Cogs in the Gears of War Page 2

  Every piece of metal surrounding him glowed in his mind, the gears and slides and rivets standing out as though they were glowing stars in a blackened void. He could feel every piece of equipment his men carried, every bolt and nut holding the outpost together, and every servo powering the armor of the warks closing in on them.

  “Boss…?” Riley mumbled.

  Jax ignored him, seeing the suits in his mind as they crouched and leapt for the top of the wall, soaring through the air.

  The battlements shuddered under his feet, then let out a massive groan as if an earthquake were rolling through, flexing and bending the frame in its wake. It was followed by a great wrenching sound, metal ripping through metal.

  The suits appeared over the wall, arcing downward toward the crew. Like super-powered hedgehogs, their armor was covered in jagged spikes, meant to shred opponents as they got in close and personal and barreled through enemy lines.

  Jax laughed. They’d regret eschewing firearms and giving him the extra seconds he needed to bring his power to bear.

  The battlements swayed, and then thousands of nails, screws, and bolts tore free of the walls, shrieking to meet the incoming warks.

  Jax saw widened eyes the instant before the wall of makeshift shrapnel peppered the enemy, devouring them like a swarm of hornets. Muffled screams rang out, and the suits toppled from the air en masse, their momentum blunted, their armor and flesh pincushioned with hundreds of metal shards. Blood and oil spewed from their suits as they fell, each striking the ground with a sullen thud, sounding like a discordant drum roll.

  The battlements shuddered again, and Jax pressed his power to reinforce the structure to keep it from collapsing beneath them.

  He was only partly successful.

  A great slab of armored sheeting broke loose of the wall and toppled forward. The whole outpost seemed to dance as it tore away, and Jax gritted his teeth to maintain his concentration.

  With a press of his will, he severed all of its connections to the outpost and nudged it forward so that the slab of steel crashed down atop the floundering squad of suits.

  It struck home with a metallic clang, the pained shouts of wark soldiers echoing in its wake.

  “Remind me not to piss you off, boss,” Riley told him.

  “Always a good rule of thumb,” Jax replied, but he wasn’t finished yet.

  Whatever surprise they’d had on their side was gone now. The warks knew they weren’t just facing off against a renegade crew of mercenaries. They were in a fight against a gearbinder now and would adjust accordingly. He needed to make an example of the suits to buy the team time to find a way out of the outpost before the warks recovered and overran them.

  He reached out and seized the great slab of fallen metal, manipulating it with his mind as the sheet crumpled and folded in on itself. Like a giant hand, the slab reacted to Jax’s pressure and bent inward, scooping up the suits in its unyielding palm. Then Jax squeezed, crumpling the whole as though it were a ball of aluminum foil.

  There was a sharp crunch, like the carapace of beetles crushed beneath a boot heel, and the mangled wad of steel dropped to the ground, dust swirling it its wake. A black soup of oily viscera oozed from the cracks and stained the earth, dark striations snaking away from the mass.

  Jax stared out at the warks gathered in the distance and zoomed his gaze in. Gone were the sly grins and bemused expressions. The wark command stood rigid, staring at the ruin of their suit squadron now crushed beyond recognition.

  “They’ll think twice about rushing us again,” Conor laughed.

  A flutter of movement at the rear ranks of the warks drew Jax’s attention. Soldiers parted in waves as a solitary figure strode among them, making his way toward the front line.

  Jax groaned. “That’s the least of our worries.”

  “What do you mean?” Brand asked.

  Jax pointed the figure out, and though they didn’t have the benefit of his enhanced optics, it was clear the wark army was making way for someone.

  Even Brand, idiot that he was, understood the implications.

  “The warmancer is with them,” he gasped.

  “The one and only,” Jax muttered, staring out at the man as he approached the lines.

  Gray of hair and beard, the warmancer was dressed befitting his rank as the commander of all the gearbinders in the Warkold army. His uniform was immaculate, the insignia of his position standing out in sharp contrast to the dark reds and black of his outfit.

  A shudder ran through Jax as he met the man’s eyes, memories flashing.

