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

  Which means me, Dane thought, grumbling as he sought to hold pace with them. Amid the aches and pains and near exhaustion of his body, his mind naturally turned to the other problems of his predicament. He could be half a universe away from home. What were his chances of ever getting off this planet? Of seeing Bruce and Corsoni and Hopskirk and Doctor Heathcote ever again?

  Before, when he had just been thrown into the jungle, Dane’s mind had steeled itself into survival mode. But now that he had a glimmer of hope that there might be a way that he could actually survive this challenge (with the help of these new allies) then it was like the rest of Dane’s mind started to concentrate on the bigger problem at hand.

  Namely, the ongoing war between humanity and the Exin queen.

  And now that I have met her up close, Dane thought of the large figure of the austere and controlling queen, and how much awe and admiration and paralyzing, fanatical fear she had appeared to evoke in her underlings. Dane realized the scope of the danger that the humble Orbital Marines and the First Admiral of Earth had to deal with.

  A fanatical culture. An entire civilization in service to one war-hungry queen, who had said that their crusade against humanity was in some way holy.

  Ugh. The thought made Dane’s teeth clench in fury.

  “And what is worse is that the Exin are clearly more advanced than us by a hundred years or more,” Dane groaned and muttered to himself.

  “Tk!” There was a sharp note of rebuke as Dane stumbled on, until he felt the sudden sharp prod against his chest. He looked down to see that the leader of these little aliens had thumped him lightly with a staff.

  “Hey!” Dane froze, one hand twitching a little as it hovered near the tooth dagger in his belt. “What is the meaning of this?”

  Had they decided that he was mere dead weight now?

  “Look, thank you for saving my life. Believe me, I am really, really grateful . . .” Dane began, as the alien captain uttered another low hiss of reprimand.

  “Tk-kr!” It menaced the spear at him once again, and Dane felt his jaw harden. If they thought that they could do away with him here and now, in the middle of some nowhere patch of alien jungle, then they had another thing coming, he promised himself. His hand settled onto the smooth bone pommel of the dagger.

  “Chrr-krr!” the older female alien was at their side and hissing the words low, pointing out into the forest ahead of them. Suddenly, Dane’s ears caught up with the sound that these aliens had clearly sensed far sooner than he had.

  There was a low, droning sound coming closer through the forest.

  “Oh crap,” Dane whispered, making placating gestures with his hands as he realized that they had been warning him about this thing.

  This thing that sounded mechanical, Dane thought—and it was getting closer.

  “Chk!” With sudden alacrity, the leader of the group gestured up the trees. As fast as evaporating mist, the alien creatures all stowed their spears into their vine harnesses on their backs as they leapt and scurried up the branches of the trees on either side of them.

  “Erm . . . How do I?” Dane moved to the nearest tree, but without long prehensile fingers and a tail—or half the skill and grace of his traveling partners—he only managed to grasp onto the lowest branch—before a coil of rope dropped from the branch above, and Dane found that he was looking up at one of the aliens.

  “If you think you can hold my weight,” Dane said cautiously as he accepted the rope.

  And was surprised when the aliens gave a quick, powerful tug on the rope that was strong enough to give Dane a leg up in climbing onto the branch next to it.

  These little guys are strong! he thought as they repeated the procedure again and again to get higher and higher into the trees. Dane’s guide finally stopped at the sound of a low, churring whistle from the canopy to the opposite of them.

  When Dane looked, he could see the glint from their bright yellow eyes. Their entire group had made it into the canopy of the surrounding trees. The guide at Dane’s side was now pointing out, over the silvered darks of the night-lit forest, what was causing the mechanical noise that so threatened the alien hunting band.

  It took Dane’s eyes a moment to adjust, but then he saw the expanse of alien stars. They were brighter than anything he had seen in the city evenings and nights on Earth. The forest below was vast and fell and rose in humps as it abutted rocky outcrops and dropped down river ravines. The tops of the trees shone with a muted silver where starlight met moisture or leaf glint.

  And then there was a bright light flashing across the forest—impossibly bright, shining a brilliant beacon before it.

  There was something moving out there, Dane realized. Another drone? A much larger one, perhaps?

  The light had a blue tint, and Dane realized that it wasn’t in fact one of the rotor-bladed Exin drones but was floating on its own pulse field—much like the larger, attacking seed craft of the Exin fighters did.

  “What is that?” Dane whispered, as the blue-tinged floodlight moved low over the canopy of the forest, turning slightly and then back again, as if it were searching for something.

  “Krr-kt!” His guide turned to blink solemnly at Dane, and the sergeant wondered if what the Exin were searching for was him.

  BWAAAR!

  Suddenly, a noise like a sonorous roar sounding like an elephant crossed with a lion erupted overhead, and the branches and leaves were whipped and blustered as a blinding light filled the little path that they had left. The alien guide beside Dane flinched and froze, and then the whooshing sound of mechanical noise was a thunder overhead as another of the Exin searchers passed.

  Dane hunkered down a little, but he couldn’t take his eyes from what he saw.

  The brilliant light belonged to a floodlight mounted on the front of a floating thick metal disk that was fat enough to have its own pulse generator, emitting blue underneath and behind it.

