Metal Warrior: Steel Curtain (Mech Fighter Book 8) Read online

  But we had three Exin seed craft and the orbital defenses already waiting for us, he thought briefly.

  “The Ares?” Dane called. “Have they made it?”

  “They’re through, Sarge!” Corsoni called as the shaking reduced almost to nothing, and the thrown scanners on Dane’s holofield showed that they were racing over burned red-and-rocky earth straight toward a distant gleam of silver buildings.

  “We’re here! The first orbital laser is in the same installation as the power station . . .” Corsoni was saying. “Shall I light her up?”

  “Go ahead, pilot,” Dane growled before flicking on the public channel to his Gold Squad. “Ready to disembark. Wait for the Traveler Mech. Clean jumps and by the book, people!” he called, stepping forward to feel the ghost of his vast metal titan legs move in perfect symbiosis toward the launch bay doors.

  “Activate Traveler link,” Dane breathed. As he approached the door, the five other Traveler Mechs behind him—all unmanned and controlled by a mix of the human operator in him and their own event-calculating computers—moved to march behind him. A long line of metal. A wall of armor.

  Dane’s holofield showed him a small window of the Gladius’s forward scanners. Corsoni was pounding the base with everything he had, and Dane saw the bursts of explosions and flares of sparks. Elsewhere, he knew that Sergeant Bruce Cheng was doing the exact same thing in the Ares at the next installation.

  The one ahead of him was made of silver rectangular buildings sitting atop metal struts, squatting over the desert plain in its own canyon. Its height was dominated by one vast telescope disk, and a host of smaller ones.

  Probably what they use to transmit the energy to the satellite ansible above, Dane figured.

  “Corsoni—count me down!” Dane said, as the much smaller AMPs of his Gold Squad filed behind the Traveler Mechs.

  They banked around the structure as smaller pulse lasers started to flare into life. These buildings had defense mechanisms—and they were firing back.

  “No time to hang around, Sarge. Three, two, one, go!” Corsoni shouted and must have pulled the launch bay doors, because suddenly, there was a rushing gale of air, and Dane saw that they were banking hard, angled toward the surface.

  Dane didn’t waste time either.

  “Activate jump thrusters!” he shouted as he took one giant step and then another. He kicked off from the edge of the launch bay and hurtled toward the red plains below . . .

  3

  Alien Metal

  >Impact! . . .

  The alien A.I. programs of Dane’s Traveler Mech had been hybrid-synced with Marine Corps computers, meaning that the alerts and warnings it gave as it slammed into the orange earth of the Exin world were at least understandable. The digital holo icon of his suit showed his two backwards-jointed legs flaring with warning orange as they absorbed the impact of metal against the planet, quickly fading to show that no lasting damage had been done.

  Not by the planet’s surface, anyway.

  >Environmental Readings:

  >>Gravity: Normal, Earth standard

  >>Atmosphere: HAZARDOUS, airborne chemical toxicity detected . . .

  The almost-human voice of the Traveler Mech spoke in smooth, unruffled tones, and then, a little more urgently.

  >Enemy Tracking detected!

  Multiple alerts burst into circles of threat across his vision (the holofield inside the chassis stretched 180 degrees around his head). The Exin power station already had its defense lasers trained on him.

  Dane was at least a few hundred yards out from the strutted buildings, the entire edifice squatting in the center of the cramped canyon like an over-fattened spider. The red-rock walls of its enclosure crowded close to the buildings, with only the massive transmitter dishes, antennae, and smaller apparatus standing apart from its surface.

  Oh, and the lasers, of course.

  At several junctures across the high brackets of girders that swept across the heights of the buildings were mounted weapon pods. They displayed the long, lancelike tubes, oddly bonelike, that made up Exin weaponry. They twitched and moved with eerie, robotic precision, and they were firing straight at Dane.

  Frack!

  Dane jumped, and felt the powerful servos in his golem’s legs react, pushing him into the air as tiny microburst thrusters fired along them, aiding and powering his dodge.

  >Would you like me to deploy countermeasures, sir? Y/N . . .

  “Yes! Fracking yes!” Dane shouted at the Traveler machine intelligence as he slammed once again into the red earth, considerably closer to the Exin power station now as orange beams of light burned the air behind and around him.

  Two tiny ports opened on the domed canopy of Dane’s chassis, and there were scintillating flashes of electric-blue light as . . .

  TZSS-tk! A sudden flare of electricity played across his entire suit, reached at least several feet into the air around him, and crackled off and on as the first of the power station’s laser’s hit . . .

  >Outer carapace hit. . .

  There was a brief explosion of sparks as the first of the Exin lasers hit the energy field emitted by Dane’s Traveler Mech. The resulting explosion left Dane with a jolt to his right shoulder, and then another, as the second beam hit.

  On Dane’s vector icon in front of him, he saw the orange glow of damage persist in a faded glare. It wasn’t a serious amount of damage, but Dane was sure that his suit’s countermeasures meant that the laser had exploded a few yards away rather than strike him dead on.

