Hollow Storm

I arrived at my rendezvous location with Jack, but instead of a Stranded encampment I found a scrap fortress with buff dudes in red clothes and sports gear guarding it.

"No way." I stood in awe, "She couldn't have possibly done this in one weekend."

The gate guards saluted me with shouts of 'the Legate has returned!' and I moved through the fortress seeing more men dressed in red and sporting equipment drilling younger naked men furiously. The naked men performed vigorous calisthenics as well as practice drills with makeshift spears and machetes.

All around the area, men used the local rubble and scrap to create more and more fortifications and hard points within the fort itself. These murder boxes would do far more to counter Locust insurgents than walls ever could.

Every man I saw without a baseball helmet and sunglasses on had a shaved head and a thousand yard stare, and the raw number of men here was mind boggling. Jack had left with a crew of a dozen who worked as scrappers for a tribe of just over fifty including women and children, yet there were hundreds of adult males at this location.

At the center of the fort stood a large tent where I found Jack sitting on a mobile yet comfortable throne in a red dress with a bearskin hung over her shoulders and a gold chain with a heavy medallion dangling temptaciously between her heavy breasts.

"How the fuck did you make these people into Cesear's Legion?" I asked her as she smirked, "I was only gone for two days."

"Sounds like you're doubting my hustle." she grinned, "It was a lot of work conquering all the local Stranded Tribes and whipping the best of them into something worth leading, but I did it. And I did it in style."

"Please stop." I begged, "I can only become so erect!"

I spent the next three and a half months leading Jack's Legion. The first thing I did was lead scrapper teams along the path of Delta's devastation, gathering the massive amounts of guns, ammo, and armor left behind during the Lightmass offensive. It was a damn good choice as we soon needed those guns when the remaining Locust attacked the surface in their desperate bid at both revenge and escaping the Lambent. The COG lost territory daily, drawing back to the bedrock of Jacinto, and the Stranded started heading our way en masse.

No one knew how to break a man down and forge him into twisted steel better than me and Jack. In ninety days we had turned over two thousand men from desperate lawless and oftentimes gutless savages into stoic brutal killing machines. When the Locust came to attack us we thanked them for bringing us more guns and ammo and armor.

Soon I was leading platoons into the hollows to hunt down the grubs before and after attacks on our rapidly expanding fort. After a recruit finished his training he would earn the right to wear clothes and would quickly be blooded against the Locust. After his first kill he would be allowed into the female camps, and each kill after allowed return trips.

New comers complained only briefly about being stripped of their freedom and segregated by sex, but the older Legionaries quickly beat that out of them. Obedience, Discipline, Survival. Jack and I never subscribed to that bullshit about losing your humanity for the sake of victory. Humanity gets your species extinct. When all that is left of the world is ash and rubble and enemies it is time to start making sacrifices to ensure the survival of the species. The COG sure as hell couldn't do it, so we would.

Men fight and scavenge and build, women grow and raise children. If you are not participating in one of those activities then you are part of the problem. I only had to discipline a platoon once. All forty men presented themselves in their ten man squads, drew lots and the two short lots in ten were beaten to death by the other eight.

Most of those young men now wear refitted Theron Guard armor as elite Praetorians of the Legion.

For myself, I resized and reinforced RAAM's armor, mounted an underslung shotgun to his double barrel machine gun and forged some larger magazines for it, as well as reworked the receiver of a COG sniper rifle to take custom made ten round magazines and operate as a semi automatic weapon. I kept the revolvers as is. They kick ass, were made for huge hands, and made me feel cowboy as fuck.

Slowly but surely we were gaining ground against a world that just wanted to kill us all.

At the end of the Harvest month, Dom and Marcus came to the fort on a King Raven. We may have beaten the weakness out of the men of Jack's Legion, but we didn't beat the hate of the Gears and the COG out of them. The bastards are lucky I was down by the gate getting ready to lead another raid on the Locust when they showed up.

"Dude." Dom greeted, "The fuck is with all the naked guys?"

"I try not to notice but with my enhanced field of vision and 100 - 20 eyesight I am pretty much fucked on not seeing pipe non stop." I told him as we moved through the now sprawling Fort Legion, "Jack has them earn the right to wear clothes again after they complete basic. Its all a part of breaking them down and making them tough as nails. It works, so I endure the eyesore of your pathetic human genitalia."

"Ain't nothing pathetic about what I am working with." Dom thumbed his nose in pride.

"You got a pair of nuts." I told him, "I got a quad of apples."

"That's just the testicles though, I got a baby's arm holding an apple hanging left, dawg." Dom asserted his dominance.

"You people got horses on this world?" I asked him.

"Dawg, no! That ain't right yo!" Dom backed up in fear.

"Head is more spade shaped, but yeah. Don't waste your time measuring dicks with me." I chuckled.

"People think horses have big cocks?" Marcus asked in confusion.