  “Alvor Grainge.” He whispered the name like a curse.

  This wasn’t the first time they’d crossed paths, but the sour knot twisting in his stomach warned it would likely be the last.

  “Shit!” Conor muttered. “Didn’t you serve under that guy?”

  Jax nodded. “He’s the reason I’m out here raiding wark outposts to survive. Fucker exiled me to the Barrens after I disobeyed an order.”

  “You never were good at doing what you were told, boss,” Riley said.

  “I might be an asshole, but I’m not gonna bring the roof down on a bunch of innocent civilians. There were kids there, for Cog’s sake, babies.”

  “Well, at least you cracked his jaw a good one before you got dumped in the dirt,” Conor told him.

  “I suspect that’s gonna come back to bite us in the ass,” Jax admitted. “Given how I took out the suits, he’s gonna know it’s me up in here.”

  “This isn’t good,” Brand mumbled.

  “Still think they shot the wrong guy,” Riley stated, shaking his head and glaring at Brand. “How you want to handle this, boss?”

  Jax stared out at the warmancer and felt the man’s gaze leveling on him. The temperature seemed to drop, goosebumps pimpling Jax’s flesh.

  “We need to find a way out of here,” Jax stated.

  “If only we had a secret tunnel…” Conor suggested.

  “Oh yeah, that makes sense,” Jax laughed. “Let’s just squeeze into a tiny hole in the ground the enemy knows about and has filled with robo-dogs. We’re better off having grenaded the damn thing. It’s one less way for them to get inside.”

  “But it’s likely the only way out, too,” Conor argued. “At least the only one that doesn’t leave us facing a firing squad of wark soldiers.”

  Jax sighed, staring out at the warmancer once again, seeing the man’s smirk as he watched the team atop the battlements. Grainge was in charge of the operation now, and while that meant the warks weren’t going to simply push forward and try to overwhelm Jax and his team, he knew that whatever headed their way would be worse…far worse.

  They needed a new way out.

  Jax stiffened as a thought struck him. He spun on his men. “Conor, go collect that rog Riley brained and bring it to the westernmost side of the complex, by the cliff. Brand, you go with him.”

  Conor grunted, but he nodded and raced off, Brand right behind, asking questions.

  “Riley, get the men up on the walls and give a show of defiance, but tell them to keep their heads down. I don’t want anyone making themselves targets for the wark snipers.”

  Riley relayed the order through the radio. “And what are you going to do, boss?”

  “I’m gonna go hunt down some toys,” Jax replied, starting off down the stairwell and marching out into the courtyard.

  While the warks had emptied the outpost’s stores and removed all the valuable equipment and gear from the compound before Jax and his men overtook it, they hadn’t planned for a gearbinder to be among the raiders.

  Jax closed his eyes for a moment and recalled the mental map he’d made of the outpost when he’d broken the slab off the wall. Largely useless to them before, there were a number of broken-down vehicles in one of the garages, the once-armored trucks broken down into their component parts used to repair other, operational vehicles.

  But given his power, the parts were exactly what he needed right th
en.

  His crew barely twenty-five strong—twenty-four now that Dev had been turned into a chew toy—there was no way they could stand against an assault from the warks, especially now that Grainge was there. But there were enough of them left after manning the walls to help him haul gear.

  A handful gathered in the courtyard, awaiting orders. Jax marched past them, waving for them to join him.

  “I need some mules,” he called out. “Come on.”

  Moments later, the crew hauled out armfuls of vehicle parts and electronics, lugging them across the courtyard and over to where Conor and Brand stood over the deactivated rog.

  “You having a yard sale?” Conor asked.

  Jax ignored him and focused on the rog, his mind trailing through the dark corridors and winding conduits of the mechanical beast. He grinned when he spied what he needed.

  He manipulated the frame and realigned the circuits Riley’s shotgun slug had blown apart, Jax repairing the damage, rerouting electrical lines and powering up the rog again.

  The infiltrator growled low in its throat and clambered awkwardly to its feet. It’s four red eyes glared at the men.

