Mech Warrior: Born of Steel (Mechanized Infantry Division Book 1) Read online

  Mech Warrior: Born of Steel

  Mechanized Infantry Division, Book 1

  James David Victor

  Copyright © 2020 James David Victor

  All Rights Reserved

  Except for review quotes, this book may not be reproduced, in whole or in part, without the written consent of the publisher.

  This is a work of fiction. All people, places, names, and events are products of the author’s imagination and / or used fictitiously. Any similarities to actual people, places, or events is purely coincidental.

  Cover Design by Christian Bentulan

  Contents

  1. “Bad Luck” Dane

  2. Recovered

  3. Buddies

  4. Focus on Your Goals

  5. Discoveries

  6. Assisted Mechanized Plate

  7. What a Marine Is Capable of…

  8. Request Denied

  9. Brawler

  10. New Sanctuary

  11. Last Chance

  12. Really Screwed Up This Time

  13. Deployment

  14. Thank God for Over-Cautious Citizens

  15. Sometimes You Roll, Sometimes You Bounce…

  16. The Famous Doctor Heathcote

  17. Watkin’s Place

  18. Life Signs

  19. Multiple Contacts

  20. Bazooka

  21. Hold Tight

  22. Spore-creature

  23. Suit Impact Warnings

  24. William’s Don’t Give Up

  25. Not Even My Worst Enemy

  Epilogue: The Family

  Thank You

  Free Story

  1

  “Bad Luck” Dane

  Block, damn you! Dane did his best to raise his metal arms to catch the hammer-blow of steel, brass, and aluminum that was coming his way.

  He failed, and the heavy metal fist—far larger than any human hand—crashed into the protective shell that Dane was currently sitting within. If it weren’t for the mesh webbing that held him, or the X-harness that secured him to his mech’s seat, Dane Williams would have been paste.

  As it was, he was flung to one side of the arena. The heavy body of his Intrepid Mech-Brawler crashed onto the packed-dirt floor, sending up sprays of dust and grime everywhere.

  “And Bad Luck Dane goes DOOOWN!” screamed the announcer from the tower that overlooked the mech arena. The red emergency lights on the inside front of Dane’s cage started to flicker.

  He was in trouble. The strike had dislodged some of his right lateral servo-controllers, meaning that his right-hand arm was twitching unresponsively.

  Dammit! Dane growled. He slapped one of his own giant metal hands on the floor and threw himself to one side, moments before his opponent—Killer Jones—slammed a giant metal foot into the dirt where he had been.

  “And Bad Luck Dane is clear! A close call, ladies and gentlemen…”

  Dane’s ten-foot-tall Intrepid mech was the same as the one that Killer Jones was wearing. However, Killer had used all of his allowable modifications to bolt extra plating around the head and body chassis. Because of that, as Dane flipped his legs underneath him and staggered to his feet, he was looking at a larger, stockier Mech-Brawler than the one he was in.

  Around them both stood the arena for the New Sanctuary Fall Smackdown. It was a wide—it had to be, given the size of the opponents—circular space with high steel walls that stood twenty feet tall, enclosing the two mechanical warriors. Above that sat the tiers of seating. Easily a thousand people were seated around them in ever rising terraces. There were pennants, flags, and giant prosthetic Intrepid masks. Dane even saw a few in red, his personal fandom.

  “Let’s give ’em a show.” Dane took a deep breath as his right-hand arm clanked uselessly at his side.

  Dane had not used up his allowable modification quota on armor plating—a fact that he was regretting now as his head rang from the blow that he had been dealt.

  “It don’t matter how big they are. You hit them enough times, in the right places, and they’re gonna to go down!” He remembered the words of his father, giving him the hardened Williams stare around the side of the punching bag.

  Dane’s father, Joseph, or “Hurricane Joe” as they had nicknamed him in the ring, had never been a Mech-Brawler. He had hated the new fighting sport, in fact, calling it “a good way to get yerself lazy, sitting in a metal cage all day.”

  Joseph hadn’t entirely understood how physical Mech-Brawling was, of course. That had been a bone of contention between father and son for the majority of Dane’s teenage and early twenty-something years.

  Until Hurricane Joe had walked off a sidewalk one day and got hit by a bus.

  That had been it. Nothing fancy. No tragic or heroic death in the middle of a fight, or in any of the other ways that fighting sports people can die in training.

  Hurricane Joe had been a boxer, and he also had truly terrible, terrible luck. Hence Dane Williams, when he started getting known on the Mech circuit, became known as “Bad Luck Dane” instead of anything much cooler.

  Dane wondered what his father would say now, if he was watching from somewhere up above at his son getting his butt handed to him in a fight that he was odds-on to win.

  That old Williams curse… Dane hissed, his chest heaving as he waited for Killer Jones to make his final move.

  Dane was tired. His body ached from moving and pulling all of that metal, despite the assisted hydraulic and internal winch systems that worked to make sure he wasn’t attempting to shift a ton and a half of metal by body strength alone.