We both looked at him in horror.

"Now I know why they were all crying." I muttered and Dom nodded his head.

"Fuck dude." He sighed, "I ain't ever been the dude with the littlest cock. This don't feel good, man."

Jack was chilling empress style when we came in.

"These Theron's are looking a bit smaller than usual." Dom commented on Jack's Praetorians.

"Post apocalyptic survival favors those best at reducing, reusing, and recycling." I grunted.

"I take it you two are here to see if Grunt can come outside and play?" Jack grinned.

"Actually to see if all the guys you two have gathered can come and play." Marcus answered.

"No deal on the minions." Jack shook her head, "I'm not giving the COG another chance to betray them to their deaths."

"And you are cool with your alien husband being the one at risk of betrayal?" Dom asked.

"The COG can go ahead and make his day by giving him more people to fight and vengeance to pursue. He is like a dog with a bone when it comes to vengeance. The last guy dumb enough to betray us got cut into three pieces with one swing."

"The Locust are winning right now, and if Operation: Hollow Storm fails then you and your people will be all that is left for them to attack." Marcus reasoned with my wife, "If we don't stand together to survive, we will all die divided."

"On the contrary," Jack mused, "I like our odds against the Locust."

"They would drown you in their blood." Marcus countered.

"Just more meat for Grunt." Jack smirked, "You get to take Grunt out for another boys weekend and he will probably make this Hollow Storm go super easy. He knows the Hollow, the Nexus, and everything down there like the back of his hand. Plus he never turns down a fight with the Locust."

"Deal." Marcus nodded and I went to pack extra ammo for our trip to the depths of Sera.

"Is that 'the' Grunt." shouted and excited Ben Carmine as we loaded up onto the armed mobile drill rig being piloted by Dizzy, a Stranded turned Gear in a cowboy hat with the most backwoods over the top accent I had heard, possibly ever.

"Yeah." I nodded my head, "The one and only."

"Oh my God!" he frantically started digging through his duffle bag and came back with a permanent marker.

"Could you please sign my chest plate?" He requested in awe.

"Sure thing." I agreed and signed it Gatatog Grunt Bearsbane Desilijic Tiure.

"Clayton is going to lose his mind when he sees this."

"Nice kid." I commented while he walked away from me.

"Hopefully he doesn't go the same way his brother did." Marcus nodded.

As we stood in companionable silence I screwed a heavy duty silencer on the end of my sniper rifle and chambered a round of my hand loaded hot rounds. Better bullet shape, more powder, way more death down range.

"You'll thank me for the can later." I started shooting the oncoming Nemecysts as they flew through the air seeking to destroy our convoy. Once upon a time I marveled at my new reptilian reflexes and dexterity. Today I put on a shooting clinic that would leave the old me in awe. Not a single damn Nemecyst got through to the convoy. I also deadeyed the Reaver riders, cutting the effectiveness of those flying squids to near nothing.

Despite taking no damage, our drill rig broke down when the engine overheated giving the Locust a chance to come at us, but the local air support cut them down to size. They performed similar feats when we came across a volcanic area with lava seeping out of the ground. From a sloping crevasse came an enormous wave of Locusts trying to overwhelm a rig to our right. They were supported by a giant Brumak, forcing us to charge ahead rather than sit around for it to fuck us up. We didn't end up duking it out with another rig piloted by the grubs, so my work keeping the airspace clear was paying dividends.

Another Brumak appeared but we just pumped rounds into its head till its skull couldn't continue to maintain its structural integrity.

"This operation is going really well." I commented as we pulled into the town of Landown and I fired a quick machine gun barrage at a wave of 'hidden' tickers that exploded causing the convoy to come to a halt.

We had to send in ground forces to sweep the area for the landmine strapped dog sized creatures. After we cleared the town the Locust began another nemecyst bombardment that I no sold. With that out of the way we were forced to clear a pitch black tunnel of the little exploding creeps and then battle a Locust mortar crew on the other side. I think Marcus must have had extensive artillery training because he commandeered their mortar guns and used them to clear the whole town and the drill site. The dude was like an artillery savant.

With the drill site cleared Marcus and Dom loaded up onto a drill pod and awaited deployment. Because of this they were completely unable to watch me blow the head off of General Skurge when he popped up out of the ground with his stupid chainsaw staff. Dumb mother fucker should have known not to lead his army from the front if he wasn't bulletproof. RAAM knew better with his weird kryll shield.

No one has plot armor when I am in range.

With him dead the Locust immediately lost morale and started to rout and the Gears began an easy insertion into the hollow. I even had my own drill pod with my name on it.

I wish I could get the sound system to play 'The Boys are Back' because with the memories of five Therons this definitely felt like a homecoming.

Do people normally kill everyone when they come home? Probably not, but I am sure there is ample president for the psychotic rampage I am about to embark on.