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

  As soon as Otepi had retrieved the destination encoded within the Exin Beacon, they had put into place Operation Hammer Blow, which had already been designed and gamed by much brighter minds than hers (or so they led her to believe).

  The human Deployment Gate One, the one that had the jump facility, would take twenty-five minutes from opening a directed wormhole to this spot in the universe and then cycling back to open again. In between that time when Otepi and her strike force of starfighters appeared in space, they would be on their own for a full twenty-five minutes—almost half an hour before the simulated wormhole could be reopened, and they could return to Jupiter orbit.

  And then what? Otepi remembered her earlier qualms. She (maybe) and whoever remained of her suicide squad would return to Jupiter to join in the next muster, as they fully expected the Exin to retaliate.

  She felt like they were kicking the hornet’s nest. Not that she minded that so much. What she minded was the fact that she couldn’t strategize or prepare for what would happen next. After she had arrived or after they got back. If any of them did.

  And now their lead scout was down.

  “Secondary scout ship! You’re up!” Otepi called, as she watched the ripple of plasma blasts burst apart in the upper atmosphere, creating a wide spray of fire and chaos. This was believed by the marine tacticians to confuse enemy radars and scanners.

  “Where are we going, Captain!?” called one of her pilots in another of the squadron of starfighters behind her. Each one was loaded with missiles designed to be fired from low orbit. But it would still require dipping into the atmosphere if they wanted to be sure of a strike.

  Flash!

  And to avoid the sudden beams of purple light that shot up from the surface like torch beams.

  “Evasive action!” Otepi called, pulling hard on the flight sticks in her hands to veer the craft off to one side, away from the spears of violent light being thrown up by one patch of the planet.

  Which Otepi guessed also meant that was one of the Exin capital cities . . .

  >Message Received! Downloading scan data . . .

  But then, all of a sudden, Captain Otepi’s screen flickered into life as the scan from her first scout ship came through. Even though it had been destroyed by the Exin ground lasers, the marine scout had managed to hit the transmit button before he was blown apart.

  Lines of neon code surged down one side of her screen.

  “Are you reading this?” she called, for the rest of her phalanx to call back that they were.

  And, in horror, Otepi realized that most of the planet was uninhabited.

  The scans were showing vast continents of forest, dotted with small industrial complexes and a few port towns. This couldn’t be the home of a multi-planetary civilization, could it!?

  What if we got the coordinates wrong!? Otepi suddenly realized the Marine Corps’s basic error. They had assumed that the Exin Beacon would signal to the Exin home world. They had assumed that the warp-capable jump ship, the one that had arrived in the orbit of Planet 892, had landed and then had fled the scene again—with Sergeant Williams—must have come from the prime world of the Exin civilization.

  It was such an advanced ship. The most advanced that the humans had ever seen of their adversaries. How could it not also have come from the most advanced world of their enemies?

  But clearly—it didn’t.

  “Captain! On our two o’clock!” one of the pilots in her attack group was calling, and she turned her eye to her ship’s sensor scan . . .

  To see that something strange was happening further out in the orbit of the planet. There were massive displays of radionic and magnetic energy. Even as she looked with her naked eyes at the port screens, she could see the way that the stars seemed to haze and blur, as if they were passing through a very localized heat wave.

  And there were rippling flashes of light as ship after Exin ship started to arrive through the custom-built wormhole.

  And in their center, rippling from brilliance into materiality, came the Exin jump ship itself.

  “Attack group ready for direct engagement!” Otepi called, her eyes sliding to the timer until her window to return home reopened.

  >00.21.07 . . .

  19

  The Hyena and the Brotherhood

  What!? Dane tensed instinctively. The ruddy predawn skies of this alien planet were now tormented with gales of fire and waves of smoke blistering the sky.

  They were being fired upon. From above. But who . . . ?

  Suddenly, the entire building shuddered, and Dane could feel the reverberation through the trolley he stood upon. A glare of purple light shot out through the top of the building itself and speared up toward the sky.

