Metal Warrior: Steel Curtain (Mech Fighter Book 8)

by James David Victor

  His A.I. calmly and matter-of-factly took over Dane’s suit in a way that the sergeant didn’t like at all—or wouldn’t have liked if he wasn’t being rolled back and forth and shaken like beans in a can as the Gladius tore its way through the atmosphere and down toward the moon’s surface.

  Right now, however, Dane was more concerned with the fact that his entire suit appeared to be locking up. Sheaths of metal that he hadn’t even known were there rushed out to lock into place over the chassis of his suit, the joints, and the largest areas of his arms and legs. He clutched at the small AMP-suited Farouk, holding him tight to the chassis that housed Dane as his suit morphed and changed.

  “I didn’t even know it could do this!” was pretty much the last thing that Dane remembered saying before they made moon-fall.

  The Gladius appeared like a dread comet through the skies of the large moon world. Which is to say that she burned and was surrounded by a corona of flames and burning plasma, and lastly, a long, streaming tail of smoke. Luckily, most of that vapor trail was just that—a tail that was made of the mixture of steam and gasses burned by the sudden incursion of the Gladius to otherwise freezing cold air.

  However, not all of it was vapor—the human marine ship was losing precious fuel and precious oxygen at an alarming rate. This in itself would have been a source of dire alarm for Pilot Joey Corsoni, if he wasn’t also trying to make sure that the Gladius didn’t nosedive into something as final as a building, a city, or a mountain.

  “Rargh!” Joey tensed, every muscle in his arms pulling at the flight controls as he fought the inevitable drag of gravity. “Rear stabilizers! Right stabilizers!” he was shouting as they shot across the night-darkened space.

  “Every star’s damned stabilizer!” he amended. The metal aerofoil flaps along the nacelles and the main body of the Gladius deployed, for one after another of them to suddenly be ripped from their body, unable to hold back the velocity of this moon’s thin air.

  Joey saw flashes of settlements: strange, octagonal, and hivelike structures of dark gray buildings—and he also saw a whole lot of rocky outcrops. This moon was really a sister planet, with its own atmosphere—but it was clear why the Exin favored the larger, greener planet. This one appeared mostly made of solid stone . . .

  There. Up ahead there appeared to be a plain, on the far side of one of the larger building complexes.

  We can make it. We can make it!

  Joey fought to raise the nose of the Gladius, hoping at least for a belly flop of a landing on the sand and grit rather than a complete crash . . .

  But no, the Gladius couldn’t make it.

  The ship dropped lower, spilling burning fuels and billowing smoke behind it, and then they were careening straight into one of the hivelike city complexes. This one appeared to be built upon several levels, with the lowest dedicated to the same stilt buttresses that Dane had seen on other Exin habitations. The uppermost levels were made up of domes and towers, and the long spikes of antennas, transmitters, and receivers.

  The Gladius crashed into these uppermost layers first, snapping them off with gouts of sparks as easily as if they were made of matchsticks.

  The Orbital Marine Fighter continued its descent into the next layer, however, smashing through one side of a rounded building which, luckily, appeared to be made mostly out of glass panels.

  And still the Gladius, thrown from on high, continued its terrible path of destruction. It skimmed the debris of the domed building and hit the next level down of the Exin cityscape—with the main part of its body moving through one of the narrow streets between the buildings, as one nacelle was snapped from its bulk behind it, resulting in a wash of flames that blossomed upwards into the night sky.

  The Gladius chewed its way between the buildings, its fuselage and then its hull finally connecting with the city’s foundations, sending up sheets of sparks before they were ripped and snapped from their housings. More plate windows exploded with the shock of the impact—even if their buildings were a few blocks away from the actual strike.

  And finally, the human vessel came to rest at last, deep in a nest of buildings, with its entrance torn out of the walls and ceilings of the metropolis behind it. Thick black smoke boiled and billowed upwards from it, and flames were set off all throughout the Exin moon community.

