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

  “I’m cautiously optimistic,” she said severely. No thanks to you.

  “Good.” Otepi said, looking back out of the window as if there was something far more important happening out there than the fight for a man’s life in here. “Good. Get some rest, Doctor.” The captain straightened up and made to leave, her face distracted.

  “Captain!” Sylvia wasn’t going to let her get away with that, no matter what her rank was.

  “Yes?”

  “I think I deserve to know why that was necessary. At least, if the intelligence was worth ever having to do that again!” she said hotly.

  Captain Otepi looked at her in a long, measured manner. “Oh yes,” she said at last, turning fully to address the doctor.

  “Sergeant Cheng isn’t our only source of intelligence on the Exin. And he has corroborated just now something else that we have been told.”

  Corroboration? You almost took a man’s life just for corroborating evidence!? Sylvia could have screamed.

  “What Sergeant Cheng and the others saw here a few days ago was the queen Exin. The head honcho. The one in charge of all of the Exin who have ever fought against us,” she said.

  “The queen of the entire Exin race came here, to Planet 892, because some kind of Exin signaling device—Bruce called it a beacon—was triggered,” Captain Otepi stated in a cold, dispassionate way. “That means that somewhere on this planet is a way to contact the Exin. And perhaps that can show us where the Exin home world is.”

  Otepi let that sink in for a moment. A means to discover where the Exin were coming from and to strike back. That could mean everything, Sylvia knew. When the captain had seen the importance of the revelation sink into Sylvia’s eyes, Otepi nodded and turned to go.

  “Captain?” Sylvia caught her at the slide of the opening door. “Bruce said that Dane destroyed some kind of egg? Something important?”

  Otepi nodded seriously. “Her eggs. We believe that the queen’s eggs produce future leaders, war generals, more queens . . .” she said in a soft tone. “Wherever they took him, and wherever he is right now, it’s clear why the Exin would be pretty fracking mad at him.”

  4

  Not Exin-born

  “Get your clawed hands off me!” Dane managed to yell as his guard patently ignored him.

  The sergeant did not know how many days or hours had passed in his confinement, but he knew that they had traveled. He had felt the vibrational hum moving up through the bones of the craft he was contained within, and several times he had been awoken by a flash of light coming from the singular porthole to his cell. When he had managed to push himself to his knees, he had seen that outside the stars had vanished, to be replaced by a rippling sort of lightness, one that was threaded and shot through with fine blue threads.

  The ship was using warp tunnels, Dane realized. But this new type of ship didn’t use the large, circular jump-gates. And it seemed to be making multiple small jumps—though none of them appeared to last very long.

  I wonder if that means it can’t make longer warp jumps? Dane had thought.

  Right now, of course, Dane couldn’t think about warp tunnels. Black and hardened claws filled his mind and vision, instead, as he was dragged to his feet by the Exin guard and hauled through the door to the corridors outside.

  “What do you want!?” Dane did not go quietly, and even took a perverse pride in the way that he berated the Exin that held him and every other one that he saw. Let them know that humans are not easy to subdue! he told himself as he was dragged down round corridors made of more of the strange blue-and-midnight metals, with buttresses and archways that appeared more grown or spun than fabricated.

  “What are you looking at! You never seen a human before!?” he demanded of two Exin who appeared across their path, pausing and chittering at his approach. Even despite his tirade, Dane kept his eyes sharp, noting how these two other Exin were smaller than his guard, appearing like the worker Exin that he had seen on Planet 892.

  There are two castes, he thought. Maybe more. Some were larger like his guard, and some were smaller and appeared to be staff to the bulkier Exin. And then there were the truly large aliens who had four arms . . .

  Just like the queen did.

  Dane was dragged through corridors that gradually merged into bigger and bigger avenues, lit up by globular blue-white lights that caught the sheen of the alien’s scales. There was more activity the further that they moved through the ship, heading down ramps that rang with the skitter of clawed, alien feet. Dane was reminded of the hidden workings of an ant’s nest or a bee hive.

