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

  “Appreciated. You heard the doctor, everyone . . .” Otepi, despite Heathcote finding her mostly belligerent when at base or behind a desk, was businesslike and pragmatic when in the field. This was a side to the austere woman that Sylvia had not seen, and one that she respected.

  “Cap?” one of their marines said. “We’ve got a problem . . .” Sylvia hung back at the tree line with four other squad marines but could see the small live-screen video appear on the internal heads-up display that was projected onto her face-plate.

  It showed the darkened mouth of the cave, with sweeps of energy readings that flashed a dull blue.

  “There’s power inside somewhere,” the captain deciphered.

  But where it was, or how to get to it, seemed almost impossible. There was a mound of rocks blocking the way—except for one small crawlspace near the top, which the boulders hadn’t filled.

  “Specialist? I want a 2R drone in there,” Otepi said. One of the marines up ahead quickly moved to detach one of the modules at their belt and start to press buttons and pull attachments until they were releasing into the air a small hovering marine drone, no bigger than a hand.

  “Slow and steady . . .” Sylvia heard Otepi’s voice say. She realized she was holding her breath as the camera switched to the drone’s view and followed its journey up to the small crawl space and into the dark . . .

  “There was a firefight,” Otepi said, as they continued to watch the drone’s progress through the center of the Exin bunker.

  The scenes ahead were picked out in hazy, confusing detail—at first yards of rock, followed by gulflike openings as the rockfall stopped to reveal a wide, carved-out avenue.

  More of the Exin statues appeared, sculpted as if they were coming out of the walls, and Sylvia felt a sensation of dread as the drone swept its scanners back once, twice, and again.

  Somewhere down here is the clue to why Dane was taken. To where he is . . . Sylvia found herself thinking, before instantly feeling ashamed at the thought. I should be more worried about Hopskirk, she told herself—who was still lying in a medical unit back at the expanded Expedition Base Camp in an enforced coma, awaiting whatever clues she could get about the origins of the virus that was still slowly changing him into a walking monster.

  In the modules of Sylvia’s own AMP suit, she had several phials of samples of the virus as well as a full field biological testing unit. She hoped to be able to use them with the source of the infection to figure out how the virus mutated and what possible weaknesses it contained.

  “Doctor?” She heard the captain’s voice over the open suit channels. “What’s the medical verdict?”

  Sylvia breathed out steadily, surveying the footage. There was nothing here that she could see that could be a possible route of transmission. No animal or vegetable life which could harbor the virus. Not even any liquid for it to be concentrated within.

  “It’s not here. Not yet,” Sylvia said, her eyes on the darkness ahead of the drone.

  “Understood. Carry on, Specialist,” Otepi breathed, and the drone swept forward, scanning the smooth, machine-worked surface of the walls.

  Bing!

  Until its sensors started to ping.

  “Captain? I’m reading power fluctuations and something else . . .” the specialist controlling the drone sounded just as stressed as Sylvia felt. “Organic compounds.”

  “Send me the analysis,” Sylvia said quickly, and at once the HUD on her screen started to fill with reports of trace chemicals. Most of them were proteins or protein complexes.

  “Wait a minute.” Sylvia knew several of those strings of letters and numbers. She knew them very well, as she had spent a long time studying them back at Fort Mayweather. Knowledge of those numbers was, before Planet 892 and the war, what could have been described as her life’s work.

  The doctor pulled up the marine servers through the AMP suit and navigated to her own secure server and the medical research it contained.

  Yes. She was right.

  “Those are Exin proteins and molecules,” Sylvia said, just as shapes started to appear on the screen.

  The drone had come to a vaulted archway, through which a wider room appeared. The sensors were reading stacks of Exin molecules and proteins in the air, as well as human—or almost human.

  “That’s trace amounts of the mutagenic virus,” Sylvia recognized in a worried breath. Then the camera revealed a massive metal pyramid shape, as well as striations and large tubes running from three metal bulkheads in the walls to the pyramid itself.