  The Gladius had landed and was the very first invasion effort of the human forces.

  11

  General Systems Alert

  It was dark in Dane’s Traveler suit.

  And quiet. The suit’s suppressors and seals were so total that he couldn’t hear whatever agonizing screech of metal or human was happening outside.

  But I made it, he thought, and then—My squad? Joey!?

  >Restructuring local interface . . .

  There was a sudden blip of blue neon light across his interior HUD, but Dane’s suit A.I. had lost its uniquely quirky (and rather patronizing) voice. For a moment of tight bewilderment, Dane wondered if the almost-intelligent thing-inside-the-machine that was not him had died from the crash, but was rewarded with another flare of neon and the familiar, almost-aristocratic—and still disinterested—tones of the Traveler Mech.

  >Sergeant Williams, I am rebooting all systems now. Your medical scans show elevated tension.

  “Damn right, elevated tension—we just crashed on an Exin planet!” Dane called out. His face was washed over with green-and-blue lights as the controls of his suit came back on, first initializing the suit infrastructure, then the mission parameters.

  >Cycling Micro Reactors 1—3 . . .

  >Internal Systems GOOD . . . Starting Radionic and Sensor, Biometric and Health, Energy Management, Armaments . . . GOOD . . .

  >External Systems COMPROMISED [Await Report] . . .

  >Traveler Mech 01 Alpha / SGT Dane Williams / GOLD Squad Active . . .

  >Operation Hammer Blow CLASSIFIED . . .

  >Senior Commanding Officer OTEPI . . .

  >Strike Operation COMPLETED . . .

  >ERROR! Unregistered mission parameters! . . .

  >Ah, sir . . . it appears that we have a problem.

  The A.I. informed him, as vision was returned to the screen field of Dane’s suit, revealing the blackened and ruined wreck of the Gladius launch bay around them.

  “Gold Squad! Corsoni!” Dane immediately called, raising one of the backward-jointed legs to move and finding it heavy and unresponsive for a long moment.

  His suit had been thrown into one of the equipment lockers that ran along the inside of the walls of launch bay two, Dane realized. Jagged spurs of metal were crunched around him, and Dane had to fight to pull himself out. His extrication was matched with the sudden sprays of sparks and hisses of venting gasses.

  >The situation is becoming increasingly unstable, sir . . .

  His A.I. continued informing him.

  >There has already been a three percent increase in toxic, flammable, or hazardous chemicals in the air . . .

  They must have burst some of the fuel or atmospherics, Dane thought. He threw his mighty fists to hammer back the metal plates of the hull so that he could drag himself forward.

  “Reporting, Sarge!” It was Hendrix, already clambering out of his own rubble, with apparently nothing more than scratches to his suit.

  “Dear stars . . .” There was a groan as Farouk emerged as well, nursing his own injuries from the crash. “I think this ship landed on my head,” he was grumbling as the Gold Squad assembled. Dane found Joey’s identifier pinging toward them through the corridors, before a wave of light sliced through the smoke-filled darkness. Their engineer appeared small in comparison, with only a humble military encounter suit—the half harness and environmental suit that was one step down even from the Assisted Mechanized Plate.

  “Perfect landing!” Joey shouted to them as he scrabbled out of the broken port door to their level. Even though his tone was humorous, Dane had known the young man long enough to detect the taut growl of self-recrimination i
t contained.

  “We’re alive. That’s good enough for me,” Dane said briskly, before looking to the wreckage, and a realization dawned on him just as it did the others.

  “Isaias!” Hendrix screamed, bolting to the main body of the wreckage and frantically scrabbling at the large sheets of twisted and malformed metals.

  Farouk wobbled on his feet, looking sick for a moment.

  Corsoni, just as pale, turned to Dane.

  “There’s no way we can get him out of there,” he said, choking slightly on the words.