  “We’re good. We can take this,” Dane was announcing to himself as he realized that the countermeasures would act a little like a barrage screen. At least for the time being.

  “Traveler Mech unit!? Gold Squad!?” he called into his suit’s channels. Sudden blips appeared behind him as the five other Traveler Mechs—all automated—landed and leaped from their craters toward the station ahead of him. Dane saw that they, too, were surrounded by the electric counter fields, and although they were being struck by the station’s defense lasers, it was like watching fireworks exploding over the surface of tanks.

  They kept on marching.

  >I took the initiative to activate countermeasures across the unit, sir. You should know that any particular actions that you take with this suit will be assessed for applicability to the rest of the Traveler unit.

  The soft A.I. was informing Dane of the other mech’s status, which he really didn’t have time for. It was frustrating, but he had to trust that the extensive computer scientists, engineers, and strategists of the Marine Corps that had test run these Traveler Mechs knew what they were doing.

  “Good,” Dane said tersely, finding the smaller signals of his Gold Squad—actual humans—inside their AMP suits performing the same operation that the Traveler Mech and he just had.

  But they were stretched out further back and off to one side of the plain before the canyon, having disembarked from the Gladius, which continued its sweep low to the ground. Right now, Dane could see that the Gladius was accelerating higher into the sky, with Corsoni taking her back out into orbit to help the rest of the fighter group in their assault against the space-based ansibles.

  All according to plan.

  If, he supposed, that plan was getting shot at by a massive alien base.

  “Move out!” Dane shouted, leaping forward to halve the distance between him and the power station again.

  “Activate scans of structure. Identify power relays, fuel lines, the transmitter mechanics . . .” he was saying as another trio of the station’s defense lasers exploded in his counter field. This time, he was shoved back a few feet from the pressure, and the orange warning glow held stubbornly onto his front carapace.

  We’re under direct fire. Even these Traveler Mechs can’t stand up to that for long . . . Dane realized.

  “Gold Squad, target the defenses!” he shouted as he leapt again. He saw the shadow of movement as the five other automated Mechs joined him, each leapfr
ogging forward in clouds of exploding sparks and plasma.

  “Sir, yes, sir!” It was Isaias who responded, and Dane’s suit showed him sliding into position against a thrown boulder, popping out to fire his pulse rifle at the weapons modules atop the power station. Short, glowing white balls of meson pummeled the joint, and then more as Hendrix joined him from a more distant shielded position. As Dane jumped forward again—almost into the shadow of the power station’s strutted leg—there was a sudden explosion above them as the Exin weapon module gave way.

  “One down! Next!” he heard Isaias call to the rest of Gold Squad, and still the rainfall of Exin lasers hammered on his top canopy.

  Straight ahead were the gigantic stilts of the platform, each one almost as wide as Dane’s Mech was itself, and he fought the urge to slam into them with his suit to see if he could shift them.

  Too many. Even if I took out one, it wouldn’t do any good, he told himself.

  “A-Mech! Where’s that scan report?” he asked. Alerts and alarms rippled across his field as more of the Exin defenses struck him.

  >Sir, we have at least three possible energy signifiers ahead, which I presume are three interlinked reactor units.

  As his suit’s A.I. was saying this, a new alert appeared—Target Acquired!—from up ahead.

  Something was moving in the dark and gridded world of the under-station, between the floor and the buttresses of the platform above. Something was moving fast, and it was moving fast toward the Traveler Mech.

  “A-Mech—identify!” Dane took a step forward, bringing his suit entirely under the platform and out of range of the station’s defense lasers. Across the front line, the other Traveler Mechs did the same. Dane saw more movement, as large units dropped from the underside of the platform to the dark earth below, extending long, insectlike legs and sprinting toward them.

  “Spider drones!” Dane called out. Only they weren’t the small creations that he had faced in space, the sort of drones that the Exin used to protect the hulls of their ships.

  But they weren’t too dissimilar, Dane saw. They were larger. Much larger.

  >Sir, they are clearly Exin drones, presumably another defensive activation.

  His suit sounded just as exasperated as he felt. “I can see that!” Dane shouted, raising one giant metal arm as the first flashed forward under the alien structure.

  >Indeed, sir, I can also see that.

  His suit seemed to have a program for being snarky, which probably would have made Dane laugh had he not been about to be hit by a giant, murderous robot thing.

  The Exin spider drone was several times larger than any that Dane had faced before, and moved by a combination of long metal legs with powerful burst thrusters. It had to be the size of a car, but would still barely come up to his midpoint in the Traveler Mech.

  KLANK!

  The creature did not even slow down as it hurtled straight into him. Dane swung his metal fist, but the creature had been moving too fast. He felt it connect, and then he was being thrown back to slam against one of the nearby struts. The metal limbs of the thing enfolded themselves around him.

  “Frack!”

  >Warning, sir, damage to front carapace . . .

  Dane could clearly see the damage to his front carapace—the tank-sized Exin drone had a ring of small lasers where its mouth should be, and it was firing them at point-blank range into Dane’s suit as it held him. On his field scanner, he saw blips of alarm as the other five of his Traveler Mechs were surrounded and jumped upon.