  Where are the engines? The navigation and comms in this damn place!? He kept on trying to discern any clue to his surroundings that might be useful—if he managed to survive the next hour, that was—but he couldn’t make any sense of the hieroglyphic-like signs etched down the sides of the blue-metal walls. There were pulsating conduits of tubes that seemed filled with light. Gases? Plasma? Dane had no idea what function they fulfilled.

  The noise rose steadily around them as the bodies of the Exin chittered and skittered down one of the wide ramps in the heart of the mother ship. Dane was surrounded by scaled bodies, each of them snarling and hissing at the sight of him.

  “Skrekh!” His guard pulled him roughly to his feet, compelling him to speed up.

  “Look, I know you can speak English, you damned . . .” Dane was saying, before the curse died in his throat.

  A wave of silence had suddenly flowed through the throng, and Dane was looking around as much as he could. He saw that each and every one of the Exin drones (as he was thinking of them) had slowed their steps and were staring pointedly forwards.

  The corridor that they were in was huge, enough for ten Exin to march side by side, and at least three Exin high. They passed under two large, ceiling-high metal sculptures of fierce Exin with four arms, using their two largest to hold up the ceiling. They were snarling down at the crowd with flaring mandibles in an expression that Dane could only guess was complete disdain for all that walked underneath them.

  “What’s going on?” Dane growled at his guard, who merely made a sharp hissing noise and wrenched Dane’s arms tighter.

  “What, you want me to be quiet? IS THAT WHAT YOU WANT!?” Dane shouted—as the crowd of drone Exin dispersed around them. Dane found that he and his guard were in a large room like an auditorium, lined with what must be every Exin drone who worked in this ship . . .

  And in front of them, sitting on a raised throne—the queen.

  “Ssss!” The guard holding Dane suddenly kicked him in the back of the legs and forced him to crunch his knees onto the hard metal ground, before stepping back, leaving him kneeling before the throne of the Exin queen.

  “Ach!” Dane screamed in agony as pain raced up his legs. Recovering, he looked around. The lowest circle of the entire auditorium was lined with Exin warriors—the four-armed type—who leveled their strange whorled “shells” at him. Pulse weapons. Dane knew them well. There had to be at least twenty or thirty weapons trained on him right now.

  No chance there, then . . . Dane had to think, just before another wave of pain shot up through his legs and made him groan in torment.

  “Skrech!” The queen above him leaned forward and cocked her head to one side as she regarded him carefully.

  Even seated, it was clear to Dane that she was tall for one of the Exin, with the four arms that Dane thought marked some higher or more prestigious class than the others. She still had the same green-and-blue scales and double-jointed limbs, but her head ended in swept-back fused horns, and her body was garbed in undulating waves of a deep midnight blue. There was a flash of a small purple light at the side of her jaw, which Dane presumed had to be some kind of mouthpiece or implant. The next time that her mandibles flared, the marine found that he could understand her hissing and clicking perfectly.

  “Human,” she said in a harsh voice edged in static.

  Dane looked up at her and wished th
at he had a gun. He could end it all here, now . . .

  “You are the one who destroyed one of my—Vihai” there was a sudden glitch of static as whatever translator technology she was using tried to convey the word that she intended and failed, “If you were Exin-born, I would take that to mean you wished to challenge my bloodline, and present your own—” (more static) “Vihai!”

  She’s damn right that I’m challenging her bloodline, Dane thought. If she meant that her bloodline was the Exin who had attacked Earth, then Dane could see no better reason to challenge it very thoroughly indeed.

  “You would undergo the three tests. You would be pitted against the best of my brood to see if you were worthy of challenging me . . .” the queen stated. Dane could, at the same time, hear the electric translation as well as the hisses, scratches, and clicks of her voice.

  Dane remembered the hieroglyphs on the walls of the Exin Nursery back on Planet 892, and how they showed these large eggs being bestowed on adoring Exin drones. And then massacre scenes as Exin fought to . . . what? Claim them? Destroy them?

