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

  The Exin satellites sat, just as the recon vessel had described them, around the accompanying planet in a geosynchronous orbit. Otepi could see how vast each one was, and her scanners still recorded the strong but narrow-band pulse of energy transmissions from each to the next. These were the very same signals that encoded the dance of electrons and caused that message to replicate, right now, a few thousand light years away.

  “Weapons go, go, go,” Otepi snapped. She pulled the flight triggers for a single, powerful beam—one of the new stabilized pulse laser beams—to shoot out in a steady, brilliant white light at the first satellite.

  It struck the seemingly defenseless satellite full on, and Otepi saw it rock and tilt. Two of its legs flared uselessly in the air and started to wheel apart.

  “This is going to be like shooting cans!” came the excited words of one of her accompanying lieutenants, as another beam of energy struck out to hit another. This time, the laser sheared off three of the legs and caused the satellite to flicker and blossom with sparks and vent gasses . . .

  The energy readouts on Otepi’s holoscreen were going wild. The marine action was clearly disrupting them. That would mean that if they hadn’t managed to send an alert off to Exin High Command (or whatever the crawdad equivalent was), then surely the Exin version of Deep Space Arrays would be detecting the attack now.

  “Open field ansible channel to Marine Command Servers,” Otepi breathed. A small, shaded box appeared in her holo. The new field ansibles that had been mounted on select marine craft could do the same thing that the Exin ansibles could—only at a vastly limited range.

  “Operation Hammer Blow is go. Expect completion in T minus ten minutes. Green light on Phase Two,” she said, knowing that the message would take time to be picked up back near Jupiter. By the time that it reached home and they had decoded it, Otepi and her crew should be finished—and then Phase Two of Hammer Blow could begin.

  The opening of the Near Earth Deployment Gate, and the lightning-rush offensive against the forward Exin worlds by the rest of the Marine Fighters. There would be a ten-to-twenty-minute delay in operational timings, which was an acceptable margin for contact . . .

  Just so long as Williams and Cheng get their end of the mission completed, Otepi had to realize. It was no good just destroying the Exin ansible satellites. They had to make sure that the Exin couldn’t launch another set and get their front line up and running again. Williams and Cheng—and those new Traveler Mechs of theirs—had to make sure that the sources that powered the ansibles, the planet-based reactors—were thoroughly destroyed.

  That event could feasibly push the Exin sensing capability back a few thousand light years into space. Otepi was grinning as she fired again.

  >Alert! Energy signatures detected . . .

  But Otepi’s scanners were firing up an alert, even as she fired at the next Exin ansible satellite. There was an energy reading rippling into existence across the plane horizontal to their position. Otepi raised her head to see the glare of crimson light and the gauzy shifting of stars.

  An Exin mother ship emerged through the corona of its own jump light, already starting to spin as it released tactical measures—weapons ports opening and firing, launch ports opening to disgorge craft into the space between the planet and the marines.

  This was the reason why the seed craft had been mostly conducting evasive flight procedures, Otepi suddenly realized. They had been buying time for the reinforcements to arrive.

  “Fighters Three through Four, continue attack!” Otepi changed her course immediately, determined to put herself and her squadron in the way of the storm that was coming. “Fighter Two, on me!”

  5

  Blast Radius

  >Primary injection line, sir . . .

  Dane’s Traveler A.I. informed him as he pointed to one of the large, strangely ribbed ceramic pipes that swam into a huge, silver boxed unit, set into the walls. He clustered with one of his Traveler Mechs around the first of the three networked reactors, while units three and four were at two different sites. Unit five, the Traveler Mech critically damaged by the giant drone attack, Dane had ordered to stand near the periphery of the platform’s edge and help his Gold Squad however it could.

  Good. Dane moved a step closer, activating one of the weapons modules on his back. A compartment opened and a rack of three of the mini-missiles that they had mounted onto each Traveler Mech slid out.

