War: A Tanki Story

Chapter 10: Bitter Victory

Ever since he was deemed medically unfit to drive a tank, Lynus had confined himself to his laboratory whenever he had a few hours of free time.

And now his invention was nearly ready. Chickens scampered all around, carrying tools and blueprints on their backs. Corntos the Rooster passed Lynus a wrench and he tightened a final bolt.

Now all he needed was an energy source.

He pushed his chickens into a treadmill and they began generating energy by running at top speed. He attached a cable to his newly-made turret and waited.

A crackle of golden electricity shot out of the Enerdrive, and Lynus whooped in glee.

Bryan walked in as Lynus was trying to teach his chickens to open a bottle of Coke. They succeeded and everyone drank the fizzy beverage. "What's this? A time machine?" he joked, pointing at his structure.

"No, it's my latest creation, the Enerdrive!" Lynus explained as Bryan picked up an especially cheeky chick named Corny. Remotely steering (or trying to, anyway. Only being able to use one arm wasn't helpful for driving) his new contraption, mounted on a Hornet hull, he shut it in a hexagonal Transparisteel room filled with scrap tanks for targets. Pointing the turret at one of them, he pressed a red button on his control. A bolt of sky-blue electricity leaped from its end and immediately attached itself to the tank, covering it in a ball of electricity and even connected itself to the tank touching the end of the first tank. The beam shrank slowly and became thin and concentrated. Both were engulfed in the many jolts of electricity. When Lynus finally let go of the button, all that was left of the two tanks were a pile of ashes and a few lumps of molten steel.

"Wow...." breathed Bryan.

"And that's not all, Lynus added. Clicking a different button, the energy harvester at the back of the turret moved to the center of the of the turret, the barrel moving to its centre. Lynus pressed the red button once again, and a bright red ball of energy formed at the end of the barrel. It grew bigger, and bigger, until it was the size of a fist, then a basketball, then even bigger. Suddenly a resounding POP was heard.

Bryan turned around. Corny, having overdosed on soda, had inflated like a balloon. Finally the pressure increased to dangerous levels and Corny flew around the room, a loud squeak escaping from his rear end. He now sat on the floor, dazed. The last thing he did before falling over was give Bryan the thumbs up.

Slowly, Bryan returned his gaze to the Enerdrive.

With a thunderous boom, the energy was released, all at once, in the form of a huge titanic shockwave. The windscreens of the tanks all shattered at once, and many of them got a bent barrel or a dented front. Some of the hulls simply shattered on the spot. Even Lynus, who was wearing sound-cancelling headphones, had to put his hands over his ears.

The chickens, on the other hand, simply flopped to the floor unconscious. They would wake to feel extremely tired, and a horrible pain would stay in their ears for a week or so.

But this was a great leap in the history of tank warfare.

"Can we put this into use against the Bouncing Lions?" Bryan questioned eagerly.

"Sure! Under one condition, that is....."

"Anything! As long as we can put this to good use!"

".......I will have to use it myself."

"YOU WHAT?!?" Bryan almost screamed. "You can't possibly go anywhere near the battlefield. Look at you! You can barely turn a steering wheel without straining your muscles! What are you thinking?!"

"This machine is highly unstable, Bryan," explained Lynus quietly. "Charge it for one second too long and you might just unleash a lethal force of energy, endangering the lives of anyone within a hundred yards of you. It has a built-in function to prevent this, but it requires an implosion. This means that the tank itself will explode. Only I know how to activate it- and the controls have been edited. I can do this."