Metal Warrior: Ring of Steel (Mech Fighter Book 7) Read online

  “Clear!”

  No, Dane could have told Hendrix. This one had four arms, which meant that it was a full, specially bred and reared warrior caste, an elite fighter of the Exin empire. He wouldn’t therefore just be responsible for mopping floors.

  This key will at least give access to the barracks, the armory, and perhaps . . .

  Dane thought of the Exin queen and the War Master Okruk, who always had coteries of these four-armed, zealot guards. This key he held in his hands might even let them into wherever the command center was.

  Aha! He suddenly remembered something, turning back to the body.

  “Sarge…” It was Farouk, holding his rifle up to the outer door, which was now visibly shaking.

  “One moment!” Dane reached up to the frozen and macabre face of the Exin warrior, with its three-part mandible jaw. He grimaced, before turning the head to one side to find what he was looking for.

  There. A small, blue crystal held in what looked to be a chrome wire lattice. “A translation bug.” He pried the small device from the creature’s metal collar. He had seen the higher-up Exin—the warriors and the chiefs—use these, as well as the chief of the slave race, the furred Chr-At. These bugs were clearly given to those with some degree of responsibility in order to communicate their wishes to the slaves below.

  “Sir, I am really feeling uneasy about this,” Farouk was saying, backing away to the inner door.

  “Go!” Dane said, as the marines leapt through the hatch and slammed it closed behind them. The slab of the Exin key in Dane’s hands flashed, and there was an answering clunk from inside the door mechanism.

  “That’ll hold them for a bit,” Dane said.

  “You sure?” Farouk was saying, but a warning whistle from ahead of them brought their attention to what Hendrix and Isaias had found.

  The porthole opened into the side of a wide corridor that seemed to move along the inner spine of the external pod. Similar porthole doors were dotted along the corridor’s walls, and Dane guessed that they led to other engine rooms or houses.

  But the two other marines weren’t looking at that. They were looking at the scattered piles of nine-foot-long, crystal-and-glass tubes positioned along the corridor floor.

  “What is this? Someone forgot to pack their weird-ass pajamas when they evacuated?” Isaias said as he walked between them, stooping down to look first into one and then into another.

  But Dane suddenly guessed precisely what they were. Each tube was just a little bigger than an AMP suit and wider too. Although the designs were different, with marbled, crystallized panels that obscured what it held, along with woven mats of blue-black metal studded with diodes—Dane was sure he knew what each one would contain.

  “Isaias! Stand down!” he shouted suddenly as he saw the marine reach down to tap on the crystallized glass experimentally . . .

  Hss! For a sudden plume of white gasses to escape the top, before erupting right down one side too.

  “Sarge!?” Isaias was staggering backwards, surprised and shocked.

  As an Exin warrior, awakened from its torpor, was released . . .

  “Marines!” Dane shouted, but already the creature had slammed Isaias to the floor. Hendrix was the nearest, but as he leveled his rifle, it was dashed out of his hands by the sweep of one of the alien warrior’s four arms.

  “Damn! Damn—I can’t get a line!” Farouk was shouting as he tried to target the creature with his own pulse rifle, but Isaias was right underneath it, and Hendrix right there—any stray shot could take them out as well.

  “Ach!” With a snarl of frustration, Dane was already jumping the nearest of the sarcophagi, swinging his pulse rifle like a bat as he brought it across, towards the Exin warrior.

  “Sckragh!” Dane’s suit microphones glitched with the sudden roar of the creature. It turned, as fast as a striking viper, to catch Dane’s swung rifle in one claw.

  “Urk!” Dane gasped. Even seconds out of deep stasis, the thing was strong. Very strong. It held the end of Dane’s rifle and started to tighten its taloned fists. Dane heard a grinding noise as the rifle barrel started to bend.

  “Oh, come on!” Dane shouted. He had, after all, only just got that rifle back! He let go, and the Exin lurched back a little—

  “Sarge!” He heard Farouk shout, and Dane ducked as a singular bolt of burning plasma shot through the corridor to slam into the Exin’s chest. It seemed that the marine was confident enough that he wouldn’t miss.

