Metal Warrior: Nerves of Steel (Mech Fighter Book 2) Read online

  It worked, and Dane was rising to his feet, shaking his head (which felt a little stiff) as he broke into a run after Marks.

  “I’m behind, way behind,” Dane was growling to himself as he ran through the darkened tunnels, lit only by his suit lights and the green vector scans of his HUD display. He followed the ghost image of the arrow from left to right, turning down one corridor, then the next, getting closer to the exit point.

  “You can’t win them all, champ…” Joey was, if anything, sanguine.

  “But I should be doing better!” Dane, however, was not. Suit operations were, after all, what he was good at. Very good at. He had spent an entire professional career in one before (albeit a Mech-Brawler suit), and he had managed to defeat two of the Exin spore-creatures in this very suit, too.

  “You just have to do your best, Dane, not be the best,” Joey advised.

  “I expect better of myself,” Dane growled instead, as he ran across a low-ceilinged bunker room, extending his jog to try and catch up with Marks. Hopskirk was behind him, as were most of the other M.I.D. trainees on this mission. Only a handful were at the head of the pack…

  Osgud, the thought rose unbidden in Dane’s mind, remembering what Marks had said. What I had done to Osgud…

  “I didn’t do anything to Private Osgud,” Dane was muttering to himself.

  “What’s that, champ?” Joey was in his ear.

  “Nothing…” But Dane was thinking about the mission in New Sanctuary. Osgud had been his Acting Lieutenant for the search-and-rescue mission to retrieve the kidnapped Doctor Heathcote. At first, Marks’ buddy Osgud had been a predictable nightmare: a thuggish bully who wanted nothing but to stop Dane from ever graduating as a Federal Marine. “You’re not worthy—you’re too weak!” Osgud had reinforced time after time—referring to the Exin virus that surged through Dane’s body without the Vito-neura antidote to keep it in check.

  But something had started to change on that mission, hadn’t it? Dane thought. When he and Osgud had faced the common enemy and had to rely on each other, saving each other’s lives even, Osgud had started to—what—warm to him? Accept him?

  He saved my life, Dane recalled, but in so doing, he was hit by an artillery shell from the looter’s copter, which almost killed him.

  So what does Marks think that I did to Osgud? Dane puzzled. He had stood guard over Osgud’s unconscious body, after all, until Sergeant Lashmeier and the others could get there. And Dane hadn’t seen Osgud since. His injuries meant that he had been in medical for the last month, recuperating.

  “Dane! On your right!” Joey was suddenly saying, as Dane flickered a glance—

  >Proximity Warning!…

  There was a flash of steel in the dark as a form—a body—rolled through the air in a split-second of action. Dane slipped his metal boots forward, letting them scream and squeal across the concrete surface with flares of sparks as the AMP suit of Marks flew across him.

  Thrown across me, Dane thought, buckling one knee to turn his slide into a roll. The exit point was at the end of this long, low hallway, and it glared brilliantly against the light controls of his suit.

  “WILLIAMS!” He heard a voice shout as he bounced up from his roll—to see the instigator of the thrown Marks, none other than his fellow AMP trainee Private Cheng.

  Bruce Cheng was a mountain of a man outside of his suit, and the Assisted Mechanized Plate that housed him only made his prodigious form all the bigger. Like Dane, Bruce had a professional combat sports background—only his had been in traditional Japanese sumo wrestling, not Mech-Brawling.

  Dane looked at the giant blocking the exit and gulped.

  “Friendsies?” Dane hazarded, earning a scoffing, scolding laugh in return.

  “Come on, Dane—come at me!” Dane could hear Bruce’s grin behind the suit-to-suit speaker system. Bruce, unlike Marks or Osgud in the past, was actually Dane’s best friend here at the M.I.D. training camp of Fort Mayweather. Apparently, that didn’t stop the big guy from wanting to pummel Dane into the dirt, too.

  And, as Dane felt a surge of something wolf-like and savage in his own breast, he realized that it wouldn’t stop him, either.

  “You got it, big guy.” Dane ran forward.

  Wham!