  Dane sighed, sadly, his heart torn to pieces as he thought of leaving the dedicated marine buried on an alien planet. He walked up to the still digging Hendrix and calmly put a hand on his shoulder. Tears streaming down his face, he pulled the man away slowly

  “We are alive now on an alien planet,” he whispered. “Surrounded by aliens. Isaias would want us to live for him.”

  Hendrix gasped a few deep breaths and blew out a long exhale, focusing, in spite of the pain. Then he nodded, ready to act now and mourn later.

  With a heavy heart, Dane turned to survey their current greatest asset—the Traveler Mech units.

  One of which appeared to be crushed, trapped, or otherwise pulverized by the crashed ship.

  “A-Mech?” Dane asked.

  >Three are in working order, though all in various states of minor disrepair, sir, and I have already authorized the auto-repair routines on your currently mech. It will take time though, so I would suggest relocating to a mech in better condition.

  “Get me into one of the working ones,” Dane requested. His current mech was nearly trashed, so it wouldn’t do him much good. One of the mechs that was in working order marched over, forming a sort of airlock between the two so that Dane could transfer from one to the other safely. The auto-repair on his first mech started immediately after the transfer had been made.

  Dane heard the hiss from Farouk, who had climbed past them to where one end of the Gladius’s launch bay was still burst open.

  At first, all Dane could make out was a confusion of metal shapes, but his suit’s visual filters and object identifiers quickly turned them into a forest of metal stanchion legs and girders, and strange wreckage and rubble twisted beyond, and then . . .

  Flash!

  A sudden sweep of green light blipped high above them, as something zipped over the hole they had torn in the fabric of the Exxon metropolis.

  >Alert!

  His suit’s sensors pinged, identifying the source as electronic, airborne, and radiating Exin code frequencies.

  “They must have drones or whatever-the-frack-else coming for us . . .” Dane said with a hiss, as his heart hammered in time with that repetitive thought:

  Crash-landed. On an alien planet. Surrounded by rather unfriendly aliens . . .

  The last time that Dane had been in a situation like this, he had been thrown into an alien jungle and expected to survive with nothing more than a knife. He had survived that (with help, he had to admit).

  But there also hadn’t been a full, well-armed, and not-friendly-at-all city surrounding him before. How could they ever get out? How could they hold out against an entire Exin city!?

  >Sir?

  It was his suit’s A.I., managing to sound as though it was attempting to disturb a sedate dinner event.

  “What!?” Dane hissed in alarm, as there was another flash of movement from outside the Gladius. It was clear that the ship was totaled. There would be no hope of resurrecting her and flying out of there any time soon.

  “Please tell me that you have just thought of an ingenious plan to save our butts!” Dane said wearily.

  >Ah, unfortunately, I cannot vouch for the safety of your posteriors, sir. However, there is an urgent call from the Dreadnought Lincoln, currently stationed between this moon and its sister world. It is a general systems alert. They are being bombarded by both the orbital lasers on this moon and the other world and cannot hold the front line.

  Dane swore, looking out at the ruined night of the lower city beyond and the long trail of rubble that the Gladius had carved through it. There was the distant sound of screeching alien alarms, which Dane presumed meant that the Exin warrior caste were already dispatching intercepts on their location.

  But somewhere up there beyond the thin envelope of alien air was one of their own ships, getting hammered by meson and laser blasts. There were marines just like him dying.

  And then, suddenly, Dane had a plan.

  “Can you locate the Exin planetary defense?” Dane said tersely.

  >Indeed, sir. Approximately two miles north-northwest from your current location.

  “Traveler Mechs!” Dane called in a flash, already moving to the edge of the ruined hole in the launch bay. Behind him, there were the tortured gasps and scrapes of metal as any of the automated, giant beings that could, pulled themselves forward.

  “Dane! I mean—Sarge!” It was Farouk, calling urgently as he reached his side (and looked very small beside it). “Sarge—what are you doing? Taking on a city!?”

  Dane turned to look at his marine, who was a little over half the height that he was in the Traveler Mech.

