Cogs

3

Romero eased Kate back down to within standard parameters, skewing across the battlefield to swiftly eliminate the last two remaining bunkers. On cue, a swarm of cog-piloted Storm Kings blazed overhead safely, en route to Pyongyang where they would deliver their cargo of Marines to assault the capital city. Monitoring the radio chatter, Romero learned that only one of the Storm King VTOLs, the lead bird, had been lost. It had been piloted by a cog named Talmadge.

Romero slowed the tank, allowing himself a brief moment of peace before continuing. He sighed angrily as he replayed the battle stats. He liked Talmadge; she was competent and cute — he had tumbled with her on more than one occasion. Blond, petite and bouncy, she'd had a devil's smile. She'd brought her Storm King in too fast, allowing the North Koreans' bunkered artillery systems to take her down before Romero's slower hovertank had been able to open a lane. Talmadge had been too aggressive, and it had cost her and her passengers everything. Even though her death hadn't been his fault, Romero felt the dull pang of regret in his stomach. He hated losing people.

"Rest in peace, Midge." He said softly as he guided his tank towards the capitol to assist with the assault. Soon the smoking ruins of the shattered defensive line faded into the black of night. One hundred kilometers ahead, the Pyongyang skyline was lit by hellish explosions. The US Army was exercising violent diplomacy.

The hovertank skimmed easily over ruined farmlands until the cratered fields began to give way to the outskirts of an industrial sector. Wrecked buildings began to dot the landscape. Heavily damaged warehouses and abandoned factories rose up around the tank. It was dark, silent, long abandoned in the wake of the bombings that had softened the approach to the heavily fortified city. The angular tank slowed as it glided along smashed roadways. There was no sign of anything on the wide spectrum scans, yet Romero remained wary.

Romero screamed in agony and anger when the tank's skin was penetrated by a swarm of armor piercing rounds that tore white hot holes through Kate's skin. A thought activated Kate's damage control system as he accelerated the massive tank. The Berserker lunged forward, smashing through a cinder-block walled warehouse where he brought the wounded hovertank to a lurching halt. He scanned the spectrums again but saw nothing.

Cursing violently, Romero hit replay. His mind sifted the data, seeking the attack's trajectories. He found them and triangulated the vector the rounds had taken. The fire had come from three separate locations, marked by an 'absence' in the spectra, like blank spots on a Jackson Pollack painting. Stealth tanks! The "Vampire" stealth hovertanks were an older generation of the current hovertanks used by the Chinese. The Chinese had sold a few dozen of the narrow-hulled tank hunters to North Korea about a year before. The tanks were designed to counter the huge American juggernauts with swarm tactics. Small, mounted with 40mm autocannons loaded with armor piercing sabot rounds, Vampires moved fast and could out-turn almost any other hovertank in the world. This fight was the armored equivalent of a bear versus wolves.

"Fucking Vamps!" swore Romero as he jolted Kate out of the ruined warehouse into the debris-strewn streets. Another sweep of the systems confirmed that the region was clear except for the three dead spots that surrounded the Chinese tanks. The Chinese tech might be superior, but the Korean pilots were poorly trained. They had left their ECM systems on maximum, not realizing they could be tracked by the blank spots their jammers created. Out in the open, their numbers held the advantage, Romero knew he had to take the fight to the heart of the industrial zone where the building would confine their maneuvers. There it would be less about the technology and more about piloting skills. It was in close quarters where he would get payback.

Romero's pride was stung — he should have seen the ambush coming. The North Koreans had caught him while he had been reflecting on the loss of Midge and her VTOL. Kate swerved sharply around a corner, narrowly missing the wall of a building as Romero brought her around in a slewing turn. The Chinese tanks were stalking him; two were flanking him, the other was racing ahead to ambush him at the far end of the service road. He should have called down air support, but wounded pride demanded a more personal response. The Vampires were closing in on his position. Romero gunned Kate's turbines and shot forward, skating about five feet above the broken streets. The steel behemoth flew through the canyons of shattered buildings, swerving and spinning tightly through the bombed-out thoroughfares.

