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

  “Gah!” Dane barely suppressed a growl as he raised his fists to fire several shots into the air, striking down three of the enemy as more swirled and spun away from him . . .

  There were too many. His Traveler Mechs couldn’t raise their weapons to halt them.

  “Auto shock, everyone!” Dane called.

  >Right away, sir! . . .

  His suit’s A.I sent the command, and within moments there were three more flashes of light and cascades of sparks as the Traveler Mechs were freed from their assailants, and able to resume their barrage against the enemy.

  The Exin drones were falling all around them, and Dane realized that these defenses were primarily melee or search-and-destroy weapons. They chose to envelope their enemies and paralyze them.

  Hang on, he thought. Paralyze them for what!?

  The sergeant of the Orbital Marines got his answer little more than a moment later. There came a sudden rumble and crash over the rubble ahead, and a crowd of shapes burst over the rubble field and started to run, leap, and scuttle toward them.

  More of the Exin Beetles—the giant Mechs that they had fought before—but this time, they were accompanied by a host of smaller Exin warrior caste as well.

  Plasma and meson fire plumed, as shots rained down on their position.

  “Gold Squad! Cover!” Dane shouted as he took a leaping step forward. He wasn’t worried too much by the sudden blister of meson blasts that hit his own carapace. The Traveler Mechs were tough. Tougher than almost any human-made Mech yet made (save for the gigantic Titans, that was), and could take some of the smaller pulse weapons.

  Some.

  >Amber warning on all forward-suit components, sir . . .

  Dane ignored his A.I., focusing his fire on the first of the four Exin Beetles already charging down the rubble slope toward them. The Beetles had rounded carapaces, and looked to have six metal legs, the first four of which could double as attacking arms if need be.

  Wham! Wham! Wham! Dane fired barrage after barrage of his fist cannons at the first and was pleased when he saw it flipping to one side. One down.

  Wham! Wham! Wham!

  More of the warrior caste’s bolts were striking him, pushing his damage rating dangerously near the red territory . . .

  “Exo-plate!” Dane called, for sheaths of iridescent-blue plate to sweep over his arms and body. It made his flexibility slower, but bought him time as the first of the Exin Beetle Mechs launched through the air to slam into one of his Traveler Mechs beside him.

  But Dane had no time to help his automated mech out. The warrior caste were around and upon him, shooting and leaping onto his form as he roared inside his metal skin.

  “Get off me!” He swept his arms to one side and then the other, flinging first one, then two of the Exin warriors from him. But there were more. Always more.

  “Auto shock!” Dane called out again.

  >I’m sorry, sir, but the reserve battery hasn’t recharged enough yet. A further eight minutes and thirty-two seconds should . . .

  Dane snarled, kicking out one giant foot and dislodging the two Exin that were struggling to climb up his leg, winning a brief open circle in the midst of the melee. There were shots raining all around them, and Dane saw that his advance into the city had effectively halted.

  “Corsoni?” he called out, knowing that the engineer—the one with the least amount of protection and the furthest away, was therefore the marine who had the most opportunity for his next task. “I need something big. Something to distract and cover our movements!”

  “Already on it, boss!” Corsoni’s face appeared in his viewer field. He was hunched by one side of the destroyed Gladius, his visor soot-and-dust scarred from pulling open one of the ship’s panels, and he was yanking bundles of cables and circuit boards out.

  Wham! Another blast—this time heavier—hit Dane’s side, and he was sent spinning to a sliding crouch on the floor. Instantly, a trio of Exin warriors were on him, leaping over his metal body and unloading their weapons at point-blank range into his suit.

  >Sir, I have to suggest taking a new strategy!

  His suit A.I. was starting to sound a little bothered—and Dane could only second the thought as his damage rating slipped into the slightest shades of crimson.

  “Tzk’kri’a!” He could hear the jubilant shouts of the warrior caste as there was a sudden spray of sparks over the side of his viewing screen. He saw one of the four-armed Exin emerge clutching what looked like a bundle of wires—torn from some paneling of his own suit!

