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

  It was darker, and his suit registered a cooler atmosphere as he kept on pulling his acting lieutenant into the recesses of the room, behind one of the supporting pillars.

  “Right, what did Corsoni say?” Dane killed his own suit lights and rolled Osgud heavily into the recovery position, before looking at his back-plate for the small module component.

  Vhurr! With a few flicks of his fingers, Dane’s gauntlets extended the small Marine lock-key mechanism from one index finger. He opened up the lid of the module to see a friendly green button inside, with the words:

  MANUAL AUTO-MEDICAL.

  “Gotcha.” He pushed the button and closed the lid, knowing that Osgud’s suit, no matter how damaged, would now start deploying a range of automated medical procedures to keep the man inside alive. This included purifying the air, temperature regulation, and even injections of painkillers and stimulants, as required, that the suit would know from its last set of user readings.

  “Sorry, Osgud. It’s the best I can do,” he sighed before looking back at the screen.

  There were now five green blips of life on his scanner. Two were coming for him and Osgud, one was apparently standing by the chopper, and the other two were near the far side of this very building.

  Five, Dane thought. Four looters plus one doctor.

  He looked down at Osgud, knowing what he had told Marine Control, and he looked out at the hazed rubble field outside.

  Just as there was a woman’s scream rising through the air.

  “Aiiii!”

  22

  Spore-creature

  “Get off me!” Heathcote screamed, swinging for the man as best as she was able to with her hands tightly bound.

  Now is my chance, she thought, as the ricocheting sound of the thundering bazooka still resounded off the buildings. The looters had hauled, carried, and dragged her through the ruins of New Sanctuary to here, where a chopper was already waiting for them.

  And someone who has a chopper has money. And power, Heathcote had thought. She wasn’t being held by any ordinary bunch of bandits and thieves, but a well-connected gang with important employers. Ones that would probably try to pull out every Marine access code and secret Heathcote had, by any means necessary…

  So, when they had dumped her and the Triton-stamped boxes here, at the ground floor of some blown-out high-rise block to go and greet the chopper, she had known that her time had come.

  She hadn’t expected the AMP suits, however, or for her opportunity to arrive with quite so much conflagration.

  Her ankles and wrists were still bound, but she had managed to stagger to her feet and swing a two-handed club-fist against the looter that had been left guarding her. It connected badly, on the back of his neck, but it had sent the man sprawling forwards. He jumped back up with a snarl and smacked her with the butt of his rifle, before grabbing at her visor—

  “GET OFF!” she screamed. I only have to make so much noise that the MID can find me… she was thinking, throwing herself forward against the man to slam him to the ground against the heavy wooden crate.

  Crunch!

  One of the wooden slats splintered, and the man hissed in anger, throwing her off him as they both tumbled to the floor.

  “You idiot!” he shouted fiercely, aiming a kick at her.

  Sylvia had been given her basic combat training when she had been seconded to the Federal Marine Corps. It was nowhere near the level of expertise that the trainee privates had been given—but it was enough for her to keep her head in the middle of a brawl.

  She rolled forward, slamming into the man’s leg that he was still standing on as he swung the other back.

  “Whoa!” He went down heavily, and backward, smacking once again into the crate with a heavy thud, this time splintering another slat and destroying the already-broken one.

  Something gray and green behind it shifted.

  “You fool, you fool… you’ve woken it up!” The man rolled himself across the floor of the disheveled room, a few feet away from Heathcote.

  “It!?” Heathcote hissed in alarm, her eyes moving to see the shape that was still mostly hidden behind the box. It was rounded, organic looking, with scaly plates of gray and green.

  Just like the Exin, Heathcote thought, as the scales pulsed and moved, and she saw something extend from the crate, a four-toed set of claws. The crate was big enough to hold something the size of a large dog, and Sylvia remembered how the looters had been trying to be careful as they carried it.