  Or maybe Farouk doesn’t like superior officers, Dane thought wryly as the Exin shrieked and slammed against the rear wall. Farouk had injured it, and Dane drew his Field Blade from where it was mounted on his shoulder to finish the job.

  Thump. The blade slammed into the creature’s chest and pinned it to the wall. For a moment Dane was holding the hilt at one end, and the Exin was at the other, still alive, its bright eyes fixing on Dane’s face.

  “Skrakh! Krr-kr—Eckhja!” It said, and the small blue crystal flashed that Dane had mounted on the mantle of his own suit (it stuck with an automatic, magnetlike stickiness), and the translated words of the creature sounded through the corridor.

  “They won’t help you, human! They’ll kill you too!” The creature said before it gave one final gasp and slumped dead. Dane didn’t move, adrenaline and tension forcing his body into a rictus before he slowly relaxed and pulled his blade from the dead creature.

  “Gee, thanks,” Isaias groaned, pushing himself up to his feet. “Sorry about, you know, waking up that guy . . .”

  “What was all that it said?” Hendrix was picking up his rifle. His face seen through the glimmer of his faceplate looked similarly spooked. “It sure managed a lot of words in a few grunts, right?”

  “They won’t help us?” Dane frowned. What did it mean, the small, furred race of the Chr-At? The sergeant didn’t believe that the small aliens could pose a threat to humanity, because they were a slave race and barely had any technology over that of bows and arrows.

  Hss!

  But Dane had no more time to ponder the dead warrior’s words as there was another sudden hiss of escaping steam and gases from behind him in the corridor, and then another from around them. And another.

  “What was that you said about being sorry!?” Hendrix snapped at Isaias, as all the marines started to back away from the shuddering, venting Exin sarcophagi.

  “I didn’t know it was going to do that—this!” Isaias said in his defense, as it seemed that almost all of the two dozen or more stasis tubes, each one containing a super-large, dangerous warrior-caste Exin, appeared about to open.

  “Maybe they’re on auto,” Dane was saying, quickly pushing Isaias back down the tunnel as all the marines started to speed up. “It’s not like we’ve been exactly subtle so far.”

  Dane looked over his shoulder. About three hundred feet further down the tunnel appeared to be some sort of Exin lift, which presumably went straight down into the body of the main mother ship.

  “Run!” Dane shouted.

  6

  Hive

  Four against twenty. Four against twenty . . . The evaluation kept singing through Dane’s head as he pushed Isaias and Farouk ahead of him, leaping over the last of the opening Exin cryostasis tubes and charging towards the lift.

  “That key thing of yours better work!” Hendrix was already there, inside the wide door of the silvered tube that was the Exin lift and pointing his pulse rifle back past them. Dane hunched, focused on running as bolts of orange plasma fire shot past his shoulders and slammed into the emerging enemy behind.

  “Ssss!” He could hear hissing snarls and the rattling, guttural voices of the Exin warriors as they emerged from their confinement.

  The Exin are clearly a species who are grumpy in the mornings, the errant thought flashed through Dane’s mind. He would have started laughing had it not been tinged with adrenaline-laced fear. It was a hysterical thought, he knew—but sometimes hysteria was the only thing that kept you san
e in the midst of a life-threatening situation.

  “Skrakh!” Something dark and large pounced past Dane to his right. It was one of the Exin that had to be the most awake, and it was already between Dane and Farouk up ahead. It was raising its two larger arms to bat at Farouk’s exposed back . . .

  “Down!” Dane heard Hendrix shout, and both the sergeant and the private dove to the floor in a combat roll that scraped sparks from their AMP suits.

  Fzzt! A volley of orange bolts from Hendrix and Isaias flung the enemy back, and then Dane was skidding as he and Farouk were hauled into the lift. The doors hissed shut with a thump behind them.

  “Holy stars. Holy stars . . .” Farouk looked wide-eyed inside his suit. Dane turned over, raising his rifle back the way they had come. He saw only the closed door slowly rising upwards as the lift started to move down.

