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

  The human crafts were too far ahead. They weren’t going to dazzle and disorient their enemy. They were merely going to be . . .

  Cannon fodder.

  >Marine Tactical Server / Captaincy / OTEPI . . .

  >>Multiple contacts . . .

  >>Fighter Seven disabled . . .

  >>Fighter Five destroyed . . .

  >>Fighter Three seriously compromised . . .

  >>Fighter Eight . . .

  “Frack it, frack it, frack it!” Otepi snarled at the attack vectors that she was watching, overlaying the real-world visions of orange-and-purple plasma exploding and flaring in the night ahead of her.

  The opposing Exin fleet was small in comparison to the waves that they had fielded against Earth. This has to be a first response strike group, Otepi thought. If, that was, the Exin operated in any way like humanity did in times of war.

  But even though the Marine Corps fighters were faced with just a limited number of the Exin seed craft, the alien attack craft had somehow arrived from their warp seemingly already firing. Maybe their attack computers were faster than the humans were, Otepi conceded. Or maybe right now she didn’t have time to wonder.

  “Evasive maneuvers!” called her second copilot watching the screens, and Otepi was already throwing their craft into a fast spin as a purple pillar of light shot upwards from the surface of the planet below and just missed them.

  “Good work,” Otepi breathed in relief. She knew that the only indication that any of them had before the planet’s defenses fired was the miniscule change in electromagnetic pulse radiation that indicated the laser discharge.

  They dipped and swam, skipping across the atmosphere of the planet as their screens hazed white with the corona of entry and then phased again to the vision of the stars above. Each vision was just as flame-filled as the last, however, as above her the space was starting to light up with exploding marine starfighters from the forward squadron.

  Otepi saw parts of her own comrades’ crafts breaking apart and spiraling, nose over wings. She listened to the sudden coughs of shock or snarls of fury from the cockpits of those brave men and women before the void took them.

  No. No. No . . .

  Had they been fools to think that they could do this? That they could disable the Exin home world so quickly and completely? Apparently they couldn’t even find the home world!

  Maybe. Otepi ground her teeth as she squeezed the firing triggers. She sent a strafe of her own plasma bolts thumping after a racing seed craft attack fighter that had been attempting to circle around the forward attack squadron. Her fire found it before it could target one of her own, and the flash of its explosion was a small joy for the steely woman.

  But then again, Otepi gripped the guiding stick to cast another glance at the readouts of the planet below. There were only a few sporadic electronic signatures down there. Nothing large enough to be a capital city, she thought. But what did she know of Exin demographics?

  Then again, everyone who had decided to join this mission had known the cost. They knew that it was a first strike, a desperate strike, a kamikaze operation. One fell blow to stop the war.

  “Ready the Goliath!” she hissed. Her message was transmitted back over the marine servers to the smaller, sleeker starfighter that was being held back, as per her own orders.

  This smaller human craft looked different than the others. It was barely more than a torpedo on X-wings. It looked as though any stray passing bolt of alien fire would take it out of the skies—and it probably would. But that was why the third squadron was clustered close nearby, firing at any approaching alien craft that could disrupt their plans.

  The Goliath, sarcastically named because it was such a small vessel, actually contained something very large.

  The largest thermonuclear device that humanity could cobble together—a daisy-chained rig of multiple neutrino bombs inside an iron superstructure which could be dropped from the upper atmosphere to the planet below. This was Otepi and the Marine Corps’s secret weapon.

  This was their city killer.

  “Bring up the largest population center on the planet,” Otepi snarled, her eyes flickering to the Deployment Gate time signature.

  >00.16.24 . . .

  She wished that she had a way to relay a message back to the Marine Corps around distant Jupiter, to tell them that as soon as the Deployment Gate had cycled up again, they should come through with every military and civilian craft they had to muster.

  But no, Otepi did not have those capabilities—and that was not her job, either.

  She was here to do one thing. To destroy cities.

