Metal Warrior: Steel Cage (Mech Fighter Book 6) Read online

  Metal Warrior: Steel Cage

  Mech Fighter, Book 6

  James David Victor

  Copyright © 2021 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. Woke Up in a Strange Place

  2. The Fate of Expedition 892

  3. Pretty Fracking Mad

  4. Not Exin-born

  5. Alpha-Gold-Gold

  6. By Fire and Dust

  7. The Device

  8. By Claw and Scale

  9. The Challenge Planet

  10. The Ruins

  11. Hunting Party

  12. Hostile Environments

  13. Defense Mechanism

  14. Hunted

  15. The Chr-At

  16. A Predatory Logic

  17. Bravery

  18. Twenty-five Minutes

  19. The Hyena and the Brotherhood

  20. Goliath

  21. Only One Man

  22. Creative Uses for a Neutrino

  Thank You

  1

  Woke Up in a Strange Place

  Sergeant Dane Williams, lately of the Orbital Marines, woke to the mechanical hum of a door.

  An alien door.

  Where am I? What!? For a moment, the young man had dreamed that he was back in the New Sanctuary Mech-Wrestler Dome, his final punch having sent his opponent, the brutish Killer Jones, down to the roar of the audience’s approval. He remembered looking up as the glare of the overhead floodlights had filled his old Intrepid Mech-Brawler’s screen, blinding him as it turned into fire and waves of noise . . .

  No!

  His perfect moment of victory had become, in that same instant, his defeat. The dome of the arena had cracked open like an egg, and his doom had fallen on him, on Killer Jones, and on everyone else the day that the Exin had begun their attack on Earth.

  “No!” He gasped as pain raced through his trembling body. In the fog of sleep, a part of him believed that he was still there, and that the pain in his back and his chest, his legs and hands, was the pain of the collapse.

  He was entirely wrong about that, of course.

  Dane was not back there at the bottom of the rubble of the Mech-Wrestler Dome, saved only by his Mech-Brawler suit.

  He was not even on Earth. The pains that he felt came from his recent battle on the surface of Planet 892, the first extrasolar planet that humanity had discovered and attempted to explore—and from the effects of the Exinase virus, the alien bioweapon that had been lurking in his body for a long time indeed.

  “Skreych!” There was a croaking cough of a voice. Dane’s thoughts and eyes focused to see the small metal room around him. The black-metal girders had an oddly organic quality as they swept through the floor to form the buttresses between wall panels. It was dark in here save for a small octagonal porthole high in one wall.

  And, of course, the rounded door on the far side, now open as his Exin guard stepped through it.

  The Exin was tall, almost seven feet, as they hunched over on backward-jointed legs. The alien’s body was made up of gray-and-teal scales that might be a stiffened exoskeleton or armor plating, for all that Dane knew.

  Planet 892!

  With a gasp, Dane remembered where he was and how he had come to be here. The memories slammed back into him, making the young sergeant gasp. Bruce. Hopskirk. Corsoni. His men. His brothers. They had all been sent to rescue the expedition to Planet 892—only to discover that it was some ancient nursery ground of their enemy, the Exin. He wasn’t wearing his Assisted Mechanized Plate. They must have stripped him of it when they had fled Planet 892, carrying him with them.

  Dane had been taken captive by the Exin.

  “What do you want with me!?” Dane demanded, managing to push himself on shaking arms into a half crouch, half-seated position. He knew that he didn’t have the strength to attack the Exin, but he promised himself that he would try.

  “Ssss!” The Exin guard cocked their head to look at Dane in that same predatory way that lizards or birds have, and then the alien moved with a sudden flourish. The metal gourd that they held was thrown, and something splashed over Dane’s face, awakening every scrape and scratch.

  “Ach!” Dane hissed in pain as he recoiled, before eagerly wiping the water from his face into his mouth. They’re keeping me alive, he thought. They were giving him water. They wanted him to live . . .

  “Shrehk!” The alien coughed once again at him and turned.

  “Hngh!” Dane pushed himself off with one hand to flounder at his captor. He made a desperate sweep with shaking fists, but they bounced ineffectually across the scales of the creature’s forelegs. With a chittering that to Dane’s ears sounded an awful lot like laughter, the alien batted him to one side, flinging him casually with a sweep of a long, triple-jointed arm against the metal wall. The impact made Dane’s back cry out even louder, and his legs shake with the effects of the Exinase compound that he now had no antigen for.

  “Queen.”

  For a few seconds, Dane thought that he had imagined the word in his agony.

  “What!?” he snarled at the Exin guard, to find that they had paused by the door looking down at him with contempt. The guard’s mandibles moved, and, although the words were garbled and harsh, what came out was perfectly understandable.

  “Queen. Wants. You,” the alien guard said, before stepping through the open door, which hissed shut behind the guard to leave the sergeant of the Orbital Marines in the dark.

  2

  The Fate of Expedition 892

  “I want to question him.”

  Sylvia Heathcote, Chief Medical Doctor and Special Consultant for the Orbital Marines, heard precisely what the woman opposite her had said. She also knew that it flew in the face of her almost twenty years of medical experience.