  For a moment, all that Dane and the others could hear was their panting breath and the sounds of their hearts hammering in their ears. Then they heard dull booms and clangs of metal as the Exin doubtless tried to find their way in.

  “Okay. We’re okay . . .” Dane took a ragged breath, getting up to his feet and checking the Exin key. It was flashing an agreeable green, which he presumed must mean that it was going to allow them to use the internal lift transport system of the mother ship hulk.

  He just wished that he knew where it was going to take them.

  “Let’s hope that they were the only ones left in this junk,” Isaias groaned as he thumped his back to the lift wall and started to swap out the battery fuel cells on his pulse rifle. They are well trained indeed. Dane felt a moment of pride in his men. On paper, they were newly minted Orbital Marines—but from where he was getting to his feet, he saw a unit of men who had already clicked into their training. They were checking their weapons and armor and running the auto-repair systems on their suits.

  Exactly as they should, Dane thought darkly. Since none of them knew what came next.

  “I don’t want to be the party pooper here,” Hendrix said dryly as he shrugged his shoulders, “but at what point do we mention that now there is a contingent of Exin warriors between us and our ships?”

  “We’re still in human space,” Farouk pointed out. “All we need to do is radio for help . . . ah.” His face suddenly fell, as Dane saw Farouk remember what he had already known.

  “The Deep Space Array is out, genius,” Hendrix said, and although he teased his fellow soldier, his tone was humorous.

  “Easy there,” Dane interrupted. “The ship will have a comms array. Hopefully this thing will help us figure out a way to use it.” He waggled the Exin key in the air as the lift moved at a steady rate downwards.

  And his suit’s proximity alarm pinged.

  >Warning! . . .

  “What the?” Dane looked around the lift for a moment. There was clearly no Exin here. But then he flickered on the suit scanners and saw precisely what his suit was freaking out about.

  There were blaring orange warning signs on his proximity alarm blinking from above them.

  “The lift shaft! They’re in the lift shaft!” Dane said, and, moving as one, all of the marines lifted their pulse rifles up to the ceiling.

  But the Exin were still a ways up.

  “They must have broken through the doors!” Hendrix cursed.

  Maybe, Dane thought, his eyes sliding to the alien key fob that he held in one hand. What if the Exin didn’t need to break through the solid metal doors—on their own station?

  The lift thumped to a halt, and the door started to hiss open. The marines flinched, lowering their rifles at the door—but there were no more hordes of Exin leaping out at them. There was just a gloomy, blue-black corridor on the far side.

  Thump! Wham!

  As something—two somethings, in fact—landed on the roof of the lift above them.

  “Move! Seal this door after us!” Dane said, aiming with his rifle at the roof as the marines sprang out of the lift, and he backed out behind them. Isaias once again started welding the door closed with his suit’s handheld laser.

  “This won’t hold them for long,” Isaias was saying, as they continued to hear dull whams and clanks from inside the shaft.

  “Sarge! I’m picking up large electronic radiation—could be the comms center!” This was from Farouk, who, along with Hendrix, had already started to scout the gloomy corridor beyond.

  “Then let’s go!” Dane shouted as soon as Isaias was done, and the marines went sprinting through the dark.

  The hulk itself was just as alien and strange as the previous ship that Dane had been in. Its walls were made of the same blue-black metal plates, none of them the same dimensions or shapes as the others and seemingly grown like scales. These were interspersed with organic-looking beams and conduits that were made of a white metal lattice.

  They reminded Dane of the microscopic close-ups of bone material. When his eyes passed over them, he swore that he could see lights dimly flickering along their inner length, as they must have doubled as power housings too.

  The corridor was wider than the previous one and taller too—with another balcony level on either side above them where dark, arched doorways opened. Dane remembered clawed and scaled feet clicking as the Exin had moved through their craft on unknowable tasks. He had no idea what those upper rooms were—they could have been laboratories or bunk rooms for all that he knew.

