Cogs in the Gears of War

by Tim Marquitz

  Cogs in the Gears of War

  Tim Marquitz

  © 2020

  Cover art and design by Natasja Hellenthal/Beyond Book Covers

  Created in the United States of America

  Worldwide Rights

  All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced, scanned, or distributed in any form, including digital, electronic, or mechanical, to include photocopying, recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system, without the prior written consent of the author, except for brief quotes used in reviews.

  This book is a work of fiction. All characters, names, places, and incidents are products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to any actual persons, living or dead, events or locales, is entirely coincidental.

  Also Available from Tim Marquitz

  The Demon Squad Series

  From Hell (Novella)

  DS1 - Armageddon Bound

  DS2 - Resurrection

  Betrayal (Intro short to At the Gates)

  DS3 - At the Gates

  DS4 - Echoes of the Past

  DS5 - Beyond the Veil

  DS6 - The Best of Enemies

  DS7 - Exit Wounds

  DS8 - Collateral Damage

  DS9 – Aftermath

  DS10 – Institutionalized

  DS11 – Deicidal Tendencies (Coming soon!)

  To Hell and Back - A Demon Squad Collection (books 1-3)

  Enemy of My Enemy Series (Kurtherian Gambit Universe)

  Any Port in a War

  Refuge in the Stars

  A Subtle War

  The Coming Vengeance

  Superdreadnought Series (Kurtherian Gambit Universe w/Craig Martelle as CH Gideon)

  Superdreadnought 1

  Superdreadnought 2

  Superdreadnought 3

  Superdreadnought 4

  Superdreadnought 5

  The Blood War Trilogy

  Dawn of War

  Embers of an Age

  Requiem

  Clandestine Daze Series

  Eyes Deep (novella)

  Influx

  Standalone Fantasy

  Dirge

  Witch Bane

  War God Rising

  Sci-fi

  Excalibur

  Dead West

  Those Poor, Poor Bastards

  The Ten Thousand Things

  Omnibus 1

  Horror

  Prey

  Serial

  Skulls

  Heir to the Blood Throne: Inheritance

  Collections

  Tales of Magic and Misery

  Non-Fiction

  Memoirs of a Machine – w/John MACHINE Lober

  Grunt Style: The Blue Collar Guide to Writing Genre Fiction

  Anthologies

  Blackguards (Ragnarok Publications)

  Unbound (Grim Oak Press)

  SNAFU: Survival of the Fittest (Cohesion Press)

  SNAFU: Hunters (Cohesion Press)

  SNAFU: Future Warfare (Cohesion Press)

  SNAFU: Black Ops (Cohesion Press)

  In the Shadow of the Towers (Night Shade)

  Neverland’s Library (Ragnarok Publications)

  At Hell’s Gates 1&3 (Charity)

  American Nightmare (Kraken Press)

  Corrupts Absolutely? (Ragnarok Publications)

  Widowmakers (Charity)

  That Hoodoo Voodoo, That You Do (Ragnarok Publications)

  Cogs in the Gears of War

  Jax was having a good day…right up until Ord’s brains spattered the side of his face.

  The report echoed as Ord slumped, a sharp rumble of thunder coming too late to be of any warning.

  “Fucking hell!” Brand shrieked. “Where’d that come from?”

  “Probably that battalion rolling up on us,” Jax answered, dropping behind the wall of the makeshift battlement with a grunt.

  He peeled a piece of Ord’s warm scalp off his lip, the hair threading through his teeth and leaving behind a salty, metallic tang that reminded him of licking a rusty gear shaft.

  Brand stared out over the wall, mouth hanging open.

  “Might want to duck before they ventilate your skull like they did Ord’s,” Jax warned, waving his man down.

  Not that it matters much, Jax thought. Given how much firepower was stacking up on the cracked plain outside the old military outpost they’d overrun the night before, it was only a matter of time before they were all decorating the walls.