  It was a platform, and there was ample room for the two Exin that stood upon it. One of them was drawing back from blowing a huge, bone-colored horn that stretched from the height of the Exin’s mouth all the way to the platform’s surface in a giant curve. The second Exin was leaning forward over another emplacement at the front of the platform—what looked like the long barrel of a gun mounted behind the flood light.

  “Frack!” Dane hissed, drawing back into the darkness of the leaves and praying that his enemy hadn’t seen him.

  They were lucky. The Exin platform kept on its path low over the forest canopy and did not deviate or turn around to investigate the little path or the trees that Dane and the aliens found themselves in. He heard the Exin blow the massive horn once again in a deep, roaring blast that set up the sleeping birds and giant flying insects all around it. Dane got the impression that these Exin were using that tactic the way that old-time Earth hunters would scare prey animals out of the wilds before shooting them.

  “Are they hunting me?” Dane turned to whisper fretfully to his guard. His question was answered a heartbeat later.

  BWAAAR!

  The sound of the third horn blast was much further away, but Dane looked up, and his guide suddenly scuttled ahead to peer out over the trees. They all saw clearly the lance of boiling orange-and-yellow plasma that was hurled from the mounted flamethrower on a third, distant Exin platform.

  The lance of fire struck the forest below, and there was another blast of one of the Exin horns as the second and third platforms turned in their searches and started racing back to the one firing.

  Dane could hear distant, chittering shrieks and saw flames leap up faraway trees as the forest was ignited. The guide ahead of him was incensed and trembling with fear or rage. When the guide turned back to look at him, Dane was certain that they were watching the Exin platform firing on the home or community of these small forest people.

  “Krr! Tk-kt!”

  There was an authoritative shout from the tree across from them, and Dane saw that it was the captain or le
ader of their small band, standing proud and silhouetted against the starry sky, his eyes flaring a brilliant silver and yellow as he chittered and howled in rage.

  He was calling his small band to anger and to action.

  As one, the little aliens threw themselves forwards, some scrambling back down toward the ground, others using their tails and hands as they sprang to the nearest branch. They took whichever route would get them to the scene of the tragedy quickest, as the band moved, in an organic wave of fury, in the direction of the burning forest.

  Dane’s guide disappeared from the branch with a leap that took them to a lower branch, and then another wild, flinging leap toward another, before they finally reached the path. For his part, Dane cursed as he turned to scrabble and slide down to the branch below, and the next, before thumping to the forest floor. He could still thankfully hear the sounds of the racing aliens, desperate to save their homes or their friends, and they appeared to be using the same path that they had been following before.

  Dane took off down the path to follow them, his tooth dagger in his hand. He did not know what they were going to find when they got to their destination, or even what good they, a barely-technological society, could do against such an advanced and murderous one as the Exin . . .

  But he was a marine, and these strange little people were in danger. And that meant that Dane was going to try to help them, no matter what.

  12

  Hostile Environments

  BWARRR!

  The resounding horn call of the hunters rang out across the forest, greeting Dane and the racing hunting band as they drew closer. Only now, the sounds were also mixed with the undeniable screams of terror and rage.

  “Ch-krrr!” One of the small aliens in Dane’s party uttered a sharp shout of alarm. There was a resounding crack straight ahead of the marine on the path as a burning tree plunged toward him.

  “Frack!” Dane saw the blackened bark and the flaming tinder leaves a moment before the tree struck. He leapt, crashing into the bushes and vines to one side as the ground shook under the impact.

  “Urgh . . .” Dane rolled, pushed himself up, and saw that all around him the forest was burning.

  Flames, shot out from the plasma cannons mounted on the floating Exin hunting platforms, were now racing up the trunks of ancient, generations-old trees. Luckily, much of the forest floor was damp, so the fire did not spread easily or in rolling curtains of inferno, but instead clung to the trees that had been struck. Soon, however, it began to spread through branches…

  Entangled branches that held small huts and house shapes, Dane saw. There were aliens up there, people, racing along branches and leaping from one blackening tree limb to another, clutching woven bags to themselves or the smaller, squirming bodies of crying infants.

  How could they . . . Why . . . Dane felt the shocking, numb kick of horror at the sight, but had no time for paralysis as there was another whoosh from beside him when another tree was hit.

  “Tk-kr!” Dane heard a scream and turned to see a small shape, high up in one tree that was already burning at its base, and the neighboring trees were similarly aflame. He saw the creature looking first one way and then another, unsure of where to leap.

  “Here!” Without thinking, Dane raced toward the conflagration and waved his arms, holding them high. “Jump! I’ll catch you!” he shouted and saw the hesitation in the small alien’s eyes at this tall alien homo sapiens shouting up at it in an unknown language.

  “Ch’krrr!” Another screech from nearby, and Dane turned to see that the older female alien was there, beckoning and gesturing to the smaller alien above.

  “Jump—you can do it!” Dane was calling, and, seemingly emboldened by the elder’s insistence, Dane saw the smaller alien take a breath and jump . . .