  “Defense lasers,” Dane whispered in horrified awe, but one thing was for certain. Whatever was going on over the skies of the Challenge Planet, he would have to get his own personal mission done quickly. He hopped over the railing to the balcony and looked through the large, rounded porthole on the other side.

  And saw a suite of rooms made of the same dark midnight-blue metals, dimly lit, with low, curving objects that could be seats and one bank of holographic displays flickering with information.

  And standing at these boards was a figure. A human.

  Dane felt his heart thump in a rage that he hadn’t fully experienced before. It wasn’t just the fact that there was a human standing there, a child of Earth, apparently working the holographic controls with ease and competence that suggested skill. Experience.

  It was also that Dane knew him.

  The human wore a close-fitting mesh encounter suit (the very same sort that Dane himself wore, which the Exin had made for him at the start of his challenge) but over this suit was a jacket and utility belt that Dane recognized from his intelligence briefings.

  This man had short-cropped, sandy-colored hair and had a spray of stubble over his cheeks.

  It was the Hyena.

  “How did you get here!?” Dane growled. The last time that he had seen this man, this terrorist, it had been when Dane had retaken Deployment Gate One from the Hyena’s band of ex-military and Martian secessionists called the New Earthers.

  The Hyena was the man who was behind the death of First Admiral Keel and was also involved in the smuggling of Exin biotech to Earth and releasing the spore creatures that had created the Exinase virus.

  Dane had personally knocked this man out, flinging his body into the electric controls that ran the wormhole-jumping station, shocking him into unconsciousness. The Hyena had then (Dane presumed, as he himself had been pretty beaten up at the time) been taken by the Marine Corps into protective custody. He should be languishing in some high security military prison right now, shouldn’t he . . . ?

  But the Hyena did not look imprisoned as he worked the computer controls. In fact, Dane could even see a glass of something on the side table that could very easily be wine. Prisoners, as a rule, did not get wine.

  As Dane watched in confused outrage, the Hyena stepped forward and grappled with two of the holographic controls. Dane saw him twitch them, moving a purple rune over a dark screen to match up with something, and he twisted his hands abruptly.

  There was a violent shake through the body of the building itself, and another flare of purple blast shot upwards into the sky.

  He’s even guiding the defense of this planet!! Dane snarled, raising the Exin shell gun, and pointed at the man’s legs. He would have preferred shooting him through the heart for his treachery, but even in the depths of his anger, he could not bring himself to commit murder.

  Dane aimed . . .

  And quickly, the man twitched to one side, seeming to notice Dane’s shape in the window . . .

  Dane fired as the man jumped, and the bolt smashed through the glass of the porthole with a deafening crack and slammed into the floor where the Hyena had been. The lights in the room flashed a warning orange as an alarm call suddenly blared.

  But Dane was already
moving. There was no way out now. He was committed. He jumped forward through the broken-open porthole and into a roll, sliding across the metal floor.

  Flash! A sizzling purple bolt just missed him, shooting past to slam into one of the low chairs and break it apart with a flash of fire and noise. The Hyena had an Exin sidearm and was firing back at him from where he was scrabbling behind a computer bank.

  “You!” Dane roared, coming up out of his roll and firing a volley into the edge of the computer bank. Sparks flew and steam hissed from the strange alien components inside. There were several of the low seats and higher tables between him and the Hyena. On the wall was a display of long-handled, bladed weapons.

  “You betrayed your own people! You betrayed Earth!” Dane kept up the volley against the cover, firing to keep the man down as he jumped forward.

  “Ssskreych!” A sudden roar as the door at the far end of the room hissed open, and an Exin guard appeared, already lowering his own shell gun at Dane.

  Frack! Dane fired at the open doorway to the corridor beyond, and the Exin dodged back out of sight.

  Flash!