  Dane roared in dismay. One arm was trapped against his body by the thing, but his other was free. He brought down one giant fist against the thing’s body, dislodging it slightly and causing the thing’s meson pulse weapon to flicker on and off for a moment.

  KLANK!

  Just in time for another of the large Exin spider things to fall from the underside of the platform above and jump across the gap that he had created.

  “Damn it!” Dane hissed, as his vision was obscured by giant metal limbs and the scintillating flare of meson lasers.

  >Outer carapace alert, sir!

  His suit’s A.I. said this as Dane struggled and heaved at the things trying to drag him to the ground.

  “What does an amber alert mean?” Dane hissed. He grabbed a fistful of metal and pulled hard. The result was one of the Exin spider drones’ legs was wrenched from its body in a shower of lubricants and sparks. The thing twitched and kept on trying to kill him.

  >Instead of microarmor analysis, as your previous Assisted Mechanized Plates did—this suit uses a three-part alarm system. Amber for take remedial action, Red alert for severe damage sustained, including damage to several systems across the Mech, and Critical for imminent disablement of suit.

  His alien A.I. was very good at describing to him just what the technical ins and outs were of his new suit, Dane thought—although not very good at supplying him with answers to his current problems.

  Hey, wait! He had a thought.

  “The countermeasures—will they work against . . .” Dane was saying, before the A.I. cut him off.

  >Countermeasures are designed to displace beam-based weapons, sir, but these targets are too close to deploy to full efficacy. There is a thirty-five percent chance that they might be able to destabilize some internal programming of the targets, putting it under the threshold of possibility, and thus not advised by me . . .

  “I don’t care how advised it is—do it!” Dane snapped. “Across all Mechs!” he added, just in case his suit’s A.I. was in any way misunderstanding the fact that he was the boss here.

  In the next heartbeat, his suit’s icon started to light up with ever-deeper orange that tinged on red alarms of harm. The static blue electricity field crackled all around his suit in a blinding flash once more. It lasted only a brief moment, and even inside of the Traveler suit, Dane could have sworn that he felt the hairs on the backs of his arms go up at the energy displacement.

  There was a sudden lightning as one of the Exin spiders—the one that he was still gripping the ripped leg from—fell to the floor smoking and its lights slowly fading. Dane’s static charge must have overpowered some essential bit of its mainframe.

  “Ha!” Dane proceeded to wedge the dismembered leg of the one between the laser maw of the other to pry the thing off his chest.

  It disengaged first one, then two, then a whole four legs with the squeals and screeches of protesting metals. Now mostly free, Dane had a chance to seize the thing with his arm as it struggled, before he slammed it into one of the supports. There was a flash of sparks and light as some integral component inside of it gave up, and Dane was able to turn around and see the fate of the rest of his Mech unit.

  Which was mostly good, he had to admit. Two out of the five were damaged, with one almost in critical area of threat. Once Dane and several of the others were free, they instantly moved to extricate the others from the Exin spider drones. Soon enough, they could get back to the rest of their mission.

  “Gold Squad, report!” Dane called. There was a crackle of static over their suit-to-suit communicator, and then it was Farouk’s voice that returned.

  “Sir, yes, sir—Exin defense lasers on this side of the platform clear. Moving in—but we’re getting readings of smaller units coming from way out across the plains. Readings compatible with about ten Exin warrior caste, sir.”

  “Can you hold them?” Dane asked immediately. In their AMP suits, Dane knew that the marines were probably better equipped than the average Exin warrior caste. For every one AMP-suited Orbital Marine, they could face one-and-a-half to two Exin warrior caste. But there was only Farouk, Isaias, and Hendrix out there. Three versus ten?

  “We can hold them, sir,” Farouk’s voice came back certain, and, although Dane felt the twinge of frustration at what he knew he had to do, it was touched with pride for the marines that he had trained and fought with.

  “Good man. Do what you can,” Dane said, turning back and heading de
eper into the maze of struts, supports, and buttresses underneath the Exin transmitter base.

  >Straight ahead. The first of the three reactor readings is directly in front of you.

  4

  Evasive Tactics

  >Target destroyed! . . .

  Otepi’s computer signaled the end of the last seed craft, expertly taken out by two of her attack squadrons.

  That took too long. Otepi growled inside her faceplate.

  Had the ansible satellites managed to get their message back to the main Exin front line? Surely, they must have . . .

  And there had been something about the seed craft facing them, as well. A lot of evasive maneuvers. They had been trying to kill the Marine Fighters, of course, but the seed craft hadn’t been performing the almost kamikaze moves that they were so famed for, nor hurling themselves against their human adversaries with the same fanatic frenzy that had characterized previous attacks.

  Is this something to do with the new regime? she thought as she pulled up the attack plan for Exin satellites. Were the Exin that were now pledged to War Master Okruk more circumspect? She made a mental note that—if she survived the mission—she would bring it up with Marine Command. It could be a danger that they had to face. Or a weakness that they could exploit . . .

  >Attack vector determined. Initiating heavy pulse cannon . . .