  “Got it, Captain. Eighteen miles across your three o’clock,” her copilot and navigator said.

  Otepi gritted her teeth and nodded as her gloved hands adjusted her course. Far above her head and her craft the forward squadron was burning and dying, but they were at least doing their job. They were keeping the mother ship and the vast majority of the Exin seed crafts occupied while Otepi’s attack squadron as well as the Goliath’s escort squadron did their work.

  The captain focused on the small, blinking attack vector that appeared on her screen over the Exin’s largest city—the same one that was firing the defense lasers at them.

  “Begin attack flight. Let’s burn this city to the ground,” Otepi hissed.

  21

  Only One Man

  “Sckrech!” Dane fluttered open his eyes to see that two more of the Exin had arrived in the chamber, cautiously, with their shell-like guns leveled at him across the smashed furniture of the room.

  “You can inform the queen I have the situation under control,” the Hyena said in a gasp of pain. He was injured too, but he leaned against the pole blade that stuck Dane to the floor, sending another ripple of agony through the marine.

  “Sss-kry-ah!” one of the Exin said, and there was a flash of light from their jaw as the software translated.

  “Not the queen. War Master Okruk,” the Exin said, as another vibration pulsed through the building. It wasn’t a strike from the attacking Marine Corps, Dane recognized. It was the same wave of power that swept through every time that the building’s defense laser fired. Against his own side.

  “Queen too busy,” the Exin said in what was for them, a matter-of-fact voice. “War master wants you to tell us the weaknesses in human attack. Now!”

  The Exin stalked toward the wall of computers, one side blackened and sparking, but several screens still flickering with digital life.

  Through the tears of pain, Dane could make out small attack shapes, each one seeming to spiral across the surface of the Challenge Planet.

  “How could you . . .” Dane gasped. The Hyena cast him a look, gave another cruel shove on the pole blade, and moved to examine the battle map.

  “All that Earth has given you . . .” Dane whispered and wondered if the Hyena’s shoulders flinched a little as the mercenary set himself to the task.

  “There. They are trying to keep the mother ship busy while this group attacks,” the Hyena was saying, pointing at two groups of flaring orange vectors.

  “It must be some kind of tactical strike. You have to take them out now!” the man was saying as Dane turned to look down at the blade still holding him to the floor. The Exin and the Hyena were busy. They were rushing their hands over controls, probably aiming the building’s defense lasers at marines that Dane himself knew.

  I can’t let him do this . . . Dane steeled himself, reaching down to grasp the haft of the weapon. Even touching it sent another tidal wave of agony soaring up through him.

  But Dane was a man who was used to pain.

  Not just used to pain, Dane thought grimly. He was good at pain. Ever since the roof of the New Sanctuary Mech-Wrestler Dome had fallen on him, and he had become infected with the Exin virus (before the aliens had cured him of it, ironically) he had been living with nerve pain every day of his life. Sometimes it had been a crawling, constant sensation, and at others a con
stant fire that threatened to unman him at every turn.

  Concentrate on your goals . . . He remembered his Marine Corps training, coupled with the shallow breathing exercises that he had been taught.

  This is just a sensation. Just an experience, like any other.

  And up from his memory came the words of the Oath of the Mechanized Infantry Division.

  Through Fire and Fury . . .

  Dane grasped the blade and pulled it, all at once, hearing the sickening sound of his own body giving up its invader. He gasped.

  “Sckh?” There was a confused sound from one of the Exin soldiers as Dane threw one arm against the floor. With an overhead throw, he launched the pole arm with the other like a javelin through the air—

  “Urk!” It struck one of the Exin and threw him against the ground with a spurt of greenish ichor. But there was still the Hyena—looking around in shock at the impossible thing that had happened—and the other Exin, turning to raise his shell gun.

  Pheet! Pheet-pheet!

  For the other Exin guard to fall backward under a hail of arrows.

  Arrows!? Dane’s mind could barely register what was going on, as small, mostly furred shapes sprang through the broken-open window, firing.