  “Right?” Brand replied, as if just realizing standing there while an army set its sights on him was a bad idea. He hunched down, his back to the ledge that barely kept them out of sight of the force below. “Them’s wark troopers,” he huffed out between panted breaths.

  “Keen eye you got there,” Jax told him. “What gave it away? The crimson gear and hammer insignia on the banner they’re flying or the Warkold-issued reds and blacks?”

  “They’re not supposed to be here,” Brand went on, oblivious to the sarcasm.

  “No, they are not.” Jax sighed.

  And as much as Jax was annoyed for thinking like Brand, the idiot was right. The warks forming up, weapons at the ready, really weren’t supposed to be there.

  The main group had closed on foot to keep from being heard, Jax’s team too caught up in raiding the outpost’s meager supplies to notice, but this was no accidental encounter. An array of assault vehicles trailed behind the wark foot soldiers, the entire force armed and armored and ready to reap misery.

  The heavy thump of boots drew his gaze to the stairwell on the opposite side of the narrow battlements.

  “We’ve got company, boss,” Riley informed, smartly staying low in the entryway to stay out of the line of fire.

  “Noticed that,” Jax replied, gesturing to Ord’s limp body off to the side, a dark puddle growing around him.

  He stared at them through three wide eyes, the newest of them drilled into the middle of his forehead. All three managed to look surprised.

  “Ord’s dead,” Brand mumbled.

  Riley sighed and peeled his gaze from Ord, strafed Brand, then dropped it on Jax. “Shot the wrong one, I’m thinking.”

  “The day’s still early. Give them time,” Jax replied, easing up and casting a furtive glance at the troops kicking up dust and moving into position a short distance from the wall.

  “Hey,” Brand growled, finally catching the subtext of the conversation. “I’m right here.”

  Jax’s mind whirled, but there was no mistaking the immutable truth. “They knew we were coming,” he said.

  In the last month, he and his men had hit three other outposts that ran along the two-thousand-mile border between the Warkold Dominion and the sprawling Barrens to great success. He’d thought himself smart, skipping installations at random to make it hard to predict where they’d hit next, but his gift of hindsight kicked in right then, bringing an uncomfortable clarity with it.

  The outpost had been understaffed when he’d reconned it, only a few men patrolling the walls with minimal armaments and hardly a sign of movement inside its courtyard. It made it the perfect mark.

  It had also been the perfect set-up.

  And like good little mice, they’d gone for the cheese, and now the trap snapped down on their necks.

  “That explains why the stores are so low and the armory is empty,” Riley groaned, realizing what had happened.

  “Yup.” Jax nodded, shaking his head. He eased back onto his haunches and grabbed his radio, thumbing the button. “Any eyes along the flank?”

  “You want the bad news or the worse news, Jax?” Conor asked across the comm a moment later.

  “Dealer’s choice.”

  “We
’re all sorts of fucked,” Conor answered with his usual eloquence. “Got warks moving up in a loose half-moon formation all around us. Gotta be a few hundred, at least, not counting those in the convoy. Only place I’m not seeing troopers is on the ridge at our backs.”

  “That’s because they don’t need any. There ain’t no goddamned way up that cliff without us being target practice, and they know it,” Jax growled. “Keep an eye open and call out if you see any movement our way.”

  “Roger that,” Conor replied before going silent.

  “We stepped in it good, boss,” Riley said. “We going to be able to scrape the stink off our boots?”

  Jax shrugged.

  Before he had a chance to do more than that, a cold, amplified voice rose up from the warks outside.

  “Desert-rat scum…”

  “That’s just rude,” Brand mumbled.

  “You get to be an asshole when you’re the only one with an army,” Jax shot back. “That’s the rule.”

  “…you have committed acts of terrorism against the sovereign nation of Warkold,” the voice continued. “We have you surrounded. Surrender now and earn the mercy of a quick death. You have five minutes to comply.”

  “Not hearing much wiggle room in that offer, boss,” Riley said. “Whatcha wanna do?”