  “A-Mech!” Dane shouted. “Please tell me that is nothing important leaving my body!”

  >Ah, the transferral oscillator, sir. Think of it like the Mech version of your appendix. You will be perfectly capable of living without it, but it means that your energy transfers from one system to another will be slowed.

  “Nothing important,” Dane growled, throwing himself forward into a roll that flung the ad-hoc Exin engineer from his form, taking his transferral oscillator with it . . .

  Dane pushed himself up. One sweep of a fist taking out another of the warriors, whereas a blast from his cannon took out two more.

  There. Nearby, one of the Exin Beetles had forced a Traveler Mech to the ground and was busy pounding upon its body in ever more savage and final blows.

  “Hey!” Dane was shouting, throwing himself into a run, feeling his metal feet pounding on the ground once, twice. And then he was in the air, slamming into the back of the Beetle and throwing them both into the darkness under the Exin city blocks.

  Crash!

  Dane’s roll was halted only by one of the gigantic girders that stood holding the structure up above them, but the Exin Beetle rolled further into the gloom, scattering bricks and smashing through pipes that spurted foul ichor and steams.

  “Dear stars!” Dane groaned as he forced himself to his feet.

  WHAM! The Exin Beetle launched at him, bearing him down into the ground.

  “Sarge! I got a distraction!” It was Corsoni’s voice.

  “Not now, Corsoni! I’m trying not to die!” Dane hissed through gritted teeth, grabbing the top two legs to push the Exin Beetle back—at the same time as the other two legs pummeled his suit.

  “Well, we got approximately ten minutes to get out of here before the whole block blows to hell, Sarge!” Corsoni was saying as Dane struggled. The glowing neon green of the creature’s forward lights—or eyes, he thought—was bright just above him as Dane tried to move his own suit out of harm’s way. It was impossible at this close range, of course—and his suit had never felt so heavy as it did now. As it ever had, actually. Was that the result of the damage he had sustained? Losing the transferral thing, or could it be from the heavier levels of plating he had all over his suit at the moment?

  “The Gladius is going to blow! I can’t let the Exin take her!” Corsoni was already running, but not away from him. Dane could see in the scanner map on his screen that Corsoni was running toward him.

  “What!?” Dane called out, as another of the metal arms shot across his carapace, this time tearing one of the interwoven sheets of metal with it. It wouldn’t be long before the Beetle was through the external hardware of his suit and into the more vulnerable mechanics beneath.

  “We can’t leave marine tech behind!” Corsoni was shouting, already firing shots at the Exin Beetle that straddled Dane. They did little more than ping off the thing’s back.

  “Corsoni—get out of here! You haven’t even got armor on!” Dane was shouting. “I. Can. Handle this!” he reiterated.

  Joey apparently decided at that moment to mutiny, and he jumped from the floor of the rubble and onto the back of the Beetle itself.

  Frack! Dane instantly tensed. This changed just about everything that he could do now. He was inside a two-ton killing machine, throwing punches with another two-ton killing machine. If one of those blows went awry, then the much smaller hundred-and-forty-pound body of Joey Corsoni would be the first casualty. />
  “Stand down, Corsoni—that’s an order!” Dane shouted, as the Beetle lifted him several feet and slammed him, once again, into the ground.

  “What was that, Sarge?” He heard the pilot-engineer’s gasps and grunts of efforts as he clambered over the back of the creature, apparently searching for something . . . “Where is it? Where is it!?”

  >Sir, your external plating is imminently useless. I suggest you find a way to evacuate from your suit.

  The A.I. (rather unhelpfully) made this suggestion as the Exin Beetle once more slammed Dane down against one of the metal balustrades that held up the entire city block behind him.

  “Three minutes!” Dane shouted. “Gold Squad—retreat!” he called, just as there was a distant noise from behind the mess of crashing fists and scraping metal in his speakers.

