Cogs

4

Romero jumped when a voice crackled in his head. "Wr8th, that you over there playing in the rubble?"

He knew the voice; it was the new kid, Ajax. He was a fresh recruit, newly wired and on his second combat mission. The rookie was a pretty good pilot, but odd even by cog standards. A quiet, clean-cut kid from Maine, he never drank, smoked or swore. Even went to chapel every Sunday. He was squeaky clean, thus his nickname.

"Hey, Ajax. Yeah, it's me. Had a dustup with some Vamps but it's all clear now. What's your status?"

"Calm, cool, and collected. Sent some sinners to their Judgment, may God have mercy on their souls. Hang on, buddy, I'm coming up on your six, we can tandem to the capitol."

Romero could hear the excitement in his voice, though the kid was trying to play it cool. Ajax was loving every minute of this war. Romero had to admit; he too had once loved the rush of combat. At first, he'd felt the rollercoaster feelings of victory and despair when he killed enemies. Now, there was no more emotion involved than he had when digging slit trenches. War made killing people a mundane task.

Romero slowed his hovertank's progress, turning onto the remains of a highway. Ajax's Berserker, Becky Sue, slid up alongside Kate. The two hovertanks rushed towards the combat in Pyongyang in tandem, a few dozen or so meters apart. The highway had been thoroughly shelled; only a levitating vehicle could find it navigable. They both traveled in silence, each locked in their own minds, listening to the chatter of the violence ahead of them.

The North Koreans had been busy during the last few years, buying up as much Chinese war tech as they could. The Chinese had steadfastly maintained the flimsy charade of 'non-interference', circumventing outright conflict with the US by selling only their 'surplus' weapons systems to a 'friendly neighbor.'

The North Koreans were fighting for their lives and were putting up a ferocious defense. Threaded through the various commands and combat chatter, a rumor began surfacing that the North Koreans had nuked Seoul. The situation was getting uglier by the minute.

"Do you think those heathens really did it?" asked Ajax, the fearful wonder evident in his tone.

Romero thought long and hard before answering. It was certainly within the North Koreans ability and willpower to do so. Certainly, Seoul was no sitting duck. It had been encircled with one of the most sophisticated missile defense systems on the planet. Piercing that ring of anti-missile platforms would have been taken a miracle. Unless it hadn't been a missile. For years it had been rumored that North Korean operatives had smuggled nuclear components into Seoul, waiting for the call to destroy it from the inside. Then again, Seoul was vigilant and well-supported with American anti-nuclear tech.

Just as Romero started to reply, it felt as if every wire in his body had caught fire and was burning its way through his flesh. Romero screamed in absolute agony, and the 70-ton tank slammed down onto the road with a crash, her systems shut down. Just as quickly the agonizing sensation was gone. Romero's anti-pulse shielding had kicked in before his cybernetics had gone critical.

"EMP!!! Fucking shit!" Romero shouted as his senses reeled, he frantically rebooted Kate. Somewhere nearby an incredibly powerful burst of electromagnetic energy had pulsed. Unshielded electronics would have fried instantly. At first, Romero thought they had been nuked, but as Kate's sensors flickered back to stable life, he saw no radiation spikes in the area. A thrill of fear washed through his spine—the sheer power of that pulse approached the nuclear level. If it hadn't been a nuke, there was only one other device capable of emitting a burst that powerful. Romero felt his blood turn cold.

He quickly scanned the spectra in desperation. There! Above the tanks, about half a click away, he saw it on the visual scans. Romero's heart skipped a beat. It was a Shrike. The Chinese anti-tank VTOL was hideous in form, terrifying in function. It seemed absurdly assembled, almost asymmetrical. It was bulky, almost box-like. Its nickname among the US armed forces was the Flying Brick. The Shrike was China's most advanced anti-tank system, designed for one purpose and one purpose only, to kill American Berserkers.

Romero tried to contact Ajax before he realized with a sinking feeling he wouldn't connect. Ajax hadn't been one of the few lucky tankers to get the latest EMP shielding bonded into their rigs before they departed for this shitstorm. Only a handful of the bleeding edge protective tech had been available. Romero had been lucky to be selected for the upgrade—literally weeks before the invasion. It had just saved his life.

Ajax had not been so fortunate. Romero swore in sympathy as he thought of the kid in the disabled Berserker next to him. He knew from his classes what the nineteen-year-old from Maine would be experiencing. The kid would be paralyzed as his wiring melted inside him. His neurogenic links would be misfiring sending a maelstrom of meaningless signals into his brain. He would be conscious and fully aware of every sensation as his nervous system burned out during the next agonizing eternal minutes. Meanwhile, the Shrike would be closing in for the kill.

Shrikes were outfitted with an EMP burst emitter capable of sending out a pulse of electromagnetic waves as powerful as a 100-megaton nuclear device—enough to disable a Berserker for thirty seconds. It was more than enough time for the VTOL to close in and use its second weapon, the Laser Lance. The Lance was a laser cannon designed to fire a single concentrated burst of intense energy. The beam was potent enough to pierce through a Berserker's skin as easily as a pin through a butterfly. The Shrike's tactics were surgically simple—drop down from on high, stun the tank with EMP, close in, then pierce its nuclear power plant with the Lance.