  It was the Chr-At. It seemed that the chief of the slave Chr-At had found his bravery after all.

  “No!” The Hyena was shouting in surprise and shock as the man dove out of the way, reaching for one of the Exin’s dropped guns while the room became a skirmish of aliens fighting.

  The Chr-At were smaller and not armored at all compared to their Exin masters. They also did not have any of the plasma weapons that the Exin did.

  But they were quick. And they were fierce too. Decades of oppression and mistreatment lent a fury to their attacks as they fired their bows which had been fashioned from scrap metal, shooting arrows of sharpened metal rods against their tormentors.

  Dane saw others too, leaping to attack the two Exin with crude blades of torn scrap metal, or else using the solid-metal lump hammers that doubtless many used in the Exin factories, but now turned against their masters.

  But Dane was throwing himself against the body of the Hyena, struggling with the man as he reached for the Exin shell gun.

  “No, you don’t!” Dane grabbed onto the man’s belt and pulled him a foot or more out of the way. Dane’s own leg was a constant, but distant, thundercloud of pain. He knew that if he even spared it a moment of attention, it would undo him. He survived on determination and anger alone as he clawed his way up the man’s chest to grab his arms.

  “What are you doing! You are dooming us all!” The Hyena surprised him by saying, before the mercenary brought up a knee to strike Dane in the chest and knock the wind out of him.

  “Ach!” Dane rolled off the Hyena, batting at the Exin shell gun as the Chr-At chittered, and the Exin roared as they fought all around him. A purple bolt of Exin plasma burst through the air, and Dane heard a final, terrible shriek from one of his allies.

  The shell gun skittered across the floor out of Dane and the Hyena’s grasp. Dane could hear the Hyena gasping as he struggled into a crouch.

  Thwack! But Dane was upon him, a good right slug to the jaw that knocked the Hyena back, but the Hyena lashed out again with a boot.

  “Oof!” Dane felt his leg explode in agony as the Hyena’s blow struck it. He saw stars before his eyes as the Hyena scrabbled toward the gun.

  But, as the pain cleared from Dane’s eyes, his hands found the crude handle of something that he had dropped. It was the curved tooth dagger that the queen herself had pushed into his hands. He grabbed at it and threw himself forward, barreling into the Hyena even as the man snatched up the dropped gun . . .

  And then Dane was atop the mercenary and pushing the queen’s Challenge dagger against his throat.

  “Stop.” Dane breathed hard through his nose, and it took every fiber of his being to stop his arm from finishing the job of killing the mercenary. He saw the Hyena’s eyes blink in fright as he looked up at him.

  “Do it! Just kill me already!” the mercenary spat.

  For an awful moment, Dane felt the electric thirst for vengeance run up through him, across his shoulders, down his arms to the hand that held the dagger . . . But that isn’t what we do, Dane thought to himself.

  That isn’t what a marine does.

  “No,” Dane said.

  “You’re a coward and an idiot!” the Hyena snarled up at him.

  Dane held the blade at the man’s throat, a part of him wishing that he was a bit more like the Hyena. But he wasn’t.

  “No,” Dane repeated. “This is what separates us, you and me. You and your Brotherhood fight for money and power. But I’m a marine. I fight for Earth.”

  “Then you’re still an idiot,” the Hyena said bitterly. “If you and your marines have their way, then they will sentence all of humanity to an early grave!”

  “What?” Dane didn’t follow. It had grown quiet around them, and Dane realized that the fighting aliens had finished. There was chittering and pained sighing. The Chr-At had won, overpowering their enemies. Dane was dimly aware that more of the smaller aliens were pouring into the room, climbing up the side of the building using their long limbs and tails as easily as if this were a metal forest. They were chittering at each other in fierce, urgent whispers as they surrounded the two humans on the ground, locked in a deadly embrace.