  “Exin!? That’s an Exin!?” she was stammering, starting to roll and kick herself backward, away from it. “But it won’t fit. The aliens are almost seven feet tall!” she said in confused shock. She would know how tall they were, of course, as she had been personally invited to observe one of the autopsies…

  “It’s a spore-creature, you idiot!” the man was saying, looking at the claw as it flexed and started to scratch at the mosaic floor it found itself on. And then a quiver ran through the bulk of the scales.

  “Spore-creature!? What’s a spore-creature!?” Heathcote was saying. The looter’s face behind his rudimentary emergency mask was aghast. Terrified.

  And then there was a creak, as the alien thing inside started to push outwards. The crate started to shake, and its simple wooden staples started to protest…

  “Frack this!” The man said, leaping to his feet, leaving his discarded rifle, and jumping out of the smashed-open window of the building and across the rubble toward the landing sight. She could hear him shouting.

  “Weathers! Weathers, it’s loose!” he was balling. “I’m not getting infected for this!!”

  It. Infected. Spore-creature, Sylvia froze in panic as the crate heaved once again, and one of the slats suddenly burst apart, with a flailing claw reaching tentatively, maliciously, up into the air. Just another shove, and the thing would be free…

  “That’s how the virus spread so fast, so early…” Sylvia suddenly realized. The virus hadn’t been dropped by a mysterious mechanism from the Exin’s seed-craft when they had attacked at all, had it?

  “Which explained why the Mars attack didn’t have any infection, either…” Sylvia’s thoughts were racing.

  The viral count in Private Williams’s blood had been too high, which meant that the virus had been deployed before the attack.

  “And the virus was being carried by a storm from seemingly nowhere…” the conclusion crystallized.

  Somehow, the Exin had managed to infiltrate Earth with spore-creatures before their attack, and now one was right here…

  Crack! Another slat broke apart, and with it came the total destruction of the crate holding the alien thing. The creature haphazardly rolled out of its confinement, and then righted itself, and rose on shivering legs.

  It was a quadruped with a bulbous, bulky body that flexed and heaved as it drew staggering breaths. It had next to no neck whatsoever, but a seed-like oval head, and four muscular legs which ended in claws. High on its back was a bony protuberance like a spike, and the entire size of the thing was almost the size of a Great Dane, Sylvia saw.

  And then it flared open its three-jawed mouth and snarled, showing its multiple sets of pointed white teeth.

  “SSCKRARGH!”

  Sylvia screamed.

  23

  Suit Impact Warnings

  There has to be a way down to her! Dane was thinking as he swung himself down the internal stairs of the building and turned the stairwell corner to find the route ahead blocked.

  “Frack!” He looked, but the rubble and chairs and bits of building looked impassable…

  The windows! he thought, turning back to run toward the second-floor open windows. The gulf of rubble was lower than he was, but not by a lot.

  “There!” He heard a shout, and suddenly, the rat-a-tat-tat of gunfire. The two looters that had been searching for him and Osgud were down there. They had seen him.

  And they are between me and the doctor, Dane thought, not checking his pa
ce as bullets sparked at his heels, and he continued running.

  Thap! Thap!

  Bullets hammered into the floors and walls around him. He was running straight into their line of fire.

  Tock! He felt the sharp wasp-smack of the bullet that hit his leg and felt the pain judder through into his flesh, but it was like a kick, not like being shot.

  >Suit Impact Warning! Lower Right Leg-plate -15%…

  Only fifteen percent, Dane was thinking. He could take a handful more of those hits before they blew through his plate.

  His boot crunched on the lip of the building as he flung himself out and into the air, scissor-kicking as he went, feeling momentarily weightless. He relished the looks of surprise on the faces of the two looters half-climbing the rubble pile before him.

  Dane punched out with one fist as he landed on the hard rock. A bolt of crimson-white laser fire shot out, hitting one of the looters on the shoulder and throwing him to one side. Dane rolled, hitting more of the rocks on the way down.