  “Unit two? Begin reactor procedure,” Dane breathed. The second automated unit moved closer to start the careful work of removing each of the three micro missiles (each one about two feet long and cylindrical, with pulse-rocket engines at one end) to turn and magnet lock them to the underside of this reactor. One on the injection line—what his A.I. told him transported atomic waste to and from each of these reactor units—while the other two were magnet locked to the underside of the reactor itself.

  Dane wasn’t sure if this was going to be enough to bring the entire structure down—but it was the best guess by the marine strategists, who had a team of physicists working around the clock to come up with probable scenarios of what powered the vast space-based ansible.

  At the end of the day, Dane thought, it came down to blowing the crap out of whatever he found, which was a strategy that he was okay with.

  “Williams!” With a squeal of static, Cheng’s voice emerged through his suit’s microphones.

  “Cheng? What’s up—do you need help?” Dane asked immediately.

  “No. And my site is about two hundred miles away, so there’s a fat lot of good you could do if I did!” Cheng quipped back just as fast. “No—it’s you who might need help. I’ve got forward scans coming in from the Ares—Otepi has got company up there!”

  “Otepi?” Dane asked, his mind immediately wondering if more of the Exin seed craft had been launched against the Forward Task Force.

  “A mother ship just jumped in. She’s spitting out seed craft like Pez, and apparently several larger objects straight to the planet. To your location!”

  Dane swore. He should have seen this coming. Already, his mind was moving toward Corsoni, piloting the Gladius somewhere up there. Did he have a window to engage? Would he be able to extract his men if they needed him to?

  “Large objects inbound?” Dane muttered, forcing himself to scan the three micro missiles to make sure that they were primed and in place. They were. The automated Traveler Mech had done a good job.

  “You don’t think they . . . ?” he was halfway through saying, when Cheng confirmed it.

  “I think that exactly, Dane. Those War Mechs we saw on Planet 892 . . . What else?” Cheng said.

  Dane swore yet again. He had only faced those things once, and the rest of his confrontations with the Exin had been space-based. But back when they had been taking their first colony world, they had been disturbed by the sudden arrival of an Exin mother ship, which had launched three large, four-legged, beetlelike Mechs to the surface first, before the mother ship itself made a landing. Each one was a little shorter than the Traveler Mech, but a lot wider. At the time, Dane thought they were some sort of advance bridge heading system. Send in the juggernauts first to secure the drop site . . .

  Or to clear up unwanted humans from their world, Dane considered.

  “I’m close to finished here. Charges all set, getting to a safe distance—as soon as the Ares can safely pick us up, I’m rendezvousing on your position,” Cheng said.

  “That wasn’t the plan!” Dane insisted. “As soon as the mission is complete, we use our MJUs to get out of here and head toward human space to start Phase Two!”

  Dane had considered Phase Two to be the craziest part of their so-called plan. Each MJU couldn’t jump them all the way back to human space, but a series of three MJU jumps could. Marine command said that was preferable since it might throw any pursuers off their trail, and the rest of the marine strike group could use the larger Deployment Gate One for their attack.

  “Don’t lect
ure me on the plan, Sergeant!” Cheng argued. The man was also a sergeant, exactly the same rank that Williams was. He had been through most of the same war zones that Williams had. He had been an original member of the Assisted Mechanized Division just as Williams was. Neither of them had battlefield superiority over the other.

  “First in, last out, Williams!” Cheng repeated the unofficial marine mantra before closing the channel on him.

  Damn it, Dane thought, but his heart also swelled with pride in his old friend.

  “Double time!” Dane was calling to the rest of the Traveler Mech units.

  >Sir, might I remind you that the Traveler Mechs are automated. They are performing their mission with the maximum speed and efficiency already.

  The nonplussed voice of his suit A.I. informed him. Dane suddenly wished that the A.I. had some physical form, so that he could slap it.

  “Well, tell them to perform that machine efficiency of theirs extra quick!” Dane called, turning to move out between the strutted legs of the reactor.

