Cogs

1

Pyŏksŏng, North Korea - 30 May 2041, 03:50 Local Time

From within the hidden recesses of a hardened bunker, a gyro stabilized 155mm autocannon locked onto an incoming Storm King combat transport ship. A sharp command sounded and the cannon thumped a staccato dirge. Round after round of depleted uranium shells streaked downrange, stitching glowing orange holes across the airship's armored skin. The transport shuddered violently as it screamed over the blasted muck of the battlefield.

The American combat ship died with sudden violence when a round from the autocannon pierced its engine. A blinding flash of brilliant white lit the macabre landscape. An instant later, fiery wreckage smashed into the ground, disappearing in a gout of mud and thick roiling smoke. The dozen marines and pilot on board the ship were ashes before the shattered metal stopped moving.

The autocannon didn't linger; it brought its sights to bear on the next landing craft. A grizzled North Korean Artillery Chief chewed triumphantly on a toothpick as he depressed the targeting button on his binoculars, painting the next target. He allowed himself a small grin; the so-called mass invasion was becoming what the Americans called a turkey shoot. He swore when his binocs abruptly failed; the screens showed nothing but black. He dropped the electronic sensor array from his eyes and saw the reason for the failure. An angular mass of black steel floated lazily on a cushion of air. The hovertank was less than fifty meters from his bunker. The Gunnery Chief froze, the hovertank's dual superconducting quench guns were aimed directly at his face.

"Si-bal!" was the last thing the Chief said before the bunker was washed with streams of marble-sized ball bearings, electromagnetically accelerated to hypervelocities in excess of 3,500 meters per second. Everything inside the bunker was shattered to dust instantly.

The M-2130 Berserker hovertank's turbines screamed a deafening wail as the flat lozenge shaped vehicle launched into a power turn, spraying plumes of mud and debris in its wake. 'Wr8th' Romero neither celebrated the kill nor mourned the lost transport. It was combat—kill now, reflect later.

Romero was mentally and physically enmeshed with the hovertank he called "Kate." Cybernetic implants in his nervous system enabled the linking of man and machine like never before; Romero and Kate were one being. He saw through the tank's sensory systems, felt the pulse of her systems, experienced the damage she received which although muted, still hurt. The tank's multi-spectrum sensors granted Romero hyperawareness of the environment. He saw the glowing bunker emplacements, the fuzzy 'fog' created by ECM jamming and the distortions created by hypersonic cannon fire.

Through his cybernetic connection, Romero could react with the speed of thought. With the tank becoming a virtual extension of his own mind and body, he could push Kate to the extremes of her design. Together they challenged the boundaries of physics with their maneuvers. The 70-metric ton vehicle skimmed over the wrecked battlefield at nearly 180kph with no more conscious thought than if Romero were running across a field.

Romero locked onto the next artillery emplacement before it could fire upon the flock of Storm King transports attempting to land troops behind enemy lines. With the slightest of thoughts, Romero coolly purged the tank's heat vents into a trench as he passed overhead; incinerating the enemy troops hunkered in the muddy slit.

The battlefield was a nightmarish echo of a World War I no-man's landscape. The wreckage of science fiction machines littered the field, mixed with the timeless gore of dead soldiers. As with so many wars before, the current conflict was rooted in failed political posturing and saber-rattling gone catastrophically wrong. The politicos called it an action of "Justifiable Retribution" but Romero and every other combatant knew exactly what it was—the United States of America was extracting a blood debt.

Not two months earlier, the luxury cruise ship Victoria had struck a whale off the coast of North Korea and lost all steering. The crippled ship had drifted into their territorial waters. Despite repeated pleas from the United Nations, North Korea claimed the ship's disability was a ruse and warned of dire consequences. In a demonstration of their conviction, the North Koreans launched two missiles at the cruise ship as a warning. Due to a miscalculation in the firing solution, instead of passing overhead, one of the missiles struck the Victoria midship. The liner instantly broke apart and sank with all hands. Four thousand souls perished that day—some of them were Americans. For their botched show of 'strength and resolve' on the world stage, a country of 26 million people was about to be hammered back into the stone-age.