  But this brief moment had given the Hyena another chance to fire. Luckily, the shot missed Dane, slamming and exploding against the wall by his head. But it was close enough for Dane to throw himself across the room and behind the solid metal stand that functioned as a table.

  “Skrargh!” The Exin at the door fired into the room, slamming into the metal at Dane’s back.

  Frack. Frack. Frack. Dane had to come up with a plan and quick if he didn’t want to get overwhelmed and surrounded.

  “I heard you were loose, Williams!” the Hyena shouted. “I tried to tell the queen not to bother. To just go ahead and kill you, but she is a stickler for tradition.”

  Dane nudged his gun to one side and fired a volley, for the Hyena and the Exin guard to duck back out of the way.

  “You should have run!” Dane shouted back, before another scatter of shots forced him to retreat behind his cover.

  “You’re on the losing side, marine!” the Hyena crowed. “The Exin are almost ready for the endgame. The total invasion of Earth . . .”

  “How could you?!” Dane snarled back, firing another shot before ducking back home. He saw the Hyena roll out from his hiding place to another of the solid tables. The tables were almost surrounding the Hyena as the Exin threw covering fire at Dane’s position.

  This is it. Dane’s thoughts were racing, as another set of his thoughts repeated the Hyena’s last words, over and over. The total invasion of Earth. He was going to see the end of life on Earth as he knew it.

  Dane’s mind raced back to the Chr-At, to the slave people who scurried under the platforms of the Exin, doing their work, begging for scraps, and suffering the consequences of any torturous whim of their alien overseers.

  He imagined that same order marching through Earth, through planet after planet. An entire galaxy run by one fanatical queen . . .

  No. Dane’s eyes flickered to his only chance. And fired.

  His shots slammed into the wall of the ceremonial weapons hanging over the Hyena’s crouched position. With a rupture of light and noise, the glass and the short spears, halberds and stranger things hit the floor around the mercenary. Dane heard a sudden shout of pain—but he was already darting forward, twisting in midair as he fired at the doorway.

  The Exin guard had been foolish enough to advance into the room already, so convinced that he was of his victory. Dane’s shots took the guard down and sent him flinging back into the corridor. The marine spun back around quickly to the Hyena . . .

  To already see the man standing up and swinging one of the bladed weapons straight at him.

  “Ack!” The Exin weapon smacked the gun out of Dane’s hands with a shock that hurt his wrists and elbows. Dane saw it flung through the air of the room.

  The Hyena snarled victoriously, showing his teeth as he prepared to run Dane through.

  But the Exin ceremonial weapons were all around, on the floor, everywhere.

  Right in front of Dane’s feet . . .

  The marine kicked forward with his foot, hooking the pole arm and flicking it up as the Hyena came in for the kill.

  “Urk!” Dane’s adversary had to suddenly lurch to one side as the blade on a stick flashed up through the air . . . but still, it caught him on the side of the cheek, sending a spray of blood down his encounter suit.

  Dane snatched at the Exin short spear as it rebounded, catching it with both hands and swinging the blunt end at the Hyena’s head.

  Clang!

  The mercenary was clearly much quicker than Dane had given him credit for, as he had already twisted the weapon that he held around. He parried Dane’s spear and shot back a counter strike.

  Slam! Dane parried it instinctively, using the spear like a quarter staff as he swung the other end to test the Hyena’s defenses.

  Both men were trained fighters. Both men were fighting for their lives. They swung and jabbed with the stolen alien weapons, sweeping strikes that whistled as they tore through the air, flashing close enough for each of them to feel the breath of wind right in front of their eyes.

  Clang! And they parried, sending shocks up and down each other’s arms as they tried to strike out at each other’s head, shoulders, hands, and legs.

  “Who got you out of prison?” Dane snarled after a particularly powerful strike had pushed the Hyena back toward the window side of the room. “Who helped you escape—your New Earthers?” Dane swept with the blade, referring to the Martian insurrectionists who thought that they could use the Deployment Gate to jump to another pristine Earthlike planet. They had been manipulated and fooled by this man right in front of him.

