“Scatter!” I shout.

  “Take cover and return fire!” Wormface howls.

  His orders are sound, but in my infinite wisdom of taking the largest suit, I’ve also become the easiest target! We are in no-man’s-land, the dead space between trenches where the only cover is barbed wire and shell craters.

  Where the hell can I stuff my newly built not-quite-a-mech-but-way-too-heavy-to-be-called-a-marauder-battlesuit behind cover? Both arms come up, double fisting dual launchers I let the automated targeting computer aim and fire, guiding my grenades into Juggernaut center mass. Leg servos engage overdrive, giving me a burst of mechanically aided power to launch myself fifty feet. Arm launchers reload midair, four conical armor piercing warheads this time.

  A blue spear burns the air behind me. Tripping warning lights across my screens, minor damage to the legs, as if the Juggernaut was aiming for my head and didn’t expect me to jump. Just a graze was enough to compromise the inner thigh armor. A direct hit would have penetrated my armor like a million horny frat boys.

  “Don’t get hit.” I Pray as a dozen of my guardians open up in the same split second, illuminating the night as only energy weapons can.

  Juggernauts answer in kind, firing energy mounts better suited for spaceship dissuasion. Our collective link shares targeting and life senses, depicting the death of a trooper as [13/13 powered armors] in my mind. Someone just died-

  -and all I can think about is how easy it’ll be to replace them.

  We didn’t even register the loss of biomass.

  Fear locks down my legs, faceplanting me into the dirt and preventing me from moving. Problem is, I’ve landed in a shallow depression, three quarters of my battlesuit is visible. Including my head and both arms. Target locks appear in front of me and I fire two grenades at Juggernaut’s central mass. Technomancy green flares, shielding.

  Ignorant of my fear the HUD adds this new information to its calculations, showing an estimation of the opponent’s shielding. As if we are in a training exercise. 80% shields left. These tanks have shields, and plasma cannons. I open a com channel, marking the leftmost Juggernaut for the squad.

  “Focus fire and bring it down!” I scream blasting all our ears.

  Thirteen marines aim at a single target, yellow beams mingle with red bursts from the troopers and my grenades. Just as the Juggernauts fire eight lines of incendiary light. Blue plasma rakes our lines in a strafing slice. Emurine would have been cut in half save for his last second activation of the reaper jetpack.

  He sails into the air, drawing plasma fire up, taking it out of our dirt as Juggernaut sensors detect an incoming enemy and pull their shots to target him. Another cannon fires and Emu-rine vanishes, the beam disintegrating everything from helmet-top to knees. His feet and hands continue through the air, bouncing off one Juggernaut’s shields to land atop the other, with velocity reduced the limbs pass through shielding unhindered.

  [12/12 powered armors]

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  He’s dead and gone, but I can’t let that get to me. They incinerated the demo charges too, our best anti-tank weapon. Four grenades burn from my fists, colliding with the Juggernaut and adding a weight of fire to the scales of our remaining lives. Green shielding, so similar to the nuclear missile, flares bright as if to mock our best efforts. Orders echo through my helmet, Barker and two troopers scramble into a run. All other soldiers pouring fire into a single Juggernaut.

  Engines roar to life, the tanks’ tactical computer understanding our aim. The undamaged Juggernaut rolls forward bringing his shields to bear while the Juggernaut with 10% shields remaining begins rolling backwards, out of our line of sight.

  Four pinpricks of blue light become beams of death aimed at Barker. Each beam converges on Barker’s armored chest, carving through two symbiote infested troopers.

  [10/10 powered armors]

  *Thunk Thunk* echoes in my helmet, arm launchers firing automatically. I’m tense. Holding the triggers down. Green shields flare and vanish, the rear Juggernaut exposed. Just in time to be occluded by the lead vehicle.

  I swear, knowing that all our focus fire efforts were in vain. They’ll probably rotate again before we can kill even one tank.

  Barker never stops. While the two troopers with him died he alone remained on all fours despite wearing power armor. An illogical quirk that stumped the Technocracy’s best targeting sensors. They must have assumed he would stand, the suit’s legs are longer and bearcrawling was slower than running not to mention awkward and painful for a default human. But whatever Barker was, seemed not to care about comfort. Throwing off the enemy cyborg’s calculation.

  He tumbles forward face first into the shield and for a moment I fear he’s bought the farm.

  Then a golden halo appears just below the plasma cannons. Two strokes and half the Juggernaut’s armory falls away. Cannons hacked apart by one barking whirlwind.

  Which is when the battle finally began to shift from a slaughter. Scores of plasma rifles arced out of the trenches bubbling across the rear juggernaut’s armor. While the central box of the tank’s armor withstood the onslaught its exposed plasma cannons fell victim and locked open. Energy collected in each cannon, nevermind the weapons had no barrel or vent remaining. Heat began to build, reactor whining until the -once perfectly tuned- guns turned against their reactor and exploded in a fatal feedback loop.

  Barker saw the wave of energy a half second before it hit and dove off the tank somersaulting with his golden axe in hand.

  Spillover from the rear juggernaut washed over the once fresh shielding, now brought low by our squad’s sustained firepower. Each of our improved pulsers was an anti-tank rifle in their own right, and cut the remaining Juggernaut in half lengthwise as its rear disintegrated under sustained barrage.

  My grenades switched to high explosives and lent concussive waves to the stream of plasma, breaking off chunks of flesh interwoven with steel. Part of me always knew the Novan Technomancy was a deplorable union, AI first was an evil mantra, but it was another concept entirely to see the raw meat and extraneous organs grafted onto the hull of a Main Battle Tank. Witnessing what had become of my fellow human before being entombed in steel. Tracks snapped and broke under the withering firepower, twisting in the furnace of sublime plasma and sublimating steel.

  All I could think of, all that I could picture, was my naked body, limbs removed, orifices plugged with tubes, forced to fight my fellow Earthlings. My fingers never let off the triggers. Not until nothing remained of the Juggernaut’s center and each explosion blasted dirt into the air. Even then, it took Barker’s radio to get me to stop.

  “Boss, uh, what are we digging for?” He asked, proving that he could in fact make human sounds.

  That snapped me into the present. No one was moving, except for small flashes across no man’s land, within the trench ahead. Where some once helpful force now lay.

  “Don’t worry about it Barker. We found it.” I switched to a private command line so only Wormface can hear me. “This isn’t how I wanted to meet the Tulverians, but it's time. Get Helen to say hello.”

  “Yes sir.”