  “Night-night, Bad Luck!” His opponent activated the speaker system, earning a roar of approval from the crowd. Killer Jones took a giant, metal leap forward, one foot hitting the dirt as the other started to rise and spin out.

  He’s going for a roundhouse kick, Dane saw. A fancy move in the world of Mech-Wrestling. A lot of metal to shift around.

  But Dane had a secret. He hadn’t bothered to use his allowable modification quota on armor. He had taken his father’s advice to heart.

  Bad Luck Dane allowed his right foot to slide out. He started to turn on his hip in the opposite direction of the whirl of Killer Jones.

  Dane had spent all of his modifications on speed: a mixture of enhanced electrical connections, top-of-the-line lubricants, and the most powerful servo-motor assists he could get.

  Bad Luck Dane was hurricane-fast when he wanted to be.

  The two Intrepid-class mechs whirled around each other in a fast-motion ballet.

  Killer Jones’s foot sailed past Dane’s body as he turned.

  And Bad Luck’s useless arm flared out. It swung like a dead weight as fast as natural physics and momentum would allow in a blow that caught the back of the turning Killer’s head unit.

  There was a crash of metal and sparks and a short groan of pain. Killer Jones went flying, the back of his head cage crumpled. Dane knew that Jones would be alright, as the actual human inside sat a good three feet below that, in the carapace of the Mech’s body.

  It was a finisher of a blow. The sort that ended matches, and for a heartbeat of a moment, Dane spun to a halt. He watched his opponent slide along the dirt ahead of him, all the way to the metal-containing wall at the far side.

  “And would you look at that! Bad Luck Dane has turned it around! He has pulverized the opposition!” the announcer cried out.

  Just as fire started to rain down from the sky, and the whole world was about to change forever.

  Maybe Dane really didn’t have such great luck after all…


  2

  Recovered

  I can’t breathe! I can’t breathe! Dane woke to intense pain pressing down on him like a giant hand.

  A not-small part of the roof of the New Sanctuary Mech-Wrestler Dome pressed him into the ground. One particular girder of steel stretched across the lower abdomen of his Intrepid Mech suit—and his legs within. The rest of the Mech-Brawler was crushed around him like torn and crumpled paper. The fact that Dane was alive at all was a miracle.

  A likely short-lived miracle, Dane realized, as his chest burned.

  He couldn’t tell if his eyes were open or closed. All he could smell was ash. When he tried to take a breath, he felt his chest burn with lightning and fire.

  This is it.

  I can’t breathe.

  I’m going to die.

  Those thoughts flashed through the Mech-Brawler’s mind as he heard a rising whine in his ears. But even that vanished from his mind as the unbearable pain forced everything else out.

  The rising whine in his ears became a piercing, metallic scream. Dane realized that his eyes were open, because they were now being blinded by the brilliance of the purest white light.

  Is this heaven? Am I dying!?

  The answer to at least one of those questions was no, however, as the light suddenly dropped, but the pain continued. And now there was a voice, too.

  “Scanners were correct! We’ve got another one,” said the growl of a crackling radio voice.

  “Holy spit—look at that… Crumpled like an egg!” said a second glitching voice.

  The light still glared painfully into Dane’s eyes, but he could see hazy, indistinct shapes. Two forms, rising over him, and then—

  “Arrrghh!” Dane screamed as the weight was suddenly lifted from his body. Whole new forms of torment flooded up and down his body. It was decidedly unfair, a part of him might have considered—if it was capable of conscious thought at all—that he should feel all these new sorts of pain when the weight was taken away.

  But Dane’s tortured body and protesting nerve endings now had oxygen and blood flow—and a moment to realize how mangled they really were. Dane could feel his heart accelerating in his chest, moving as fast as any Mech servo-alternator.

  “Sweet heavens, this one’s alive!” the first voice was saying.

  Dane took another ragged breath to scream, but the air was getting stuck somewhere now, and he felt his chest heave and spasm and shake.

  “Get a breathing unit on him, quick! Where’s the jaws!? Someone cut him out of there!”

  The humped, indistinct shape moved closer, and Dane thought he could make out something blocky, like a Mech-Suit, perhaps…

  “Here, brother… Hold on, just hold on…” Voices were surrounding him in his agony.

  Dane didn’t feel the bite of the needles that pierced his skin, but he welcomed the sudden release of painkillers through his body. He was too groggy and semi-conscious to be aware of the breathing unit that was placed over his face, or of men of the New Sanctuary Emergency Response Team as they worked. They set steel protective barriers around his head and neck as they cut the reinforced roll bars of his Intrepid-series Mech.

  The ruined man was eventually lifted from his robot cradle and up into the light of a new day. It was probably a kindness that he didn’t see how the sports dome around him was shattered and broken open, or how the skyline in all directions was dirty with the rising heaps of still-smoldering rubble.

  It had been a direct and devastating attack on humanity, after all…

  “If he makes it past the night, I’d be amazed,” muttered the team commander of the emergency response unit. He gave Dane Williams a sympathetic, if casual, look as he was carried past.