  >Suit Impact Warning! General Defensive Plate -32%…

  Oh yeah. The thoughts flashed across Dane’s mind as he tumbled. He’d already had a bazooka fired at him. No wonder his suit was compromised.

  “Ach!” And suddenly his leg was cramping, too, as he skidded to a halt at the bottom of the rubble pile.

  “There—there! AMP!” Someone was shouting, and Dane looked up just in time toward the copter to see that one of the two men in front of it was already raising a stubby, sawed-off shotgun.

  Frack! Dane grabbed at the nearest thing—a sheet of corrugated steel—as he rolled, ripping the sheet from where it was embedded with his mechanical grip, and dragging it across him as the looter fired.

  BANG!

  The corrugated sheet smacked against him with the impact of the gun, and a blister of holes had been punched through as the shells had broken apart on impact.

  >Suit Impact Warning! Breast-plate -40%…

  Frack it! Dane swore, flinging the sheet over his head toward the looter still standing up there over him. He heard a gasp and a scramble, but he didn’t think that he had gotten him, as the heavy-set-looking looter was reloading.

  There were at least two looters in front, his suit was compromised, and one looter behind him—and somewhere in that building was Heathcote.

  Neutralize the threat.

  Dane punched forward with his fist once again toward the heavy-set looter in front with the shotgun. He fired.

  The man jumped to one side as the laser shot slammed into the body of the copter with a black hiss of smoke.

  “Heathcote!” Dane bellowed. “Help’s coming!” He was shouting, turning to aim once again—

  BANG! This time the shotgun hit him square in the chest, and he was thrown to one side.

  >Suit Impact Warning! Breast-plate -60%…

  “Frackers!” Dane snarled, turning with his arm raised toward the man—to see the man suddenly jump behind the copter, out of range.

  “Come out!” Dane shouted. “You’re under arrest!” Dane had no idea whether, as a Marine, he could place people under arrest. But he knew that he was in a goddamn Assisted Mechanized Plate suit, and they were just wearing emergency-response gear. Even as damaged as his suit was, they would be fools to try and go up against him.

  “Drop your weapons and come out with your hands up!” he shouted again, just as there was a scrabble from behind him.

  More looters!? He half-thought as he turned, but his HUD sensor map was flaring.

  >Unidentified Biological! …

  “Oh no…” Dane turned to see something spring out of the ground-floor open window of the nearest high-rise. It was one of the Exin-things, but it was easily half the size of the one that Dane had fought before.

  It still had a whole lot of teeth, though, Dane thought. He turned to lower his arm toward it as it charged at him, leaping through the air.

  FZT! He fired his forearm’s light laser, but his aim was off. The creature hit him bodily with its two forward claws, slamming him with a painful thud into the rubbled floor and skittering off of him with a hissed snarl.

  “Urk!” Dane was seeing stars. He had banged his head against the front of his faceplate in the rebound, and somehow there was now a spasm of pain running right up through his spine, legs to neck.

  Awful memories of the plate of the New Sanctuary stadium came back to him, of being trapped, and of a terrible pain preventing him from doing anything…

  “No, no, no!” He grabbed at the rocks, pushing himself up into a crouch—just as the Exin creature charged again, this time pouncing so that its jaws clamped onto his shoulder, and its claws thumped into his chest.

  “Ach!” Dane was thrown onto his back once again, and he could hear the whine and scream of scratching metal…

  >Suit Impact Warning! Shoulder plate -33%…

  Why does that number never go up!? Some part of the panicked, dazzled part of Dane’s mind was thinking as he pushed out with the hand underneath him, performing an arm slam that would have made podcast history in the Mech-Brawler world.

  “Sckrrr!” The monster had been slammed into the rubble, and it gave a pained, bubbling hiss as it let go of him. It turned around—

  Dane staggered to a crouch at the same time.