  “The energy readings are coming directly from that device,” the specialist said, accidentally echoing precisely what the expedition’s Professor Honshou had called it, Sylvia thought.

  “The device. The first expedition found it while they were mapping Planet 892,” Sylvia said. “Immediately after that, they contracted the mutagenic virus.”

  “The device that Sergeant Cheng called the Exin Beacon?” Sylvia surmised. “The squad found this and said that they found a way to activate it—which brought the Exin jump ship here.”

  The drone moved slowly around the pyramid, scanning it up and down as the specialist made predictions based on the readings.

  “Capable of a vast electromagnetic output. Its capacity is really something not possible for a machine of its size—it should need an attached reactor.”

  “Do you think that energy could be enough to create a subspace disturbance? One that could be detected by a deep space transmitter?” Otepi asked.

  The specialist and the captain were halfway through discussing these things when Sylvia was the first to see it. One—no, two—humped shapes on the ground that did not look human.

  “Captain! There, to the right of view!” she said breathlessly, and the drone twitched in response to see the bodies of two warrior caste Exin. Both were four-armed, and both had been hit by pulse weapons.

  And, from the biological scanners, they were off the chart with the mutagenic virus.

  “They were carriers . . .” Sylvia guessed, her eyes looking around the image.

  The buttresses. Now that she could see them closer, she could discern that they were actually tall tubes, with enough space inside for a human—or an adult Exin—to fit.

  “I think I’ve found the vector. Can we get a closer look at those buttresses?” Sylvia was saying.

  “Doctor . . .” Otepi sounded a little exasperated. “My top priority is the Exin Beacon.”

  “And mine is the welfare of the marines under my care—which includes your men!” Sylvia returned. She heard a dull sigh from the captain, but she gave in.

  “Okay, see to it, Specialist.”

  The drone moved closer to the bodies of the Exin and the buttresses, and Sylvia scanned what she could see inside. Padded rests. Tubes and what could be nodes of sensors up and down the inside of the material.

  “I’m sure of it. Those are some kind of stasis tubes, and those warrior Exin were lying dormant inside them.”

  “Lying dormant? For what—to be woken up by the marines!?” one of the specialist marines broke in. Sylvia shared his disgust at the tactics. It was inhuman to think of leaving an infected soldier—a living viral bomb—inside stasis for however many years or decades or even centuries for all that she knew, just on the chance that this secret Exin base would one day be discovered.

  “They don’t fight like us, Specialist,” Otepi growled and directed the drone back to the Exin Beacon.

  “If I can get samples direct from that site, I can start working on a vaccine,” Sylvia was saying.

  “In a minute, Doctor!” Captain Otepi barked, as the drone cameras scanned up and down the device. They could see several spaces where panels were already open, exposing what looked to be nodules and crystal emplacements inside.

  “If we can figure out how to read this thing, then we can find out where the Exin Beacon sent its message to. We can figure out where in the universe we’re going to have to go if we want to take the
fight to them.”

  If we want to ever find Sergeant Williams again, Sylvia added to herself.

  8

  By Claw and Scale

  “In there!” Dane was pushed, threatened, and shoved away from the main hangar bays of the Exin to another part of the docks inside the mother ship’s belly. Here, he had been marched at gun point along a metal balcony where rows upon rows of rounded octagonal portholes stood.

  There had been other Exin drones working here, Dane saw—but the aliens fled from the balcony as soon as he arrived.

  “Oh, I see.” For a moment, Dane thought that perhaps the guard had taken War Master Okruk’s advice and had decided to simply throw him through the nearest available airlock and get rid of him.

  “Nope, I don’t really think that’s for me,” he said, when he realized the aura of complete stillness from the guard at his side.

  “Er . . . hello?” Dane muttered.

  There was a clattering as, striding up the nearest stairs to the balcony came a contingent of the four-armed Exin guards (each bearing more guns and, as always, trained and pointing at him). The tall, blue-robed figure of the Exin queen strode in their midst.