  Jax rose up and peeked over the edge of the wall again, surveying the enemy arrayed against them. They stood with a casual arrogance, seeming in no hurry to use the overwhelming force at their command despite the certainty of success.

  Jax blinked and focused his gaze on the wark officers bunched up at the front of the line, his optical scanner zooming in. They grinned and laughed among themselves, only half-ass looking in the direction of the outpost and its occupiers.

  A hard knot rose in Jax’s throat, and he struggled to swallow it back. He dropped to his ass and rubbed at his stubbled chin.

  “Boss?” Riley pressed when he didn’t respond.

  “They’re waiting on something besides us,” Jax stated, though he didn’t know what.

  “It’s not like they need reinforcements,” Brand muttered. “They’ve got enough men and gear to—”

  “Shh!” Jax hissed, squeezing his eyes shut and quieting his mind.

  He held out a hand toward the courtyard and focused his will, his senses reaching out, washing across the outpost in waves.

  The barest ping of a contact echoed back. Then another, and another.

  “Damn it!” Jax hissed.

  He leapt to his feet and dove for the cover of the stairwell.

  “Brand, stay here and keep watch,” he ordered. “Riley, with me.”

  The two stormed down the steps and burst out into the courtyard. Jax yanked his radio loose and fumbled with the button as he continued to sweep the installation, pinpointing the signals tingling against his senses.

  “We’ve got rog infiltrators headed our way,” he announced across the comm. “I need backup at the head outside the command HQ.”

  A tangle of affirmatives washed each other out seconds later.

  “They’re coming through the shitters?” Riley asked as they ran.

  “Where better to hide a secret tunnel in and out of the complex?” Jax growled. “Who the fuck’s gonna go digging around in there?”

  Riley grimaced. “Not me.”

  The pair skidded to a halt just outside the small, shed-like building that made up the restrooms as Conor, Malkom, and four others from the team arrived, huffing and peering about, eyes on a swivel.

  Conor blanched, the smell hitting them as Jax whipped open the door. “I’m thinking I’d rather surrender than go rooting around in there looking for a hatch.”

  “Not necessary. They’re coming to us,” Jax warned. “Heads up.”

  There was a low rumble and the scrape of steel on stone, and then a thunderous crash. The floor beneath one of the bathroom stalls exploded upward, flinging debris, foul water, and excrement everywhere as the infiltrator burst through the floor.

  A sleek, metal monstrosity the size of a Great Dane, the rog hurtled forward, serrated teeth gleaming in the gloom. Red eyes gleamed as its gaze settled on its prey. A distorted roar spilled erupted from its maw, and Jax gritted his teeth, the whirring of its mechanics grated across his nerves like glass shards scraping across concrete.

  The rog zeroed in on him and seemed to grin as it lunged for his throat, knife-like claws clattered across the tiles.

  Riley raised his Kalashnikov tactical shotgun and put a slug dead center in the rog’s snarling face. It did nothing to halt the beast’s momentum.

  Claws flashed, and Jax stumbled backward as the rog slammed into him. His ribs creaked at the impact, and the world swam, all the air knocked from his lungs.

  But Riley’s shot had done just enough to turn its jaws aside.

  Razor-sharp teeth slammed shut not more than an inch from Jax’s face. A wash of air brushed his cheek, and the infiltrator’s basso growl reverberated through his body. Its eyes rolled in their sockets, and Jax knew its every move was being relayed to the enemy outside. The rog’s weight pressed down on him as it opened its mouth for another attempt at tearing him apart.

  “Boss?” Riley called out, hesitant to fire again given the beast’s proximity to Jax.

  “Take out the other two,” Jax growled. “I’ve got this one.”

  Jax answered the rog’s snarl with one of his own.

  The infiltrator was unimpressed.

  Its teeth gleamed and sought his throat again, snout snapping forward.

  And then it stopped, twitching, eyes fluttering.

  “Not today, doggo,” Jax told it.