  Whubh-whubh-whubh… The sudden rev of the transport copter engines and rotors distracted Dane for the briefest of moments. He saw the transport copter start to rise and turn in the air behind the monster…

  And the monster took full advantage of that distraction to jump once again, this time hitting Dane boldly in the chest and taking him off his feet.

  Slam!

  . . . into the concrete ground, once again shaking his senses, sending pain up his back and making him see stars as the creature was once again on top of him.

  >Suit Impact Warning! Back-plate -60%…

  Dane groaned and gasped. The weight of the thing was on top of him, and he was pinned. He was dazed and couldn’t find the strength to lift even his head…

  “Ssskrargh!” The creature reared up on its back legs before driving its front claws back down once more, hitting the mechanized infantry private on the chest and further crumpling his plate. The creature had apparently given up trying to bite through solid metal and had realized with an animal cunning that its bulk and might alone would be enough to finish its prey…

  >Suit Impact Warning! Breast-plate -75%…

  “Ugh!” Dane coughed as he was rebounded against the floor. He felt like beans being shaken in a can. Just another few of these and the suit would crumple in on itself, and he would have every bone in his body broken.

  In the smoke-smeared skies behind the snap and snarl of the creature, Dane could see the drone copter turning and rising, eager to get away from the alien that had somehow found its way here…

  “Hey!” There was a shout. A woman’s shout, as something small was flung through the air to bounce off the creature’s side.

  Thock!

  It was just a mere bit of rubble, barely the size of a human fist, and when Dane looked, he saw that the thrower had been none other than Sylvia Heathcote, worming half-out of the nearby building. Still with her hands bound, she had thrown a piece of rubble (rather expertly, in fact) to hit the thing.

  “Snarkh!” The thing standing on top of Dane turned at the intrusion to hiss at the newcomer.

  Now! Dane punched upward into the creature’s gut—or what he thought of as its gut as he discharged his light laser.

  FZZT!

  There was a flash of crimson and the sudden hiss of smoked flesh and steam as the creature hissed in pain.

  “Sssraowaow!” and leapt from Dane, trailing great gobbets of green ichor behind it to spatter on the floor.

  Dane waved his arms, struggled back to a crouch as the creature was turning, looking at Heathcote, and then at the rising metal golem that was Dane…

  THAD-AD-AD-AD!

  Just as the ground started to explode with the heav
y gouts of burst rock and concrete, as the turning copter above opened fire on them all.

  24

  William’s Don’t Give Up

  “Get down!” Dane shouted, as the strafing line of machine-gun pellets, a medium artillery weapon from the look of it, ran toward him across the rubble.

  What!? Dane hissed in fury as he jumped. Were those looters not content with having escaped from an alien creature, or not having to go toe-to-toe with the Federal Marine Corps? They also had to open fire on everything that moved underneath them as well!?

  There was no time for conjecture, however, as Dane threw himself at the only obstacle nearby—the Exin.

  Dane slammed into the thing’s back with a practiced elbow move of a Mech-Brawler. He heard the thing’s roar of pain. Then he was being flung from it as it donkey-kicked, its claws catching his suit and sending him spiraling across the rubbled ground.

  >Suit Impact Warning! Breast-plate -80%…

  Dane rolled over and over, pushing himself back to his knees as the transport copter above turned in place, its main low-mounted gun swiveling down toward him…

  “WILLIAMS! I got you!” There was another shout, as a sharp snap of crimson-white fire flared from the rise of rubble between the high-rise buildings, lancing across to the copter and smashing one of the windows in an explosion of glittering glass.

  It was Osgud, Dane realized in astonishment. There was Osgud’s blackened and battered suit at the top of the rise, crouching as he fired his forearm light laser at the drone copter about to tear holes through Dane’s suit.

  “SKRARGH!” But the Exin was still ahead of him, and it wasn’t leaping for him, but was instead charging across the ground at the much weaker target.