?"

"Not really, no."

"You've brought ruin to this ship! Now there's going to be more Necromorphs!"

"Necro-whats?"

"Necromorphs! Dead people brought back as ungodly monsters?"

He pointed at the dead Brute.

"That?"

"Ah, fuck!"

"Who the fuck are you?"

"Issac Clarke, CEC engineer, Level 7. And as I'm the only actual CEC employee on board that's still alive-"

Kendra and Hammond weren't CEC: one of them was Sprawl Security and the other worked for the government.

Just because he wasn't a computer expert, didn't mean that he couldn't hack into high-level security.

He knew that Kendra worked for the government, just not which department.

"That means I'm in command. My ship. Now, as you jackasses brought those things on board, you get to kill them while I fix what's left of this ship!"

"What?"

"Look, here, Issac-"

"I am sick and tired of all this bullshit! I came to this hellhole to find my girlfriend, discover that the whole ship's overrun by these things, you and your friends get on board, and I finally learn that coming here was pointless, as Nicole is dead! I'm not in the mood!"

Dom and Marcus knew his pain. Maria was missing, and Adam Fenix was MIA.

"We'll do it."

Issac looked at them.

"What?"

"We know how you feel. My father's missing, and so's Dom's wife."

Issac straightened up.

"Sorry about that."

"May as well introduce our sorry asses. Sergeant Marcus Fenix, Corporal Dominic Santiago, Private Domon Baird and Private Augustus 'Cole Train' Cole. Dom still owes me 20 bucks from his last Thrashball game."

"Like I said, see me after the war."

"War's over."

"I don't have any money on me, OK? You can wait."

"I know."

Issac took off his helmet.

"Let's go; I've got a ship to fix. And you people need proper weapons."

"Proper weapons?"

Lower decks

The Necromorph horde was finally getting beaten back by the thousands of Locust on board the Ishimura.

After all, Berserkers and Boomers were harder then fuck to kill.

But the Necromorphs were pulling out the other forms that had: Pukers, the exploding Crawlers and the raptor-like Stalkers.

Even the large Tripods were being used.

The deadliest was the one created by Challus Mercer: the Hunter.

It hacked and slashed through squads of Locust, but it seemed even with the deadlier forms, the Locust were winning this war.

Still, the Necromorphs simply patched up their dead and tried more ambushes and infected the dead Locust.

The Lambent Wrench-created Lurkers were a hell of a lot deader then the human baby created ones, that was for damn sure.

And now they had the Pack to rip apart more Locust.

Bridge

"Control, this is Delta. We've made contact with a survivor, and almost everything else is hostile."

"Almost?"

"There's a few survivors throughout the ship. One's actually hellbent on killing us."

"What?"

"His name's Challus Mercer."

"Who the hell was that?"

"Issac Clarke, CEC Engineer and the highest ranking man on this ship."

Marcus looked at his new companion.

Issac was a nice guy who was very, very (x 20 verys) pissed off: his girlfriend was dead, and now all he wanted was payback and LOTS of it.

"We're getting weapons and supplies from the ship's Stores."

They were shocked and amazed that Issac had all of his equipment from a store!

He bought it!

"The armor'll get removed. Take it off."

Marcus started taking off the COG armor.

"What about the space suits?"

"They'll get replaced by a RIG. Leave them on."

Issac selected a Level 3 RIG for Marcus, who got stripped, redressed and instantly badassified.

Marcus put on the armor and, well, the word badass couldn't describe what he looked like.

"Alright!"

Baird was impressed.

"My turn."

"Level 2."

Baird got out of the armor.

Jacinto

Anya Shroud and Colonel Hoffman watched as men poured into the Hollow, dragging dead Locust out of the area that the Hammer of Dawn hit.

"That is a lot of dead bodies."

"And once that ship starts making more 80-mile wide holes in the ground, there's going to be a lot more! Fenix has finally made up for his blunder 4 years ago!"

"Control, do you read?"

"Got it, Marcus."

"We're going to be up here for a few days; there's a shitload or 10 of Locust and unknown hostiles. We're going to clear them out in order to use the Gravity Tethers in peace."

"Seriously?"

"Mr. Clarke calls them 'Necromorphs'. It fits: we fought what looked like a mix of three Drones and a man. If any of those things are on the surface, the only way to kill them is to dismember them!"

"What?"

"You need to hack them apart! The limbs, head: everything!"

"Get ready, Delta; we're going Grub hunting."

"Hell, yes!"

"All the Necromorphs are on the lower decks, as well as the Locust. It's going to end real badly for them."

"The Necros or the Grubs?"

Anya chucked before answering Marcus' question.

"Both of them, actually."

And now the asskicking begins.

Well, it isn't going to end well for either side: the Gears and Issac are going to have to deal with advanced Necromorphs, the Necromorphs are dealing with the Locust, and the Locust are going to get fucked by the Gears and Issac.

It's a three-way killing spree!

Well, mostly two-way, as Zeta's dead and none of the Gears are dying.

On a sidenote, we are heading back to Aegis VII, but after securing most of the ship, killing the Leviathan, Slug and other major enemies, and finally, killing that fucking cockbite, Mercer!

In short, Gears 2 and 3 aren't going to happen thanks to the Ishimura.

Next Time on Dead Gears of War: -69 hours until the Gravity Tethers are online, Issac and his Gear escorts have to solve an air problem before it gets worse.

And I'm planning on expanding on a story I read yesterday: Thinking with Portals.

Ja Ne!