  “I’m sorry. What did you say, Captain?” Sylvia blinked in astonishment at Marianne Otepi, Captain of the War Walker unit and now field commander of Planet 892. They stood in the cramped medical room of the Expedition Base Camp bunker.

  Captain Otepi seemed, if anything, a very serious person, Sylvia thought as she swallowed hard and debated disobeying orders. Otepi had sharp features that rarely cracked a smile and one piercing green eye, the other hidden by an eye patch. She was currently wearing a withering look that said, “if you disagree with me one more time, I will personally tie you to a rocket and fire you into space.”

  “You can’t be serious. Right now? This man is critically injured. Any change in his life-support system will kill him!” Sylvia said, nodding to the person in question that lay between them, encased in the frosted dome of his medical bed as lights flickered on and off at the side.

  Sergeant Bruce Cheng’s large frame was barely held by the crystal-glass dome of the medical bed. Through it, Sylvia could see the pale creams of the many bandages holding him together. Bruce Cheng had survived a point-blank pulse blast to the chest, as well as numerous other injuries sustained with the scouting party that had attempted to rescue the Planet 892 Expedition. Given the state that the man’s Assisted Mechanized Plate had been in after the attack, Sylvia thought that it was sheer luck that they had managed to keep him alive this long.

  “I understand the risks, Doctor,” Otepi murmur
ed. “Now, please get it done.”

  “Captain!” Sylvia hesitated, stammered. “There has to be a very good reason for this. Bruce Cheng is my patient right now, and I strongly advise that we do not disturb his recovery.”

  “Doctor.” Otepi upgraded her murmur to a growl. “Sergeant Cheng may be your patient, but he is also my marine. He knew the risks when he signed up, and he took the Oath to serve Earth with his body, mind, and soul. Right now, we need to know what he knows. We need to know what happened here, and what they saw of the Exin mother ship that landed. Not to mention what the Exin were doing here—and where Sergeant Williams is.”

  You don’t care about Sergeant Williams! A flash of anger tore through Sylvia. You only care about military intelligence! Not Dane. Sylvia’s heart constricted all of a sudden when she thought of the man with the reckless smile but dark eyes that always looked a little haunted.

  Dane was gone. Disappeared. No marine scanner or sensor or satellite could find where he or his suit had gone, and her heart thumped a little stronger.

  For a minute, she wondered why she felt such strong emotion. Was it because she had known both Bruce and Dane and the others since they had first registered at Marine Boot Camp? Was it because Sylvia herself had signed so many death warrants for the other marines who had been in that first flush of revenge, and now only a few of the original brotherhood remained?

  “But we know what happened here!” Sylvia snapped. “We have the Gladius’s pilot, Corsoni! The man said that Sergeants Bruce Cheng and Dane Williams went to try and confront the Exin landing party, and, and . . .” her voice wavered, broke.

  “And they failed,” Captain Otepi completed her last sentence for her, her tone remaining rock steady throughout. “We know that. And that is all that we know. The Exin landing party fled Planet 892 when I arrived with the reinforcements, and Corsoni was too busy fighting the Exin seed crafts alongside my fighters to provide any meaningful intel from the ground.”

  Otepi paused in silence before taking a deep breath.

  “Look, I know that this is hard. It is tough for all of us. Sergeant Williams was a good man. A good marine. And we need to honor his memory by finding out what happened down here, what the Exin wanted. They displayed a ship that could create its own warp tunnels! Do you know what that means for the fate of Earth?”

  Sylvia wanted to hang her head in defeat and despair, but she refused herself the luxury. She kept on holding Otepi’s gaze as she answered her.

  “I know what it means, Captain. That the Exin could attack at any time they choose. They can warp in, carpet-bomb any human city that they want, and warp out before we’ve even got our pants on.”

  Otepi frowned at that, but nodded all the same. “That about sums it up. So, you see that we’re really at a disadvantage here, Doctor. The Marine Corps needs every scrap of information that it can possibly get a hold of about what the Exin might want.”

  “Isn’t it obvious that they want to wipe us out?” Sylvia heard herself saying.

  “I guess so. But—why?” The captain was unrelenting. “What if Sergeant Cheng here knew something that would tell us that? That would save the eight billion people of Earth?”

  I doubt it, Sylvia thought—but also knew that she was being placed in an impossible position. Her medical opinion versus the fate of humanity? It wasn’t really a win-win situation.

  And besides, her eyes moved over to the rows of similar medical beds lining the small room, each one containing dark shapes. It isn’t exactly like there’s anyone else that we could ask right now.

  Each of those medical beds contained a body from the first expedition to Planet 892, and each had fallen victim to some sort of mutagenic bio-weapon. Some of the cadavers were in a pre-metamorphosis state, while others were in what Sylvia was calling the “full” mode—a complete transmogrification into a creature that had scaly, lichenlike growths over their skin, powerful builds, claws for hands and feet, and horns growing out of their heads.

  Only one of those beds had the flicker of green lights signaling actual life, which belonged to Sergeant Hopskirk.

