The sky lit up as a bolt of bright red lightning lit up the Martian sky. 'There's always storms here,' Fayde thought,'but never any rain. So much like life.'

He walked among the bodies and the countless corpses. Some charred and smoking, some bloodied and smashed. Several burning vehicles were off to the right, burning and power cables sparking with latent electricity.

The wind rose up and a wave of dust blew across the vision of death before him. Legionnaire bodies, decomposed and crawling with maggots, littered the sandy ground, almost completely covering it. In the trenchs, corporation soldiers laid dead or dying, left behind in the retreat. The troops of the Legion had pressed on. Escape to them, was not an acceptable end to the battle.

A shivering hand reached up and grabbed his armor plated leg. He looked down and saw a Cybertronic trooper with his right arm missing and a large hole where his midsection should be. His hair was slick with sweat and his one human eye was wide open, staring at him with mortal intensity. His cybernetic eye was dimly growing red, fading with each of the soldier's gasps.

The soldiers mouth opened weakly. "Did we win?"

He looked at the Chasseur for a long moment, then bent down and removed the soldier's hand from his leg.

"You did. They didn't." He knelt down, put his MG-80 aside briefly, and neatly snapped the Chasseur's neck. He recovered his weapon and stood up. A ripping sound occurred off to his left.

He spun around quickly and saw some foul creature, gaunt and with giant claws, feasting on a dead body. Scowling, Fayde brought his weapon up and fired at the Karnophage. The bullets ripped into the creature's upper chest knocking it back 10 feet where it lay still.

Fayde continued his walk among the dead. He saw a Bauhaus trooper, bayonet imbedded in a Razide, with her entire torso nearly missing. The helmet of the trooper had come free and he saw long flowing blonde hair hang from her head. A small charm hung around her neck on a gold chain.

Fayde walked over, bent down, and snapped the charm off her neck. It appeared to be a gold locket, which Fayde opened. In it was a photo of the trooper and a tall man at their wedding. Inscribed onto the soft gold of the inside cover was only one word.

Forever

He dropped the locket onto the ground and watched it sink slightly into the sand. Soon it will be covered and lost... forever.

Fayde tightly clenched the handles of his guns as unwanted memories washed over him. Of his father, his friend, the rending.
Fiercly opening his eyes, he brought up the Head's Up on his visor. The soft green of the letters and numbers cooled his mind. He had to be focused. He couldn't lose himself in his rage.
Not yet.

He checked the batteries for the barrels of his Mg-80's and and doublechecked his ammo supply. Soon they would be coming. Already, he could hear the low trodding sound of the reinforcements. It sounded like a train pounding slowly across its tracks. He knew he would not be able to stop all of them, but he would stop some of them. Enough that the rest might flee. It did not matter to him. Death was not something to fear for him, it was his friend. But he would not go to death until he had made them pay. Pay for the Cybertronic trooper's crushed hopes, for the weeping widower of the Bauhaus woman, for what they had done to him.

He would make them all pay.