  “I guess that is exactly what I did,” Dane murmured, remembering the moment that he had seen this very being present the singular, large Exin egg from the mother ship, and he had pulled the trigger on his pulse rifle. Did that mean he was locked into some weird alien ritual now!?

  “Ss-ess keych!” Suddenly, another alien voice burst out from the auditorium. There was a ripple of scraping scales and sighing voices as, through the line of guards, another of the four-armed warrior caste Exin stepped forward. This one appeared broader and squatter than most, with one of their smaller chest arms missing, and a faded, white fracture line across one side of their head where the scales had been shattered.

  Some kind of general? Hero? Dane thought, watching how the queen turned to gaze at the interrupting Exin coolly. They locked gazes before she spoke again.

  “You are right. He is not. But is now the time to abandon tradition, War Master Okruk?” the queen spoke.

  Dane realized that, in some perverted way, these two aliens were bartering over his life. But he cursed himself that he did not know which one was on his side. If either of them was at all . . .

  “S-esskha . . .” War Master Okruk hissed out another string of words, and even shook slightly as he spoke them, clearly impassioned if not downright furious. The alien War Master stepped abruptly forward to stalk straight toward Dane, as silence filled the room.

  “Oh, here we go . . .” Dane glared at the approaching alien and quickly pushed himself up, stumbling to his feet on legs that trembled and ached with the Exinase virus.

  Thwack! The War Master batted Dane to the ground with ease with one sweep of claws, and Dane hit the floor and rolled with a gasp of pain. Dane heard the auditorium around him erupt into a hissing cheer.

  “Perhaps you are right . . .” Dane heard the queen say measuredly.

  “No.” Dane breathed. He wasn’t going to go out like this. He had seen too many good people at his side die at the hands of the Exin, and he’d be damned if he was going to let them down.

  “Hss . . .” He breathed hard through gritted teeth as he pushed himself up to his feet on quaking legs and turned with a scrape of the training boots he still wore to face the hulking War Master.

  “Let’s see what you got, you ugly son of a—”

  Thwack! Okruk reacted with a snarl of fury, bounding over the space in one powerful leap to strike Dane down with two scaled forearms this time.

  Dane snarled in pain as he hit the floor and rolled, losing all strength from his limbs for a moment. He hadn’t been fed in his entire time here, and he’d only had the splash of water allowed to him by his not-very-friendly guard. He found that he had no might at all in his body. The only strength he had to offer came from his will alone.

  Bruce. Hopskirk. Corsoni. Johnston. Mihai. Dane remembered the names of all of those that he had served with. The men and women that he had worked with and fought alongside. Who had put their trust and faith in him.

  Had they been wrong?

  “No.” He breathed. He was certain that this was going to be his last day alive, and he wasn’t going to spend it lying on the floor.

  “Is that all?” Dane slurred as he struggled once again to his feet to face off against the war master.

  “Sstregh!” Dane’s alien challenger chittered his mouth parts at him in something that Dane thought was furious surprise—but it certainly wasn’t contempt or mockery any more.

  “I would have thought you would be a better fighter than that,” Dane heard himself say. If there was one thing that he was good at, he realized, it was fighting for an audience. He’d been beaten in the Mech-Brawler arenas as many times as he’d won, and he knew that being down was just that part before you got up again.

  “You should try downtown Chicago, pal,” Dane said to the war master. “They would wipe the floor with a punk like you.”

  “SKRARGH!” Dane had no idea if the war master could understand what Dane was saying, but the very fact that Dane was standing on his own (wobbling) legs and talking appeared to be enough for the alien to suddenly roar and stride forward, a murderous glint in his eyes.

  “STOP!” The voice of the queen cut through the auditorium. Even though Dane’s opposite number appeared irate, the command in the queen’s voice brought the war master to a stock-still pose.

  “Enough. The human has proved himself worthy of the challenge.”