  He had also succumbed to the bio-weapon somehow, but the scout team had put him in one of the Gladius’s medical beds before Corsoni had taken to the skies, and that had saved his life. Right now, the marine was in a state of suspended animation as Sylvia tried to figure out how to reverse the mutagenic agent.

  And I have absolutely no idea . . .

  “Ready, Doctor?” Otepi nodded to the body of Bruce Cheng, and Sylvia sighed.

  “Ready,” she said.

  3

  Pretty Fracking Mad

  “Heartbeat accelerating . . . Blood pressure rising . . .” Sylvia said the words automatically as she kept her eyes moving between Bruce Cheng’s face and the medical display unit on his bed.

  This is such a bad idea . . . The rest of the medical bay was empty of people save for Captain Otepi and herself. Sylvia knew that there had to be War Walkers outside the compound, clearing jungle and setting up landing platforms for the constant shuttles that were moving up and down every hour of the day and night. But it seemed to her as if the entire world had gone eerily quiet as she worked.

  “Is that good?” Otepi breathed, as Bruce Cheng, his bulk wrapped in medical pads and bandages, suddenly twitched. His skin was an ashen gray color, which only now was gaining a slight pinkish blush.

  “It’s like bringing a deep-sea diver up from underwater, Captain,” Sylvia said tersely as she oversaw the automatic injection of another microdose of stimulants and watched how Cheng’s body reacted. “Too quick, too soon, and they get the bends. Or, in this case, systemic shock. You need to find ways to get their organs and nervous system used to working with all the pressures of being alive.”

  “It’s not just throw a cup of cold water on their face, then . . .” Otepi grumbled. Sylvia wondered if that was the captain’s version of a joke.

  “No, Captain. It isn’t,” she said, as Cheng’s life signs started to accelerate, then stabilize, and then Bruce took a long, wheezing breath.

  “Easy, Bruce. Take it easy . . .” Sylvia said at once, crossing over to the open medical bed to land a hand on the big man’s arm.

  For Bruce’s bloodshot eyes to snap open, and for him to roar out loud:

  “The tall one! The tall one took Dane!”

  What!?

  “Bruce, Bruce—you’re not making any sense . . .” Sylvia was saying, attempting to calm him down, and wondering if she had to get another tranquilizer shot into him.

  “Let the man speak, Doctor.” Captain Otepi leaned forward. “Sergeant Cheng? Do you remember who I am? It’s Captain Otepi of the War Walkers. What do you mean, the tall one?”

  Bruce’s eyes roved up and down, flickering to Otepi. Sylvia was sure that he was going to fall unconscious again. But he didn’t. Whatever stores of strength that the big man had, they kept him awake. Sylvia was amazed.

  “Tall crawdad. Exin . . .” Bruce said in a weak croak of a voice.

  “Here,” Sylvia moistened his lips with a squirt of purified water. “Go slowly, Bruce. Only say what you have to,” she tried to tell him as he kept on talking.

  “It had blue robes on. Taller than the others. And horns. It carried one of the giant eggs . . .”

  “Giant eggs?” Sylvia saw Otepi’s gaze intensify. “What do you mean, giant eggs?”

  “Dane . . . Dane destroyed it. Like the ones in the Exin Nursery,” Bruce murmured.

  What Exin Nursery? Sylvia was thinking.

  “Sergeant Cheng, can you repeat that for me? Did you say that these giant eggs come from a nursery?” Otepi’s singular eye flashed with apparent excitement.

  “A bunker. In the jungle. Where everyone got sick. Some kind of Exin Beacon in it . . .” wheeze, cough “. . . I think it went off, signaled the Exin to come back with their fracking egg.” Bruce’s voice was getting softer and quieter, and his eyes were starting to flutter closed. Sylvia could tell that this was
taking too much toll on his already battered body.

  “Try to calm down, Bruce. Take a breath. If this is too much, just nod.”

  “Where is this bunker or nursery, Sergeant!?” Otepi pressed hard. “Can you describe the tall Exin for me? Did it have two arms or four!? Sergeant!”

  Otepi’s voice rose in an urgent whisper as Bruce opened and closed his mouth, attempting to respond, before his eyes fluttered closed . . .

  And all manner of bells and jangles started to ring on the medical unit beside the bed.

  “Captain! Get off—he’s my patient, and I need to treat him!” Sylvia burst out angrily, even slapping aside Otepi’s hand on the silver railing. She moved to the medical bed and started to turn buttons and dials, reaching to bring the oxygen mask back over Bruce’s mouth and nose.

  Doctor Heathcote worked quickly, sliding the frosted dome of the medical bed’s cover down with a soft click and moving to direct the injectors and scanners inside.

  Sylvia lost track of time as she fought to save Bruce Cheng’s life, but after a while, the alarms and the bells started to get fewer and further apart, until they stopped entirely. She had managed to place Cheng back into an assisted sleep and stabilized his vital signs to the point where she could stand back for a moment, wipe her tired eyes, and breathe.

  “Will he survive, Doctor?” She found that Captain Otepi was standing by one of the windows to the darkened evening outside. Her voice was contemplative.