  “Silence yourself, Dane of the humans!” the queen snarled as her guards separated into two lines, leaving a clear avenue between the queen and himself. Dane had wild fantasies of charging at her and pushing her back down the metal stairs, but given her size and the crowd of adoring murderers around her, he thought that she would only bounce once before he was torn to shreds.

  Dammit.

  “What is the meaning of this? I thought you wanted me for some bloodline challenge or whatever you crazy people believe in,” Dane muttered. He saw no reason to obey the commands of an enemy invader.

  “Skrargh!” The guard behind him jabbed him painfully in the back of the legs and drove him to his feet. The translation software could not adequately explain this latest utterance either. Instead, it settled for “raised on milk,” which Dane would have thought was insanely funny were it not for the guard’s gun now resting against his temple as the queen of the Exin stalked forward toward him.

  “You have been selected. You will be sent to the place of testing, the sacred planet of Tu’lume, hunting ground to my forebears and theirs. You will live by claw and by scale, by blood and by fire . . .”

  The queen said this in slow, deliberate tones as if it was a mantra. Curiously, Dane saw a reaction ripple across the mandibles of the other Exin around. Even the guard behind him seemed to shift slightly in place. Dane thought that some of them were reacting rapturously to the queen’s words, reverentially even—while some seemed to be twitching a little uncomfortably.

  I wonder if more of her people than she knows agree with War Master Okruk, Dane thought, as suddenly the guard’s other hand appeared and swept one jagged claw across his cheek.

  “Ouch! What the hell did you do that for!?” Dane jerked forward and rolled—or tried to, but the Exin had stamped a powerful and very uncomfortable foot on his back to halt his escape and menaced even closer with his gun.

  “Ah, little human,” the queen of the Exin almost crowed with delight. “You are the first of your kind to be thus honored, but you are not the first to go so unwillingly to your fate. Many who are selected for the Right of the Challenge of Bloodline are selected by me, not them.”

  “You mean it’s some barbaric blood sport, then?” Dane growled up at her. “Why should I expect any less of you? What is it—you’ll be chasing me with sticks and guns across some hellhole you call one of your planets?”

  The queen froze slightly as Dane berated her, and a predatory stillness settled over her shoulders. For a moment, Dane believed that he had perhaps tested even her patience—and then she straightened up.

  “It is done. Send him,” she said, standing away to watch as Dane was hauled to his feet by the guard and shoved, struggling painfully, toward one of the opening portholes.

  “You won’t win, you know! You can’t! You don’t know what humanity is capable of!” Dane was shouting, as he was lifted with the brutish, inhuman strength of the Exin and bundled into the porthole with a shove. He found it was slanted downwards and started to slide.

  No! He scrabbled, imagining that this tube led to nothing but the cold, paralyzing sleep of space itself—until his shoes thumped against the solid metal end to the tube, and he heard the clang above his head.

  “Hey! Hey!” he shouted, squirming to look back the way he had come as a dim mauve light set up around him.

  He was in a tube that was bigger than he was, but not by much. Exin-sized, the sergeant thought. It had ribbons of padding here and there—but that was all, save for a bundle at the bottom of the tube that he had almost landed in.

  What is that? He prodded it warily with his feet, half expecting some trap or weapon or vicious, murderous Exin-creature to jump out at him. But no, his shoes felt something hard to the touch. When he managed to scrape his shoulder in reaching toward it, he tugged it from the wrapping canvas.

  To reveal that the hidden item was a large curved and jagged claw, serrated on both ends. The claw’s root was smooth and black and had been fashioned into a primitive handle.

  “You will live by claw and by scale.” Dane remembered the Exin queen’s words. Just as there was a tumultuous shuddering sensation all around him.

  “What’s happening? What are you doing!?” the sergeant shouted, as the shaking suddenly grew a whole lot worse, and he was literally being bounced and thrown inside his tiny tin can.