  “Aha! Got it!” That was Joey, quickly followed by a sudden glare of brilliant blue light like a halo around the Beetle. It finally appeared to realize that something was going on and lifted up on its rear hind legs (looking to Dane, for all the world, like a dung beetle).

  No! Dane reached forward to grab the thing before it could twist, turn, and throw Corsoni against something terrible, metal, and final.

  If I am going to die down here, then at least my final act can be trying to save my friend . . . Dane was thinking as he grappled with the Exin War Mech. The brilliant blue glow appeared again, and again, and then, suddenly—

  FZZT! There was a sudden spew of sparks and a long, trailing alien screech as a small shape—Joey, Dane realized—leapt from the back of the Beetle—and it slumped to one side, apparently dead.

  “What? What—I don’t . . .” Dane was saying. Corsoni popped up again, waving what appeared to be a semi-industrial laser cutter in one hand.

  “They still got vents and filters and power relays, just like every other Mech,” Corsoni said, before quickly daring a look behind them. “Come on—no time. Move it!” Corsoni was saying, and Dane realized what he meant. When the Gladius blew, it was going to go big.

  But Dane was still in his suit. It might shield him from most of the blast—but it wouldn’t take him very far, would it?

  “Frack it. Frack it. Frack it!” Dane swore, moving to scoop up the engineer in one hand and head off toward the still-glowing target vector on his screens: the orbital lasers.

  “Stay behind! Maximum firepower!” Dane shouted to his automated Traveler Mechs (now only two of them standing) and instantly they erupted in a chorus of lasers and firing guns at every Exin thing that moved around them.

  As for Dane and the others, they ran between giant metal stanchions and struts under the gigantic buildings, always heading into the dark. He could see the identifying vectors of Farouk, Isaias, and Hendrix up above in the gloom. Just then, a brilliant white shockwave washed over them all, skidding him forward, accompanied by a visible ripple through the ground and the metal all around them. It felt as though he had barely taken a few steps before there was a deep, sub-bass boom that he felt more in his teeth and in his bones than heard.

  “Frack!” He held Corsoni in his arms as he tried to hunker forward, shielding the human from the worst of the blow.

  And that was when the Gladius exploded, taking out the two automated Traveler Mechs with it.

  13

  Still Surrounded

  It was quite alarming just how much of an explosion one marine space fighter could create, Dane reflected as he tried to distract himself from the ringing in his ears.

  “Gold Squad, report!” he growled, as the scanners on his suit blurted orange-and-red alarms at him. His suit was bashed all to hell, he was leaking steam, and several of his suit lights were out.

  “Still alive?” croaked a small voice right there in front of him. Dane realized that he was still holding Engineer Corsoni cupped in his arms. He looked down to see the marine’s visor covered with soot and dust from the explosion, but at least he was alive inside his encounter suit.

  “Private First Class Farouk reporting.” A voice clicked through his Mech speakers from fifty feet away in the murk and gloom under the stilted buildings. It was followed by Hendrix. From their medical read-outs in Dane’s suit, he could tell that no one was in their best state. At all.

  But they were Orbital Marines, he reminded himself. And they were made of hardier stuff.

  They were used to being thrown against the odds and against life-threatening situations.

  “Okay, so . . . mission still stands,” Dane said, his voice feeling raspy as he tasted smoke and the burn of ozone. His suit was wrecked, and he wasn’t sure if it would be any good to him in the next part of their plan. He checked the target identifiers and found the orange vector still bouncing over the not-so-distant orbital laser battery that was currently hammering the Dreadnought Lincoln.

  Behind them, Dane saw a wall of rubble—twisted metal and ceramic pipes skewering out of metal and stone bricks and blocks. The entire ceiling of the basement area they were in—which should have been some hundred feet high and decorated with the industrial workings, pipes, and tanks that kept the Exin building running—sloped and cracked toward that wall of rubble. Dane saw that the blast from the Gladius must have further taken out more of the Exin cityscape behind them. His suit’s scanners could pick up the distant hisses, creaks, and groans of a distressed building—but not the whine of sirens or alarms from their alien pursuers.