  Cheng hadn’t even bothered to raise a fist to hit him, and it still felt like Dane had been blind-sided by a car as he leapt, attempting to barge the larger guy off balance.

  I only have to get him out of the way to cross the finish line! Dane was thinking, as Bruce reacted faster than his bulk suggested that he could—one hand snaking around to forearm-smash him across the chest, throwing him to the ground.

  “Too bad, Williams. Still as small as all the others…” Cheng said with a laugh.

  But Dane had other ideas. He rolled, lashing out with a boot at Bruce’s leg, feeling the clang of metal as boot met plate, and Cheng—predictably—jumped back a little…

  Giving Dane the time he needed to bounce upwards, lunge to the left—

  With Bruce moving to block him…

  And Dane spinning his body on a heel, catapulting him to the right and around the big man. Size wasn’t everything in this game. He could see the glowing light and bouncing green vector marker straight ahead of him. He was going to cross it—he was going to win!

  “Urk!”

  But suddenly, his legs were running ahead of him as his upper body remained perfectly still. Cheng had lashed out to grab him, his powerful forearm only amplified ten times over by the suit. He lifted Dane and the AMP suit he was inside easily off the floor, casually flinging him over his hip as Cheng bounded ahead, into the light.

  “Gah!” Dane shouted in agitation as he rolled, kicking at the rising form of Private Marks as he tried to capitalize on the big man’s win… With a cough of rage, Marks hit the floor, and Dane was scrabbling to his feet, flinging himself into the light.

  >Objective Achieved! Mission Over!…

  “SECOND PLACE, WILLIAMS!” He heard the growling shout of Sergeant Lashmeier as the sun filled his eyes.

  Ugh, Dane was thinking, slipping to his knees on the dry and dusty floor of the training ground. Maybe I’m not so good as I thought I was. He groaned.

  3

  Use Your Life Well

  “You’re right. Your reaction times are down by one point two since New Sanctuary,” Doctor Heathcote was saying the next day in her medical lounge. Dane sat on the medical bed opposite her as she punched the numbers in her data slate, pulling out holographic graphs and changing details before returning them once again.

  “I knew it,” Dane groaned. He was, or had been, a professional Mech-Brawler. There was no way that someone relatively new to a Mech suit like Marks—or even Cheng—should have come so close to grinding him into the dirt… Attached to his legs were the multiple sensor pads that Heathcote had been using to measure his muscle responsiveness, pressure, and hydrostatic resistance. He could also see the shape of the black, beetle-like box attached by straps to his thigh that would occasionally inject him with Vito-neura.

  “Is it the virus?” Dane whispered, earning a sharp look from Heathcote and then a nod.

  “Don’t sugar-coat it, Doctor, please…” Dane said. He saw the rise of the blonde doctor’s usual icy demeanor, the professional clouding of her eyes, and the slight straightening of her spine—but then her eyes flickered as she looked down. Something vulnerable had crept into her since New Sanctuary.

  Must be being kidnapped and shot at and almost fed to an alien creature, Dane considered.

  “Of course,” Heathcote said in a lower voice, before flinging a holo into the air between them. It was a hazy inexact image of a human body, with multiple threading red lines and clusters of red lights throughout its form.

  “That’s me, right?” Dane groaned. “And let me guess—all that red stuff is the virus?”

  “My drug is barely keeping it in check, Dane,” Heathcote said. “I think that the secondary exposure that you submitted yo
urself to in New Sanctuary must have amplified the viral load in your body…”

  “Can’t you just up my dose?” Dane asked, feeling a surge of frustration at this dependency. It made him feel weak. Like a junkie pining for a fix. And that only makes the things that idiots like Marks say turn out to be right, he added to himself.

  “It doesn’t work like that.” Heathcote shook her head. “Although yes, I can, but it won’t be a solution for the condition. Not until we find a cure.” She flared her hands in the air over her suit, pulling up an enlarged image of the strangely fluted, mutating, tendril-like Exinase compound virus.

  “This little sucker replicates itself and eats at your nerve endings,” she said.