  “I hope that’s you controlling that thing,” Brand muttered.

  The rog snarled and feinted toward Brand. The soldier shrieked and fell, landing on his ass, eyes wide, skittering backward until his spine thumped against the stone wall of the cliff.

  Jax laughed as Brand clutched at his chest.

  “Fuck! You nearly gave me a heart attack,” Brand complained.

  “You’d be lucky to go out that easily,” Conor told him, yanking him up from the ground by his arm. “Now shut up and let the boss work.”

  Brand grumbled, but he stepped aside, clearing the way.

  Jax nodded his thanks to Conor and closed his eyes. He reached out to the pile of scraps the men had dumped on the ground, picturing it all in his mind’s eyes, determining the best way to actualize what he imagined. A moment later, he had a glowing schematic in his head, and he went to work.

  The loose parts floated into the air and converged on the rog, each piece morphing into a specific shape as it did. What had been doors and tailgates of old trucks were now being reformed, reshaped into sharpened spades that merged with the rog’s upper torso, looking almost like massive butterfly wings had sprouted from its shoulders and spine.

  Troughs formed behind those, and the rear of the beast was slowly built up by pieces of steel, reinforcing and strengthening it, lowering it to the ground to increase its drive.

  “Not judging or anything, Jax, but your dog has a seriously big ass,” Conor chuckled.

  “I was picturing your mother as the prototype,” Jax fired back as he continued to transform the creature.

  The men chuckled, but Jax zoned them out. He needed to concentrate.

  Focused again, he moved four old tire rims into place, two on each side of the beast, creating makeshift axles to hold them in place alongside the rog’s rear legs. Then he used scraps of metal to form jagged, hooked teeth and aligned them along the rims, mounting them seamlessly to the metal, making them one.

  Jax made a number of other alterations, then opened his eyes to admire his creation.

  “That’s one ugly bitch,” Brand said.

  “Not like I’m taking it home to meet my parents, so I think we’re okay,” Jax replied.

  “What are you going to do with it?” Brand asked.

  “It’s our way out of here.”

  “You planning on riding it out the front gate and scaring the warks away?” Conor asked.

  “Nope,” Jax answered with a grin, motioning for the rog to advance on the wall. “Probably want to stand back. This was a rush job. No telling if things’ll start flying off when I put it to work.”

  The men obliged as the rog ran at the cliff wall and hunkered down. The so-called wings at its back arced forward and began to whirl, turning to a blur in just seconds. Then the rog began to advance, its sharpened wings angling downward and scraping against the earth just a few feet in front of the cliff face, biting in. Shards of dirt, dust, and debris flew all around as the rog began digging. The tang of heated metal rose into the air after it.

  Conor chuckled. “You turned your dog into a mole. I like it, but do you really think that thing is going to hold up long enough to digs its way under and out the other side of the damn cliff?”

  “It’s only got to hold together until it gets under the wall.” Jax pointed twenty yards to the wall that jutted out of the cliff, forming the western side of the outpost.

  “Uh, you do realize there is an army out there still, right?” Conor questioned. “We pop our heads out and we’ll be looking like Ord.” He tapped his forehead with his index finger.

  “You really think they’re staying outside?” Jax countered. “As soon as Grainge softens us up, the whole damn wark battalion is gonna be crawling up our asses.”

  The radio warbled.

  “Eyes to the sky, boss,” Riley’s voice called out over the comm.

  Jax spun around and looked up to where Riley was situated on the wall. Black dots buzzed against the cerulean background. The shapes grew closer, taking form.

  “Speaking of softening us up,” Brand groaned.

  “Incoming bugs,” Riley announced.

  Jax snatched up his radio. “Take cover!”

  Shadows flittered overhead as the bugs closed, zipping past in a survey run, picking their targets.

  The size of a grown-man’s torso, each of the bugs was loaded down with weapons that jutted out of its size like spider legs, giving the bugs their name. The bulk of the drone was filled with ammunition, feeding into its guns, which spit fury in every direction.

  The staccato chatter of gunfire erupted seconds later as the first of the bugs engaged the men on the walls.