  The Hyena jumped back, panting for breath. “We’re bigger than that. More powerful than you think.” He lunged, and Dane had to leap over one of the blown-apart tables to avoid getting diced. The two men regarded each other warily, pacing around each other for a moment as each caught their breath.

  “Your New Earthers are already crushed!” Dane scoffed. “I heard the Marine Corps took in their leadership on Mars just a few months ago.”

  “You think this is about the New Earthers!?” the Hyena spat, jumping forward to jab his own spear at Dane.

  Clang! There was a scatter of brilliant sparks as Dane caught it with a parry of his own and then had to block another jab, and another and another, before he got a chance to lunge forward and drive the Hyena back again. Dane could feel the exhaustion rippling through his body. Unlike the Hyena, Dane knew that he hadn’t had enough to eat these last few days. Not enough for this.

  “There’s a group. A Brotherhood.” The Hyena was sneering at him. “We’ve got members in the highest political circles. Governments. Corporations. They got me out of your prison, marine!”

  The Hyena tried to jump to one side, but a sharp sweep from Dane blocked him off.

  “A secret society?” Dane felt his blood boil all over again, giving him a much-wanted burst of energy. “One that wants the Exin to take over!?”

  “Fool!” The Hyena ducked to one side again and Dane reacted—but it was only a feint. The man instead kicked out at one of the broken tables to slam into Dane’s calves and send him flying to the floor in a sprawl.

  “Ach!” Dane rolled on the floor as the Hyena sprang at him. Luckily, he still had his pole arm in his hands, and he used it to bat away the Hyena’s attacks.

  “It’s always about the money!” The Hyena spat in apparent disgust at Dane’s naivete. “You think that there isn’t money to be made in a war? Exin tech? Exin services? This war has—is—going to change everything for all of us. And the Brotherhood are going to make sure that they end up on top, no matter who is in charge!”

  Clang! Dane parried and blocked as best as he was able, but he was on his back, and the Hyena had the higher position and the upper hand.

  “And now you think your people can do anything by attacking the Challenge Planet!?” The H
yena laughed as he jabbed and prodded at Sergeant Dane Williams, who hurriedly attempting to scrabble backward out of the way.

  For a minute, Dane thought that when the Hyena said “your people” he must be referring to the Chr-At, both those outside the Exin township and living free but hunted in the jungles, as well as the slaves that lived underneath them right here.

  But the Hyena knew nothing about Dane’s recent dealings with the Chr-At, did he?

  And the Challenge Planet was being fired upon.

  The Marine Corps! Dane realized and knew it in his heart with a cast iron certainty that this was true. The barrage of air blasts in the sky—the people attacking the Challenge Planet had to be his fellow marines, somehow, miraculously . . . !

  And Dane’s heart burst open with hope. And courage. If the Marine Corps had found a way to get here, all the way here across thousands or hundreds of thousands of stars and light years—then there had to be a chance, didn’t there?

  “Ackh!”

  Dane was thinking all of these things when, all at once, a spear of pain ran through him. The Hyena had skewered him with the ceremonial blade, straight through the meat of one of his calves. The shock of it, compared to the pain, momentarily made Dane gag for air—which gave the Hyena enough time to kick the blade that Dane held out of his hands.

  “There.” The Hyena twisted the blade that stuck Dane to the floor savagely, and tears blurred Dane’s vision. For a long moment, all Dane could hear was the ringing of tinnitus in his ears—but then it cleared into the growling, scornful laugh of the Hyena himself.

  “You’re done, Williams.” The man laughed. “It won’t be long until the Exin guards are back. They probably won’t even bother to take you before the queen this time . . .”

  20

  Goliath

  >00.17.38 . . .

  “Squad One pull back!” Otepi was shouting when she saw the first flight of five Marine Corps starfighters pull ahead to engage with the newly-arrived Exin fleet.