  More arched doorways opened out at their level, too. Farouk took them on the occasional turn, first one way and then the next, as he followed his sensors towards what had to be the comms center of the hulk.

  “This place is a warren!” Dane heard Hendrix mutter as they ran, looking back over their shoulders constantly in case they saw the flash of light catching on chasing talons and scales . . .

  But no—neither Hendrix, Dane, nor the others saw any signs of being chased, and the Exin warning markers on Dane’s proximity sensors quickly faded, then disappeared.

  Huh? “Perhaps you’re a better welder than I thought, Isaias,” Dane muttered, not wanting to give voice to his secret fear.

  Or perhaps the Exin know another way to come after us. This is their ship, after all . . .

  Hendrix was right. To a human’s eyes, this mother ship was something like a warren with its sudden, short, and, complicated corridors interweaving through the structure of the ship.

  No, not a warren—a hive, Dane thought. That’s how bees do it, right? A hive with their almighty queen at the center.

  “What the . . .?” Dane heard Farouk skid to a halt, as their passageway suddenly opened into a wide, circular chamber. At its entrance was a giant statue of a four-armed Exin holding up the ceiling—and it was this monstrous sight that the marine had halted for.

  Wait. I remember this. Dane blinked. He wasn’t thinking about this auditorium at all, but another one in a different mother ship, where he had been attacked by the War Master Okruk for the right to walk and breathe and to remain alive on board an Exin craft.

  “It’s some kind of challenge space,” Dane muttered, remembering the concentric balconies of gathering areas where hordes of worker and warrior Exin had been standing, watching the fight that Dane had been subjected to.

  Two things flashed through Dane’s mind as he slowed to walk into the space.

  One: they must be getting close to the heart of the hulk, if his memory served him well.

  Two: that there was a body in the center of the cleared circle area, apparently shackled to a metal pole.

  It was the body of an Exin. Dane’s eyes saw the gleam of gray-green scale and the multiple arms hanging from its sides where it knelt, hunched and crouched on the floor. Without saying a word, all of the marines flickered their pulse rifles up as they took a hesitant step towards it.

  Not just an Exin, Dane suddenly realized, when he saw the scrap of gauzy blue material, and the sweeping arch of fused-together horns. The horns that normally projected from the back of the Exin’s head, but had been broken off.r />
  “The queen!” Dane coughed, shocked into stunned silence.

  “What!?” Isaias said at his side.

  “That . . . She . . .” Dane’s mind raced as he tried to find any possible explanation for this, before realizing that there was none. “That is the Queen of the Exin. Their leader. Their empress. The one that wants to enslave humanity.”

  Dane took a step closer across the open floor towards the clumped body of his nemesis. She had stood almost ten feet tall when alive, and her merest arrival in the room had caused the worker drones to fall silent and sway as if transfixed.

  But here she was, dead and shackled to a metal pole in one of the Exin challenge spaces. Even from ten feet away, he could see where several of her natural armor plates had been crushed and fractured by something.

  “Does that mean the war’s over?” Hendrix managed to say, just as there was a hiss. Dane’s proximity alarm suddenly flared to life.

  “Ssskragh!” The Queen of the Exin was not dead at all, and she suddenly jerked to snarling, hissing, chittering life to swipe one clawed hand at the nearest available enemy—which happened to be Dane.

  But the blow didn’t even come close to landing as Dane leapt back. The mighty Empress of the Exin Empire was suddenly jerked at the full reach of her shackles and fell to the floor with a scrape and clatter of scales.

  “Sarge! Stand clear!” It was Farouk, leveling his rifle at her.

  Dane was more than half inclined to agree with his marine, but something made him stop and hold out one metal gauntleted hand to halt Farouk’s killing volley. It was the sudden sight of the slick, dark, wet ichor all around the injured queen, and the realization that she had not even registered on his suit’s proximity alarm because she was already so near death. Even now, when he checked, he saw the warning orange marker flickering in and out on his HUD over her form, as if the internal microservers of his suit could barely register the fact that she was alive at all.