  Maybe the building slide behind them meant the sounds of their pursuers were too muffled for them to hear. Or maybe it meant that the Exin hadn’t grasped that their invaders were still alive yet.

  Either way, Dane thought to himself. “We need to get out of here before the rest of this damn building falls on us!”

  “Aye, Sarge,” came the chorus of weary replies.

  “Buckle up, marines,” Dane breathed. He released Corsoni to the ground and tried to stand a little straighter in his suit. His head now scraped against the roof of the lowered basement ceiling above him.

  I guess that’s decided, he thought. “We progress on foot,” he announced, already starting to wave his hands through the holo controls that would start the work of de-powering and releasing him from the Traveler Mech. It would be a sore shame to see it go, and he really didn’t want to, but he knew that they could travel faster and quicker on foot in their AMP suits than they could with a huge Traveler Mech lumbering behind them.

  And maybe it won’t attract so much attention, he thought.

  >Sir, I have to insist that this is highly irregular . . .

  His A.I. did its best to try and remain relevant.

  >Your predicted biological survival in such conditions is well below the preferred—

  “I don’t want to know,” Dane grumbled to his suit, earning a few confused looks from the Gold Squad arrayed in front of him. He silenced the suit’s speaker and continued with his men.

  “I don’t want to know whether or not this is unlikely or improbable,” he growled at everyone, at himself. “Because we are going to take out this moon’s orbital lasers, which will mean an infiltrate-and-destroy mission on an enemy base, without dedicated intelligence.”

  “Great pep talk, boss . . .” he heard Joey whisper, to a snicker of groans from the others. “Way to get the blood pumping.” Joey began to tease some more, stopping when Dane turned his giant metal head to him to silence him with a mechanized glare.

  “But,” Dane said heavily, drawing out the silence for a moment, “I would not want to do this with any other marine I have ever had the honor to serve with.” He saw the members of his Gold Squad looking at him with a slightly confused, even exasperated air. What he had just said was a given, wasn’t it? They appeared to be saying to him.

  “There were scrapes that I have gotten myself into that I didn’t think I could get myself out of,” he went on. “No—that I couldn’t have gotten myself out of,” he restated. “Not without the help of my brothers and sisters in the Marine Corps.”

  He hit the release contr
ols on the inside of his Mech and saw the flash of the deactivation protocol as his AMP suit was extracted from the larger machine’s systems. The bed of pressure-responsive pads and auto-intelligent harnesses gently lifted him up as they released, allowing him to step down from the Traveler Mech as it slumped behind him.

  Sergeant Dane Williams stood before his men on equal footing, in an AMP suit just like them, readying his pulse rifle and pulling his field weapons with him.

  “Together—we are strong,” Dane said, looking at each of them in turn. “We’re doing this not just for the Marine Corps itself, but for each other.”

  “For Earth!” Farouk said, his voice clearly brimming with emotion.

  “For Earth,” Dane nodded, holding out a fist before them.

  “For Earth!” Hendrix and Corsoni all did the same until there were four fists forming a web in front of them.

  “My Breath will be as fire.” Dane whispered the Oath of the Assisted Mechanized Division, for it to be taken up by the others in his Squad.

  First Farouk, “My Will is iron . . .”

  Then Hendrix, “My Purpose undaunted . . .”

  Then Corsoni, “First In and Last Out!”

  And finally, “BOO-yah! Marines!”

  All four men were grinning wolfishly at each other as their echo faded around them. Inside Dane’s AMP suit, all of his tactical and strategic controls had been updated from the Traveler to the new suit, and he could see their intended targeting vector not so far away, glimmering above them.

  “Then let’s get this done, gentlemen,” Dane said, hitching his gun up as he loped forward.

  The darkness under the Exin buildings was striated with the glimmers of silver-and-neon light, reaching down from the narrow avenues between buildings.