  “Oof!” The alien fell the fifteen feet or more to crash into Dane’s arms and drive them both to the floor with a painful thump. It was a lucky thing that the alien was so light, as Dane was sure that if they had been human-sized than the creature probably would have broken his back on the way down.

  “You’re okay, you’re fine . . .” Dane was gasping as the alien sprang up and chittered at him in wonder, before fleeing into the forest.

  I guess that counted as a thanks. Dane scrabbled to his feet to see the elder alien regarding him for a moment, before there was another blast from the Exin hunting horn almost right above them.

  BWAAAR!

  The burning canopy was ripped apart by the sudden sweep of one of the hunting platforms, and Dane had a moment to look up to see one of the Exin snarling as it leaned into its plasma gun . . .

  “Run!” Dane shouted at the elder as he did the same, ducking as a wave of heat rushed over his head and hit the base of the tree he had been sheltering against. There was another great cracking sound like some malicious god was tearing the world in two, as the tree was shattered by the plasma blast and fell, tearing a ragged hole through the canopy around it.

  Dane leapt and ran away from the blaze, but every few feet took him headlong into another exploding tree. It was like a war zone here, and the small aliens were panicked and shrieking.

  “We have to get them out of here!” Dane shouted uselessly, knowing that they couldn’t understand him. Small shapes ran back and forth. The hunters that he had been traveling with helped them and hurried them wherever they could.

  And then Dane saw on the forest floor before him one of the dropped spears of the small people. It was long, taller than they were, almost as tall as Dane was himself. And it had as its head a knapped stone cone that looked wickedly sharp.

  Dane snatched it up and turned, just as one of the Exin floodlights started to sweep high over the burning forest and turn back toward the people’s frantic escape.

  Ahead of the marine was a clear stretch of forest. The floor smoldered, and there were gobbets of burning branches here and there, but there was a place where several trees had come down, forming an avenue for the alien hunting platform to sweep into.

  And the predatory Exin could not resist such a perfect hunt. They started to race, lowering their craft between the burning trees.

  The sergeant of the Orbital Marines ran toward them, bringing his arm and the stolen spear up to his shoulder as he did so.

  One step, two steps . . . He lengthened his stride over burning branches and smoldering bushes, remembering his athletic training back a hundred years ago in college.

  The Exin craft was screaming forwards, unstoppable.

  Dane threw his legs forward in lunging strides, springing off the balls of his toes as he reached as fast as his momentum would allow—

  “Urgh!” He flung the spear with a quick windmill motion of his arm, still lunging forward on pinwheeling legs.

  Time appeared to slow, and for a moment, he saw the javelin soaring upwards in a perfect arc—

  And then it hit the Exin at the mounted plasma gun and was flinging the shooter from their perch as the platform suddenly, crazily swerved to one side . . .

  Dane had to fling himself to the floor as the platform rolled over him, disappeared between the trees, and a heartbeat later, there was a sudden boom and a bright flash of white-and-blue sparks.

  “Tk-chtk! Tkrrr!” Dane was pushing himself up from the smoldering ground, quickly wiping the burning embers off of his palms as he heard shouts of celebration from some of his colleagues. He rose to see that several of the alien townsfolk here had turned to watch what Dane was doing and were now loudly hooting and thumping their tails on the ground.

  “Celebrate when it’s over!” Dane gasped, turning to face the body of the Exin he had struck, still impaled by the spear, and he quickly knelt down to search it for weapons. He discovered one of the whorled shell guns, which, upon closer inspection, appeared to have two handles and a firing button inside the massive shield of bone-white metal. Dane raised it tentatively, certain that it wasn’t going to obey his human biology, and pointed it at the ground.

  Wham
!

  With a jolt, he stumbled backward as a burning purple bolt of plasma hit the forest floor with a dull crack.

  Yes!

  The Exin had other items that it would now no longer need, Dane saw. A utility belt with what appeared to be ammunition cannisters or charge cells for the gun, which Dane took—as well as a large metal pebble shape with small antennas and sensor ports at one end. Dane wasn’t sure what it did, but it looked to him like it was some kind of communicator. He pocketed it all the same.

  “Tk-chk!” He was alerted to the stern reprimand of one of the aliens and looked up to recognize the elder woman beckoning him and pointing deeper into the forest. A large swath around them was burning now, and the smoke was getting thicker, making Dane’s eyes tear up.

  “Go! I’ll cover you!” Dane said, waving her off as he pointed to the gun and the sky.

  BWAAR!

  As another platform shot overhead and was gone before Dane could get a chance to fire.

  But it probably means they’ve seen me, Dane thought, then turned to the elder. “Go! I’m right behind you!”

  Even through the language and species barrier, the elder appeared to understand what Dane said. She suddenly turned and disappeared through the burning forest.

  “First one in, last one out,” Dane mumbled to himself, scanning the skies and the near canopy—before jogging after the elder. He paused when there seemed to be more forest and less fire to turn around and scan the skies once again.

  BWAAAR!

  The Exin helpfully broadcast their positions by their hunting horns, and even before Dane could see them, he started firing up into the skies between the trees. He fired several shots, one on each side.