  I have to get my men—my living men—out of the possible blast radius of that atomic material, he was thinking as he moved toward the flickers and flashes of meson and pulse light where his Gold Squad desperately tried to hold off the larger group of warrior caste Exin.

  “Well, this was never meant to be easy, right?” Dane growled at himself as he started to jog forward and then to run.

  “Unit five, on me!” he called, as he emerged from the shadows of the platform and into the blazing sun of the alien light outside. Already, there were several targeting vectors—both his own and his enemy’s—appearing across his screen.

  Dane raised his arms, feeling the weapons modules in his suit’s forearms extend and petal out as he charged forward and started to fire. Brilliant strips of light shot out toward the enemy, each pulse laser stronger than that of an Orbital Marine’s pulse rifle. The first Exin warrior caste exploded in a crater of pulverized rock and dust, and while Dane’s next shot missed, it sent the Exin warrior flying backwards.

  “Booyah! It’s the sarge!” He heard Isaias’ excited call, as, inspired by the thunderous assault by the three Traveler Mechs, the three gold squad marines leapt from behind their rocks to charge at the enemy.

  There had been ten Exin warrior caste that had assaulted the three marines, and now they were down to five. The accompanying unit two with Dane made short work of one with a stamp of its foot, and Hendrix took a further one out.

  >Amber Alert!

  One of the Exin’s shell weapons struck Dane on the leg almost at point-blank range, and Dane swung around with a backhand that rocketed his attacker into the air.

  And then the fog of war started to lift, and Dane knew that he could take a step back, leaving unit two, five, and the Orbital Marines to finish off the last three. Their charge made short work of the enemy, but that wasn’t what Dane was focused on.

  “Units three and four—what’s holding them up?” Dane barked at his A.I.

  >They are finishing their operations and leaving the site now, sir.

  “Not damn quick enough!” Dane said as the last pulse fire flared, and he was left with the pockmarked earth and the victorious grins of his Gold Squad Marines behind their faceplates.

  “Marine Corps!” They congratulated each other. This was their first alien-world mission, Dane knew. It was understandable that they were feeling pretty pumped by what they had so far managed to achieve.

  They just had to, unfortunately, do a whole lot more.

  “No time to rest, gentlemen. We need to clear the site for at least three miles,” Dane snapped at them. That would still put them in a dangerous zone if the transmitter station had anywhere near the atomic material that it could have, for its size . . . But their suits would stand up to a lot of shockwaves and fallout, Dane knew.

  “Let’s get the Gladius to pick us up?” Hendrix suggested, already slumping to the ground in exhaustion.

  >Alert! Enemy vessel atmospheric entry!

  The alert rippled through Dane’s holofield at the same time as it blipped across the marines HUD, and, as one unit, all of the humans in the group looked up.

  To see a sudden expanding ring of fire as something like a burning comet shot down toward their canyon. It was the first of the Exin War Mechs. It had to be. And above that would be the Exin mother ship, with its accompanying hordes of seed craft.

  “I think Joey and the Gladius are pretty busy right now,” Dane muttered. “Move out!”

  6

  Critical Threat

  “Keep moving!” Dane called to his men, who were bounding in giant, thruster-assisted leaps across the orange plains. Behind them, the Exin power station smoked.

  The Traveler Mechs could have easily outpaced them, being twice the size that the rest of them were—but Dane held the alien units back, keeping them in a wide grouping around the advancing humans.

  “Corsoni? What’s your ETA?” he called over the comms channel. He heard a glitch in the static, followed by the pilot-engineer’s hurried voice.

  “Hitting atmosphere now, Sarge! But you got company—right on your tail!”

  “I can see that,” Dane growled, as the large cloud of dust and smoke rose in the east, not far from where the first of the Exin War Mechs had made planetfall. They hadn’t emerged from their landing site yet, but they would any second, and probably with all guns blazing. It would take Cheng and his team on the Ares ten minutes or more to get here, depending on the progress of their own mission.