  “If I have to,” he said grimly.

  “Secure perimeter!” Dane bawled, as ahead of him the other fully working Traveler Mechs pushed forward through the complicated underworld of the city, walking down avenues that reminded Dane of the vast sunken car parks of long-ago New York.

  All of the Exin that Dane had the misfortune to spend time with appeared to build their bases and stations like this—stilted, as though they were scared to touch the ground, and raised on great metal stanchions where the actual ground was given over to rock, rubble, and the debris of industrialization. Things skittered in that darkness, and Dane was not sure whether they were Exin or perhaps slave races that their foe might have forced into servitude down here.

  What worried Dane more right now were the long avenues of clearer air over their heads as they walked under and between the stilted metropolis blocks. He could clearly see the ruins of several of these towers, with metal and glass forming landslides at their basement level—victims of the Gladius’ crash.

  The towers that remained stood tall—easily ten or fifteen stories high by his reckoning, with flashes of green-and-blue lights racing up and down them.

  And between them.

  “Drones!” Dane called, as the first cloud of small creatures swam through the air, accompanied by the sweep of brilliant green floodlights.

  Dane slid his foot back and hunkered, raising his fists—and the Traveler Mechs before him did the exact same, waiting for the first wave of the Exin defenses to close in.

  12

  Surrounded, Outnumbered, and Annoyed

  “Fire wall!” Dane called, hoping that the Marine Corps had loaded the Traveler Mechs with the standard Orbital Marine strategies and tactics. Above them, a swarm of green-lit Exin drones with flaring legs like five-pointed spiders swooped, leapt, and fell from the ruined cityscape onto them as brilliant floodlights flashed against their metal skins . . .

  Luckily, the Marine Corps had done as he hoped. The three fully operational Traveler Mechs lifted both of their long metal arms and started to fire up at the drones, hammering bolt after bolt of brilliant white meson energy in a barrage against the enemy.

  FZT!

  There were flashes of sudden explosions as the alien metals were obliterated and crashes as those shots were dodged or missed—striking the paneled windows and crystal glass above.

  “Get some!” Dane heard Hendrix yelling behind them as the remaining members of Gold Squad took up fire with their heavy pulse rifles too.

  Damn it! Dane thought as the cloud above convulsed and surged, drawing back in a murmurous flock as they appeared to second-guess their attack protocols.

  “I told you to stay back!” Dane snarled back at Hendrix and Farouk—both of whom were injured, but must have dosed themselves with enough of the suit’s pain
relief that they could still use their rifles.

  “Never going to leave you outgunned, Sarge . . .” Farouk retorted from a little way away. Dane could see that he was at least a good fifteen feet behind the Traveler line, crouching by one of the broken bits of rubble left from their crash. Hendrix was in a similar position, but still . . .

  Crash!

  Dane was rocked backwards a few steps as one of the splay-legged things slammed into him.

  >Amber suit warning, sir!

  Dane suddenly could see little apart from clawing, scrabbling alien tech, right in front of his eyes. He could distantly feel the pressure that the thing’s servo-assisted limbs were attempting to impart against him. His suit’s filters instantly cancelled out the distressed screeches of twisted and contorting metal, replacing it with the necessities of survival.

  >Auto shock plate, sir!

  Dane’s A.I. suggested this as another of the thing’s legs slapped across the top of his carriage, attempting to pull its whirling, death-blade maw into range.

  “Do it!” Dane hissed, struggling to hold the thing at bay.

  There was a brilliant flash, and Dane saw a counter on his suit shoot from a steady, healthy green to an alarming orange spike—and he felt his molars in the back of his mouth grate as the electricity surged . . .

  And the Exin spider drone was falling back, billowing steam from its inner circuits and blown fuses, giving Dane a chance to see that only one of the Traveler Mechs was not encumbered by more of the things, struggling to bring them down. And there were still more of the Exin drones swooping overhead.