  “I remember you telling me,” Dane said.

  “And this layer,” said Heathcote, ignoring him and indicating a fairly thick shell of something around the viral nucleus. “This is a sort of armor. The Exinase compound learns from its environment and builds a coating that repels compounds that might destroy its cell structure, see?”

  Dane swallowed. “So… is there any way to clean it from my system?”

  Heathcote’s silence was enough to tell Dane his answer. “The Vito-neura has been working to immobilize the virus so far, but it’s replicating fast and strong, and pretty soon it will learn a way to overcome even my antidote…” she was saying.

  “Tell me the good news, why don’t you.” Dane groaned.

  Heathcote sighed, killed the virus blow-up, and instead returned to the image of Dane’s body scan. “There isn’t any, Private. Until the remedy comes along, you’re going to have crippling pain throughout your body, leading to eventual mortality.”

  “And ‘eventual mortality’ is a cute way of saying I’m going to kick it, Doctor?” Dane looked at her seriously.

  A nod in response.

  “But…” the ex-Mech-Brawler felt another wave of emotion: anger and futility, all mixed into one. What was he supposed to do? How was he supposed to beat this thing? How was he supposed to get up and do his job, knowing his fate—to first lose control over his limbs, and then eventually over his lungs and heart function as well?

  “How long have I got? Is there any way I can improve my reaction times?” he said with an angered growl.

  Heathcote hesitated.

  “Tell me, Doc,” Dane said, as the woman opposite him looked up. Maybe it was the fact that they had saved each other’s lives out there in New Sanctuary, or that they had seen each other struggling and desperate in near-death situations, but both people knew that they owed each other the truth.

  “It’s hard to say,” Heathcote began, “but I’d say four to six months before the pain overwhelms the drug.”

  Four to six months! Dane gulped. He hadn’t been expecting that. At all.

  “Of course, I’ll put in your medical transfer request straight away…” Heathcote closed the holo images and made to stand up.

  “Don’t you dare!” Dane said, his voice strangled with emotion.

  “What? But, Private—you barely have time to do your marine service…” Sylvia was saying, shaking her head. “We don’t have to send you back to Sacramento. I’ll put in a recommendation that you stay on the Vito-neura for as long as…”

  Heathcote was talking about Sacramento Teaching Hospital, where she had picked him up from the sick beds, struggling with the Exin virus, and doomed to a similarly short life.

  “No, Doctor. Please.” One of Dane’s hands shot out to grab at Heathcote’s slender wrist. “Please Doc—I need this.”

  “Private Williams, Dane…” Heathcote started to say awkwardly.

  “Sylvia,” Dane said in a low and urgent voice. “When you got me out of the hospital, you offered me a chance. Do you remember what you said to me?”

  Heathcote nodded. “A new life,” she said.

  “No. Not just that,” Dane shook his head quickly, decisively. “You said that I would make the perfect candidate for the M.I.D., given my history. And that you were giving me a chance to give back to the Exin a little of what they gave to me.”

  Revenge, Dane remembered. She hadn’t exactly spelled it out, of course—the doctor was far too civilized for that—but that was precisely what her words had amounted to.

  He held the doctor’s eyes, making sure that she knew what he meant. “If this is my last chance at a life, then I want to use it well,” he said.

  The doctor nodded. “I understand what you’re saying. But it’s not just about your health, Williams, but your performance. If it slips much more…”

  “It won’t,” Dane said. Promised. Even though he knew that he had almost no right to promise such a thing. But I’ll work harder. I’ll train harder.

  Heathcote looked sad for a moment. Then he saw her rally herself, and that icy layer of professionalism covered her once again, excluding emotion from everything that she did. “That’s a deal then, Private,” she said, closing the data app and looking at the overhead screen. “The Sergeant has called for a special trainee muster at midday. Full dress uniform required, Private, so I suggest you go get yourself ready,” she said with finality, and the discussion was over.

  Midday was a little over two hours away, and the first thing on Dane’s mind was to get himself ready, polished, and looking sharper than anyone else.