Sharp, hammering pain ripped through Romero when a dozen rounds smashed into the slanted hull of the Berserker. The ambushing Vampire had timed his attack perfectly. But, this time, Romero had a surprise; he activated the hovertank's flood lights filling the area with intense white light and sharp shadows. Sometimes the simplest and most primitive tactics still worked best. The sleek black hovertank was visually exposed.

The smart play would have been to dart away for cover. The North Korean pilot wasn't smart. Instead, he continued firing, surging towards Kate.

Romero shook his head in disbelief, it an obvious ploy intended to drive him back into the killzone of the flanking stalkers. Romero sluiced Kate sideways in a curving arc while the Berserker's twin quench guns pumped hundreds of steel bearings into the small black tank. For a moment, the Chinese assault tank seemed to hang motionless in the brilliant light while the stream of hyper-accelerated projectiles shredded it like buckshot through butter. Then without warning, superheated metal pierced its ammo bay. The perforated tank exploded violently. Romero cut off Kate's lights; the other two Vampires were still around somewhere.

The Korean pilots learned quickly. The two Vampires switched off their ECM as they moved out of view behind a row of factory storage sheds. Romero scanned the spectra, but the enemy pilots pulsed their jammers every time he tried to get a lock on them, dancing away in opposite directions. Romero grinned despite himself; the bastards were on their toes.

He willed Kate back towards the outskirts, away from the battle for Pyongyang. He listened to the spectra, scanning every frequency and was surprised when he overheard the North Korean hovertank pilots talking on unsecured analog radio frequencies. Incredible, Romero thought.

In his first week of Tank Combat School, the instructor had taught them to use all of their senses. Romero remembered Master Sergeant Smithson's favorite tirade, "All that high-tech mumbledy junk ain't worth tits on a mule if'n y'all you don't use your fuckin' brains, even if they are shit! NEVER ASSUME YOU CAN'T BE FOUND!" Apparently, there wasn't a North Korean equivalent of Master Sergeant Smithson.

Kate flew low and fast, her thrusters kicking up a debris cloud as she passed over the devastated terrain. Romero guided the hovertank into a huge crater, the muddy water splashed out as the heavy tank settled down low. It was a classic tank defensive position, going hull down. Romero then cranked his ECCM up to maximum and waited. Sure enough, the Koreans had once again gone into stealth mode, but the storm of electronic interference from Kate's ECCM flowed around them. Romero 'saw' the voids in the chaotic noise of the invisible blizzard of random signals.

Romero didn't hesitate; he willed Kate's cannons to wash the nearest 'void' with dual bursts of his quench guns. He was rewarded with a brilliant flash of destruction. The American tank paid for its victory when the remaining Vampire unloaded a hundred rounds of armor piercing sabots her way. Most struck the berm of the crater, showering the tank with muck and concrete rubble. A good dozen or so shells found their mark punching through the Berserker's laminated ceramic and steel armor.

Through the pain, Romero smelled the acrid smoke of burning wires. He kicked Kate's thrusters into high gear, effectively popping the huge tank up and out of the crater. The remaining Vampire driver was no fool; he immediately took off towards Pyongyang, accelerating the swift hovertank to its limits.

Romero urged Kate forward, but the shells had inflicted significant damage. She growled and groaned in protest, but responded, hurtling forward after the fleeing smaller tank. Her linked electromagnetic quench cannons spewed twin streams of death along darkened streets, illuminating them with their fiery glow.

The Vampire managed to put almost a full kilometer between itself and Romero before the streams of superheated metal balls seared into its engine compartment. The crippled tank smashed into a broken building and began to burn fiercely. It shattered convulsively as its ammo stores cooked off, each round exploding in the tight interior ripping it apart from the inside.

The American hovertank kept going, though her damage was severe. A thin trail of smoke swirled in her wake as she glided through the abandoned factory zone. Fifty kilometers ahead the city of Pyongyang was dying in continuous explosions of hellfire.