  One hand pressed against its massive chest, Jax felt for its mechanical mind, willing tendrils of energy through every wire and circuit until he subverted the rog’s programming. A desperate heartbeat later, he had taken full control.

  The roar of gunfire erupted all around him as the other two infiltrators broke from the floor and stormed for Jax’s men.

  Conor and Malkom slowed the first one down, punching holes in its side with armor-piercing rounds spewed from their AR-15 Oracles. The rog sputtered and stumbled, clawing at the ground to keep its balance.

  The other infiltrator broke through.

  Dev, one of the men who’d arrived with Conor, unloaded his magazine, but the rog lowered its armored head and closed, shrugging off the shots.

  “Watch—”

  Dev’s screams started and died before Jax even got the words out.

  Metallic claws sunk deep into Dev’s groin and raked upward. Bone cracked and gave way, and the soldier’s guts bubbled from the gaping crevices that trailed up his abdomen and past his ribcage. Dev was jerked into the air, trailing intestines until the claws ripped free of his face, taking his jaw along with them.

  The rancid stench of feces clouded the air, and Jax choked back the bile rising in his throat. He covered his mouth with a trembling hand and motioned with the other.

  The rog he’d subjugated spun around with a howl and launched itself at its bloodied companion. It ducked low, sweeping under the murderous beast, snatching up its foreleg in its grinding jaws and clamping down. Then it darted back toward the head, yanking and pulling at its mechanical peer, dragging it along behind it.

  A moment later, the two toppled into the tunnel. A loud crash of twisted metal limbs resounded as they struck the ground below, snarling and growling.

  Riley stepped up and pressed the barrel of his shotgun to the wounded rog’s head and pulled the trigger. A roar set Jax’s ears to ringing as the slug blew a hole in the infiltrator’s skull, slamming into the ground on the opposite side, trailing a display of miniaturized electronics and colorful wires. The rog staggered and fell, but Jax was already on the move.

  “Grenades!” he called out, racing to the tunnel where the two infiltrators were still locked in combat. Sweat beaded his brow, and a sharp, piercing headache threatened to eject his eyes from his skull.

  Conor tosse
d him one grenade, then another. Jax fumbled them in his hands, barely letting them settle for an instant before he pulled the pins and tossed them into the tunnel after the mechanical hounds.

  “Fire in the hole!” he shouted, spinning around and barreling away from the head, kicking up dirt in his wake.

  “Literally,” Conor muttered as they ran.

  His men managed to skitter around the corner of the HQ building just before the grenades went off. Jax ducked down as debris flew past them, carrying with it the stink of exploded shit and hazy smoke.

  “Incoming!” Brand shouted across the radio. “Got a squadron of suits charging the wall.”

  “So much for our five minutes,” Conor laughed.

  “On my way,” Jax replied to Brand, motioning to Malkom. “Drop a few more grenades in that damn tunnel and seal that thing off good. Conor, Riley, with me.”

  Jax raced off, his men at his heels. The fight was on in earnest now, especially since they’d turned back the initial attack by the rogs.

  “Better hurry,” Brand warned as they hit the stairwell leading up to the battlements. “We’re about to have company.”

  “We’re here,” Jax replied as he burst from the entryway and ran to the wall. He leaned over the edge to see a dozen men in powered suits racing across the plain in front of the outpost. They closed fast.

  Conor and Riley raised their rifles to defend, but Jax waved them back. “Don’t waste the ammo. We’re gonna need it for softer targets.”

  “Maybe we should just ask them nicely not to kill us then,” Riley remarked. “That’d save us a ton of bullets.”

  Jax chuckled. “That’s the plan, Riley. I’m gonna be diplomatic as fuck.”

  “Well, you better do it fast,” Brand whined. “They’re almost right on top of us.”

  Jax nodded and raised his hands, closing his eyes and reaching out with his senses. A warm tingling enveloped him as his powers rose up, showing him the world in a different light.