  “I have!?” Dane staggered a little where he stood. What did that mean?

  The queen appeared calm, but there was a ripple of noise from the auditorium that Dane thought were gasps of shock. Some game was being played here, the marine thought. Even the Exin had politics.

  But then, Dane heard what the queen really meant . . .

  “This human has proved himself worthy to die!” the queen shouted in exultation.

  “What!? Wait a damn minute . . .” Dane started to mutter.

  “This is not a question of allowing the human to challenge the bloodline! I will allow the human to undergo the challenge—as punishment for his crimes! For destroying one of my chosen Vihai! Let every Exin across my empire see the frailty and the weakness of the human race for what it is! Let my Exin see this human struggling and failing and know that this crusade is . . .” another glitch as the translator software attempted to understand the alien word and eventually settled on, “—holy! That our people are taking our destined place as rulers of the stars!”

  The Exin queen had stood up as she spoke her judgment. She raised not only her two longer forearms, but her chest arms, too, in a flaring motion and held them up the crowd, reminding Dane of an old video he had seen of a praying mantis about to strike.

  “This human will be taken to the appointed place and prepared in the traditional manner. We will all see for ourselves how worthless they are!”

  The crowd, in turn, was silent for a split second, before erupting into hissing applause. Dane’s guard was suddenly upon him, grabbing him by the arms and dragging him violently backward. He growled in agony as the crowd stamped the ground, and their scales made a sawing, grating sort of noise.

  Dane blinked in confusion as he was dragged away from the alien auditorium and back up the large ramp. The queen was turning in apparent barbaric triumph to her adoring crowds. The marine wasn’t quite sure what had just happened, but it seemed an awful lot like he had earned himself the right to die in a slower and more painful manner, rather than whatever War Master Okruk had in mind for him . . .

  “Outstanding,” he muttered through swelling lips.

  5

  Alpha-Gold-Gold

  “I want in.” Sylvia had turned up at Captain Otepi’s office—really a command room inside the Federal Marine transporter the Hammerhead that sat in the newly cleared area of jungle just beside the Expedition Base Camp.

  Several such transporters, shuttles, and starfighters sat on the dirt of Planet 892. Additional structures—little more th
an metal boxes on struts—had sprung up in the short few days since Captain Otepi had led the rescue of the planet.

  “We intend to keep it this time,” Sylvia had overheard one of the young marines saying just that morning in one of the canteens, and he had been right. They still couldn’t open the warp tunnel from their end, but they now had a trio of Federal Beacons in position on the planet, which could transmit subspace frequencies back to Deployment Gate One outside Jupiter.

  They might not be able to come and go when they liked, but they could call for help when they needed it. The thought gave Sylvia some slight comfort, she supposed . . .

  Right now, however, Doctor Heathcote stood in the doorway to Otepi’s office and regarded the flame-haired woman sternly.

  “Out of the question. It’s way too dangerous,” the captain said, nodding to the screen on the wall beside her, which showed the localized radar map of their region on the northern hemisphere, with a place highlighted with red markers.

  “Is that it? The Exin Nursery?” Sylvia ignored her and walked into the room, over to the screen. Even though she knew her place in the military order of things, she was also experienced at slightly ignoring the protocols asked of her, since she was “only a doctor.”

  “Yes, it is. It is also classified,” Otepi said sternly, although she remained seated and made no move to get up and turn off the screen.

  “I’m essential staff,” Sylvia said distractedly as she looked at the screen. The hidden alien bunker that the expedition had found, and that the marine scouting mission had located afterward, wasn’t so very far away. Disturbingly close, in fact. “Alpha-Gold-Gold security on all medical and health-related matters,” Sylvia said, frowning at the image in front of her as if she could force the site to reveal its secrets through willpower alone. It remained stubbornly two-dimensional.

  “I’m Super-Black security rating,” Otepi growled. “And I’m not quite sure that a military investigation counts as medical . . .”