  “Urk!” By happenstance, his outflung hands scrabbled at the foam strips to realize that they pulled away, attached by tight mesh bands of alien webbing. Dane pulled them over his shoulders the best he could, until he was held tight against the metal tube as it roared and shook, the sound reaching a crescendo.

  The sound stopped, and Dane was held in silence.

  And weightlessness.

  In a heartbeat, the marine realized what must have happened. “They fracking well shot me out of the ship! They’ve jettisoned me!” Dane was saying in terror and confusion all at the same time. Was this the “bloodline challenge”? Something like the way that people were expected to walk the plank in old pirate stories? Or be abandoned on some desert island for crimes against the ship?

  No, Dane had the impression that whatever this challenge of bloodlines was, the Exin would be far crueler than that. No sooner had he thought that, than the small tube started shaking and roaring once again.

  This time it was a slow and lower shake, which grew faster and louder with every second. Dane was sure that he heard a distant roar of something outside, and his mouth filled with the taste of blood as he bit his lip. He was going to be shaken to death; he was sure of it.

  What Sergeant Dane Williams could not see was a sight that would probably not have given him much confidence.

  The small, torpedo-like shuttle that he had been put in rocketed out of the side of the three-armed mother ship with a flare of plasma fire and flame. It trailed its own comet tail of burning gasses before they sputtered out, and it was racing silently through the night, toward the surface of a deep green-and-red misted planet that the mother ship had warp-tunneled to.

  The planet looked vast in comparison even to the large Exin mother ship. At its poles, there were areas of hazed gray and flecks of white. Nearer toward the equator, the planet attracted curiously pink-and-crimson cloud formations, some violent, some moving as sluggishly as arteries.

  And Dane’s one-alien torpedo shot straight toward an area of deep green, taking on the brightness of a star as it started to break through the upper atmosphere . . .

  The metal sarcophagus with its singular human occupant attracted its own halo of burning gasses as it fell. Short spurts of fire erupted from small positional thrusters, and automated, timed charges went off as metal plates—defensive shields that were designed to reduce entry speeds—were jettisoned and burned up. The torpedo type shuttle was now sleeker and thinner
at its top, but fatter near its nose, like a teardrop weight.

  This bulbous nose started to glow a fierce yellow, orange, and a deep hellish red before there was another flash as the topmost point was released. Suddenly, the small, bulbous shuttle was dropping through red-tinged clouds and bluer skies beyond. Streamers of whirling fabric sprang out of the topmost end like the fronds of some deep sea creature, and their billowing movement caught at the fey winds, slowing the craft and making it bounce and swing.

  Dane’s entry craft appeared barely bigger than he was as it swung on its own feather-parachute tail to the green canopy of a dense jungle, tearing through the foliage and crashing through ancient tree limbs until its parachutes finally caught enough vegetation to slow, slow, and finally hold.

  The shuttle had made its descent, and now it sat swaying in the alien branches like something discarded—hissing as it cooled.

  Dane’s test, and his punishment, had begun.

  9

  The Challenge Planet

  “Hgnh? Urgh?” Dane’s mind broke into wakefulness at the sound of hissing.

  “Now what!?” He immediately thought that it might be his guard or some other belligerent Exin that might have come to gloat over his demise.

  However, that was not the case.

  The case was, in fact, that the hissing appeared to be coming from a metal tube that he was squashed inside, that was swaying and giving him a rising sense of motion sickness.

  Oh yeah, Dane remembered. He had been fired out of the mother ship for crimes against the Exin. Well, that wasn’t precisely true. His crime seemed to be that he was tough enough to survive. And now he had won the right to die in some barbaric alien ritual . . .

  Luckily, the dim light was still on, and Dane could see his small surroundings. He had dropped the serrated daggerlike claw onto the floor of his metal cubicle, where the cloth was also bundled. As his container swayed and swept back and forth, he moved with it, reaching down to find that the rag was some kind of tarpaulin poncho. Therein concealed was his knife and a small leather pouch, that, upon inspection, held a long coil of silvered wire, as well as a small octagonal device with a button in the middle.