  And then there was the detonation. Dane could see the stalled timer sitting at 00:03:00 on his top right corner. If the mission had been going according to plan, he would have triggered it when everyone was safely on board the Gladius and they’d be halfway through the upper atmosphere by the time that it went off.

  Should I trigger it now? The blast would rattle and stun them badly—but their suits should protect them. Dane was conflicted over what to do. The idea of fleeing the scene, still with the Exin stations behind him mostly intact, was not something to be proud of.

  >Sir! Picking up enemy targeting.

  His suit A.I. warned him, moments before shots of brilliant purple-white light emerged from the clouds of impact dust coming straight at his group’s position.

  “Cover!” Dane had a moment to roar and see the AMP suits throw themselves to the sides, rolling and skidding across the floor, as . . .

  WHAM!

  The pulse beam was powerful enough to spin his Traveler Mech almost to one side and drive it to the ground.

  “Ooof!” He snarled with the sudden awkward jolts and shudders that ran through his harness to his body.

  “Sarge! You all right!?” It was Private First Class Isaias, not so far away, and already running toward him. He looked so small in the cockpit screen, and, for a moment, Dane almost crowed with laughter at the idea that a human so small could help him with the Traveler Mech that he was in.

  “I’m good, I’m . . .” Dane was in the process of saying, ignoring the fact that one whole side of his Traveler Mech was smoking, and that there was a dangerously crimson-looking threat level on his damage icon . . .

  But then Private Isaias wasn’t there anymore, and Dane was merely looking at bare, sandy ground.

  What?!

  In a rush, the split-second vision of what had just happened slammed back into his mind. It had all happened so fast, but two of the Exin Beetle Mech’s pulse beams had struck Isaias in a flash of blinding light, lifting him off his feet and sending him flying backwards.

  “Isaias!” Dane roared, locating his crumpled body almost ten feet away, the entire front plate of his AMP suit a smoking, twisted mass.

  Dane pushed himself forward, moving to get to Isaias first.

  >Sir, Private First Class Isaias is gravely injured. He is in critical condition and requires immediate attention. His wounds may prove fatal, even with the measures taken by his suit.

  His suit’s A.I. insisted, while others of the G
old Squad looked around in horror and started for Isaias.

  “Damn it!” Dane skidded to a halt, spinning around as he roared his grief and frustration. As much as it annoyed him, his suit’s A.I. was correct. Dane had to neutralize the enemy before more of them decided to take out his Gold Squad, and he was in a Traveler Mech suit—big enough to take the pounding, whereas, clearly, the AMP suits weren’t.

  “Traveler units! Isolate enemy! Fire with prejudice!” Dane snarled, raising both of his Mech’s arms, fists clenched, to fire the beams back out at the coming Exin Beetles.

  Dane saw flashes of orange, red, and green as his shots hit the distant body that was growing larger and larger, fast. Behind him, the rest of the Gold Squad were reaching the form of Isaias, Hendrix seizing the AMP suit and heaving it over his shoulders in a fireman’s lift, carrying him behind cover where he could treat the man as best he could.

  “No man left behind!” Dane heard Hendrix shout, and felt his heart break with pride and anger.

  “Sarge! Williams!” This was from Farouk, now somewhere farther behind him. Dane hadn’t realized it, but he had been charging ahead in his fury. The Exin Beetles were now almost level with him, and Dane could make them out clearly. Each one was shorter than his Mech by almost a yard, but they made up for it with more than double the width of their Traveler Mech opponents. They had six legs with the forward two shorter than the others, giving the Beetle Mechs a hunched-forward appearance as they charged. Dane knew they could rear up on their back four and use the front two as arms. On their shell-like carapaces were multiple gun ports, from which flickered the pulse lasers they were firing.

  Dane leapt as the pulse light slammed into the ground where he had been. He felt the thruster rockets along his Mech’s thighs and calves fire, flinging him toward the oncoming Beetle as he barreled into it—