  Jax cursed under his breath, grabbing Conor and pulling him in close. “You and the others follow the rog into the hole and clean it out behind it. Then cover it up with something to keep it out of sight of the bugs. Grainge will be using them to suss us and our tactics out. We can’t have him see it.”

  Conor nodded, motioning for the others to follow the order. “What are you going to do?”

  “We need to clear these bugs out first, give the mutt time to dig the tunnel.”

  “And then?”

  Jax shrugged. “One thing at a time,” he answered, running off into the courtyard and making a show of it, letting his energies pulse out to alert the bugs of his presence. Grainge would be watching, he knew. The rest of his men were collateral damage in the end, something the warmancer didn’t give a damn about. They’d be easy to take out once Jax was gone. He was the one Grainge wanted.

  True enough, the bugs headed Conor’s direction changed course and came after him. Jax let out a sigh, half-relief, half-what-the-fuck-did-I-do.

  Despite his gearbinder abilities, he wasn’t an inkling the techwiz the warmancer was. He’d gotten by on creativity, finding new ways to manipulate his powers and using them in manner no one suspected him capable. But in a face to face test, the warmancer was every bit as powerful as the nukes that irradiated the wastes, while Jax was packing more of a Derringer.

  Bullets stung the ground at his feet, kicking up dirt and reminding him he was in a fight. He wouldn’t do anyone any good if he gave into his despair and let the warmancer mount his head on command’s trophy wall.

  Jax focused and waved his hand, brushing aside the closest of the bugs, slamming into the one flittering alongside it. There was a loud clang as they collided, and Jax explored its innards, searching for their failsafe triggers. With limited ammo onboard, the bugs’ protocol was to Kamikaze its opponents as soon as it ran dry.

  Switches flipped, the two drones exploded, taking out a third as shrapnel filled the air. Jax turned it aside with a flick of his wrist, angling the spray away so the metallic shards pelted the earth harmlessly yards away.

  Gunfire reverberated all around him as his men engaged the bu
gs from their hidey holes, but there was no way they’d get through the assault unharmed.

  Sure enough, as Jax raced for the wall where he’d left Riley, a drone strafed the battlements and cut down two of his men. The first was killed instantly, dancing under the spray of bullets for a moment before crumpling to a heap.

  The second staggered back and fell off the wall. He screamed as he careened through the air, striking the ground with a brutal thunk that stole the last of his breath from his lungs. His neck was twisted in line with his shoulders, and Jax looked away, unwilling to let the memory sear into his head.

  He hit the stairwell in a sprint, flying up and onto the battlements just as Riley downed one of the bugs. It clattered to the battlement, and Malkom smashed it with the butt of his rifle, sweeping it off the wall before it exploded.

  Two more of the bugs angled their way, sweeping over the courtyard.

  “I’ve got them,” Jax called out.

  Fortunately, while Grainge’s power was the greater of the two, he was working it at a distance and controlling far too many bugs to be precise. This close, Jax’s gearbinder talents were the more useful.

  He grabbed hold of the two bugs with his mind and slammed them together, melded their shells into one. Then he imagined flinging them over his shoulder like with a catapult, and the entangled drones whipped overhead, shrieking toward the line of soldiers massed outside the outpost.

  He regretted they were too far away hear their panicked screams, but seeing them scatter like roaches when you uncovered their den was pretty satisfying.

  As soon as the bugs hit his optimal range, and he felt the warmancer’s influence pressing against them, he triggered their destruction, raining debris down on the heads of the scattering forces.

  Jax laughed as warks fell beneath the bombardment.

  It wasn’t many, maybe a handful, at most, but Grainge hadn’t so much as waved a finger to redirect the deadly shrapnel, as Jax suspected.

  “Still the same old asshole, huh, Grainge?” he shouted, despite knowing the warmancer couldn’t hear him.

  “You gave him another black eye,” Riley laughed, continuing to fire off slugs at blitzing bugs. Another one dropped, trailing smoke and blowing up over the empty plain outside the compound.