  “The Brotherhood is the only way that humanity survives, you idiot!” the Hyena was saying. “The Brotherhood, like me, are negotiating a way to survive as a client planet of the Exin. The Exin are too big. Too powerful. Check the computers yourself if you don’t believe me!” The mercenary pointed at the computers behind Dane’s head.

  Which reminds me, Dane thought, as he leaned closer to the Hyena. “I want the mainframe codes. The defense controls of this planet. The Exin military codes. Everything you can get.”

  The Hyena froze, blinked, and then laughed a dry, defeated bark of a laugh. “Never. You’re not even listening to me. The Exin are going to win. They were always going to win. You have no idea what you are talking about.”

  “The codes!” Dane pressed the blade a little tighter. “I want access!”

  The Hyena flinched but held Dane’s gaze. “You’d never kill me anyway,” he said.

  “Chr-chr-tk kat!” a voice said by Dane’s shoulder, and he spared a look to see that it was the Chr-At slave chief, with the jaw bug that translated his words, and a very vicious-looking homemade gladius in his hands.

  “No. But I would. Give our friend what he wants!” the Chr-At slave leader said, and the Hyena looked between man and alien before his shoulders sagged.

  “Top pocket. An Exin data card. It’s like a key,” the Hyena hissed. Dane released the man, acting quickly to take back his knife while the Chr-At had the mercenary covered.

  They got the Hyena to his feet (Dane gasping in pain as he struggled to one hopping foot—he pointedly did not look down at his calf, already seeing the sheet of blood that he was leaving behind him anyway) and lurched toward the surviving Exin military computers as the room shuddered once more with another blast of the defense laser.

  “And we have to turn that thing off too,” Dane whispered as he took the Exin key—a small hexagon of dark, blue-gray steel—and placed it atop the computer bank where the Hyena directed.

  There was a green flash, and the screens started spilling with data.

  “Send it all to the Marine Fleet above us,” Dane growled.

  “What’s the point?” The Hyena shrugged, but a sharp poke from the Chr-At slave chief made the man squeal and forced him to do it.

  “And now turn off the defense lasers! Do it!” Dane growled in frustration. Around them, the war party of the slave Chr-At were spilling into the corridors, running through the Exin building. Distantly, Dane heard the flares of plasma fire as they attacked their oppressors.

  “You think your furry friends can win?” the Hyena said miser
ably, as his hands moved across the screen, and in response, all of the lights across the room flickered once and the deep, vibrational hum stopped.

  “You’ve just signed their death warrants too.”

  “Maybe I have,” Dane muttered. “But at least they have their lives in their own hands now. No more living on their knees—like you want for Earth!”

  The Hyena scowled at Dane for a moment and then pointed at the screen. “Look.”

  Dane did so, to see that at the top, there appeared to be a status bar slowly filling up as the Hyena transmitted the stolen Exin data to the human fleet above. But underneath that was an array of maps. Star maps. A whole lot of orange, interlocking shapes, and a very few green puddles.

  “That, right there, is the Exin empire. The Exin galactic empire,” the Hyena said, pointing at all of the orange shapes. “You can’t see the scale of it, but that little green dot right there?” Dane looked. It looked like a pebble in a sea of fire.

  “That is the Sol system. That is Earth,” the Hyena said.

  Dane blinked. The Exin empire was . . . vast. In comparison, it made Earth’s solar system appear to be a tiny stone placed inside a sea.

  Or not inside, Dane saw. On the edge. Earth was on the edge of the ever-expanding orange tide.

  “You see, that is why the Brotherhood is trading with the Exin, monsters that they are,” the Hyena was saying. “They simply outmatch and outclass us. You have to think bigger, marine! The Exin are at the height of their powers and are about to expand like Spain or Great Britain in the seventeenth century. That is where the Exin are at, and we humans are merely one of those primitive, backward island states about to be engulfed.”

  “Shut up!” Dane turned and hit the Hyena squarely across the jaw, for the man to crumple against the screen and flop to the floor.

  “Do you want me to kill him now?” the Chr-At slave chief said (a little too joyously, to Dane’s reckoning).