  I can’t slip up on anything now, he was thinking. A new determination had filled him after his discussion with Doctor Heathcote. In no time at all, he had managed to get himself up and dressed. He left the medical unit inside Fort Mayweather, which was made up of multiple medical lounges—some with many beds, others which were smaller and for private consultations alone. It was at one of these that Dane found his steps pausing as he passed.

  PVT. OSGUD, the information board read, and Dane paused before the open door to look inside.

  There, he could see the form of Private Osgud laying on his own medical bed, completely contained in a protective bubble of medical plastics, see-through enough to show Dane the man inside.

  The usually fierce man that had been Dane’s nemesis for so long appeared fragile now. Weakened by the Exin virus that had ravaged his body. Lights flickered along the console by his side, readouts with numbers and percentages that Dane didn’t understand.

  “I guess that I looked just like that after the first attack,” Dane muttered, taking a half-step inside…

  “Williams…” he heard a murmur from the cradle and startled. Osgud wasn’t asleep. He was awake and was turning his head to peer up at him with eyes that looked sunken and dark.

  “Osgud, thank god you’re…” Dane started to say, moving to the side of Osgud’s bed.

  “Thank god I’m what, Williams? Crippled?” Osgud managed to croak.

  The same thing you used to call me, Dane thought—but there was no glee or satisfaction in that memory.

  “I’m so sorry, Osgud—” Dane started to say, to be cut off by a sharp cough from the feeble man.

  “Can it, Williams…” he said with obvious difficulty. “Why did you let the doctor open up my suit?” Osgud said, and Dane knew precisely what he meant.

  “You had been hit by heavy artillery fire!” Dane said in a rush. “There was blood leaking out of your suit—you were already getting infected, and Sylvia—the doctor—had to treat you…” Or else you’d die, Dane added silently.

  Osgud looked at him. Glared at him, and Dane recognized the feelings of despair and uselessness that he saw mirrored in the man’s eyes. They were feelings that he, too, had experienced in his own convalescence, after all.

  “You should have left me,” Osgud said finally, turning his head away.

  Dane felt like he had been slapped in the face. He had thought that there had been a change between them. That during that fight, there had been something like understanding—even respect—born between them amid the laser fire and ruins of New Sanctuary.

  But no. Now it made sense what Private Marks—Osgud’s best buddy—had said during yesterday’s training mission.
What I had let happen to Osgud, Dane thought.

  “You’ll get through this,” Dane promised him. “I did. You can.”

  But Osgud only made an angered grunt in response, and Dane realized that he had nothing else to say to the man. After all, he had almost a year of managed pain with Heathcote’s new drug. Would Osgud have the same? Would Osgud have less or more time until Heathcote had the same conversation with him that she’d just had with Dane?

  Dane’s heart felt as heavy as his footsteps as he turned and left his Federal Marine brother behind him.

  4

  The Ceremony

  “Williams—you got any idea what this is about?” Private Vindiar was saying as he met Dane jogging up from the bunk rooms. Vindiar was a little thinner than Williams and was wearing his dress uniform—really just a smarter, cleaner version of his standard Federal Marine uniform, but with a cap. His boots, like Dane’s, were polished within an inch of their lives and gleamed in the reflected light of the window.

  “No idea.” Dane shook his head. “All I know is that the sarge wanted a special muster…”

  There was a rush of noise as the metal doors to the dorms banged open, spilling another gaggle of AMP-suit trainees, each one wearing a dress uniform—and the one in the lead glaring at Dane as soon as he saw him.

  It was Marks, fixing hard blue eyes at Williams as he stormed towards him, marching with no apparent desire to turn aside.

  Dane felt that animal blink of anticipation, the desire to avoid conflict—but after it came a surge of anger at the man. It wasn’t my fault Osgud got hit out there! He didn’t move and glared straight back.

  “Get out of the way, Williams,” Marks pulled himself up to a sharp stamp of his heavy boots, a handbreadth away from Dane’s face.

  Make me, Dane’s eyes said, but his face remained impassive. A silence fell among the crowd of other marines as the expectation of sudden, explosive violence welled up in the space between them.