  Dane was now enclosed in a pristine white medical bed and being carried to the flattened-out patch of ground where a large four-rotor transport copter sat, its carriage doors open. His was the only medical bed to make it out of the New Sanctuary Mech-Wrestler Dome. Everyone else that the suited and protected emergency response team found was put into black zip-up body bags.

  Bad Luck Dane was alive, but only barely.

  “He might be the luckiest man alive, making it out of that!” mentioned one of the medical orderlies on board the copter. They were also dressed in the all-in-one environment suits.

  “Lucky? You’re kidding me, aren’t you?” said the original voice who had found him. “He might be alive now, but he’s going to be infected for sure. The poor guy’s gonna wish he had died.”

  The man’s prediction was understandable, but Dane Williams had never been a man to give up easily.

  The next time that Dane awoke, it was to a similar brightness which had awoken him from the wreckage of the New Sanctuary Mech-Wrestler Dome. This time, it didn’t hurt quite so much.

  He was in a room with white-paneled walls and a large window that looked out onto blue skies. There was a potted lily on the windowsill.

  For a second, Dane almost felt peaceful, until he looked down.

  He was lying in the cradle of a wide medical bed with raised walls where banks of neon read-outs and lights flickered with his every breath. A soft white sheet covered him up to the shoulders, and he saw that he was wearing a blue medical gown underneath. The idea that he had somehow been naked and someone had dressed him crossed his mind, but no matter. A little embarrassment was a small price to pay for life.

  What happened? he thought, raising his arms to push himself up—

  A sudden, pained cough erupted through his lungs, and needles of electric pain spasmed up and down his body.

  The tinny bell of his medical bed’s alarm unit suddenly rang out. It was quickly followed by the running feet of doctors and nurses.

  “Be still, Mr. Williams!” The first of them, a small man in medical whites, got to him. He gently but firmly pushed Dane back down to the pillows. The next was a woman in nurse’s green, moving around the bed to check his vitals.

  “Is he stabilizing?” the doctor—that was who Dane assumed the small man was—asked, and the nurse affirmed.

  “And the virus?” the doctor demanded.

  Virus? What virus!? Dane thought in alarm. I had a building drop on me. I didn’t get sick! He wanted to correct them, but every time he opened his mouth, pain surged through his lungs and up his legs.

  His crushed legs, he remembered.

  “It’s still a positive. It’s lodging in his kinesin-two protein,” the nurse replied.

  What the heck is my kinesin-two protein!? Dane started to panic.

  “Easy, Mr. Williams. I know this hurts, but you must relax,” the doctor said.

  He gave Dane another firm push down before moving to the steel cabinet near the door of his room and taking out a syringe.

  “I’m moving him onto treatment plan one for the Exin virus,” the doctor announced.

  Exin virus!? Relax!? Dane did not feel very relaxed right then.

  “Wait, Doctor. I need him conscious!” A new voice entered the room, and with it, a woman with long, golden curls streaked with graying white. She did not wear a white lab coat or nurse’s scrubs, but instead wore a dark blue and slate-gray service suit, belted at the waist, with a name tag at her breast.

  She walked into Dane’s medical room with calm authority, and Dane saw the doctor flinch as if poked. He stepped back suddenly, leaving this new woman space to approach the pained, enfeebled Dane.

  His body felt as though it was pricked with fire. Dane thought that he’d rather have whatever the doctor was going to inject him with than a conversation.

  “Mr. Williams, my name is Doctor Sylvia Heathcote of the Federal Defense Board,” the woman said, speaking softly and clearly as she leaned over the bed. Her clear blue eyes were piercing as they scanned over him.

  “Do we…” gasp “have to do this…” argh “now?” Dane managed to breathe and splutter through his hurt.

  A glimmer of a smile crossed Heathcote’s features. “Yes, Mr. Williams, we do, unfortunately.�
��

  Dane breathed through his teeth.

  “You see, Mr. Williams. I am afraid that the good doctor here was about to put you onto something called treatment plan one, which means that you spend the rest of your life in a bed like this one, unable to move, wracked with pain, and you will probably die after only a few years…”

  Wonderful.

  “However, there is an alternative. I am a doctor specializing in epidemiology, and I have been tasked with finding a cure for this virus. If you are in my care, I might have a way that you will at least be able to use your legs again.”

  “I haven’t got…” gasp, hiss—Dane tried to explain that his problem was with falling masonry, not viruses.

  “Ah.” The woman called Heathcote looked up and scowled back at the doctor. “No one has told him yet?”

  “I think this is hardly the time!” the Doctor glared. “And your treatment is experimental! You’re only allowed to do this because the Federal Marines want more soldiers!”

  What!?

  Doctor Heathcote was unapologetic. “Yes, they do. And you are right, my drug is experimental, but it seems to work to block the Exin virus from attacking what is left of an infected patient’s nervous system,” she said in a matter-of-fact manner. She turned back to Dane at her side.

  “Mr. Williams. What I am about to tell you is going to shock you. Please try to listen. And what my colleague here is saying is also true. But know this, I am offering you a way to walk again, and to fight. And to perhaps have some sort of freedom.