Metal Warrior: Steel Curtain (Mech Fighter Book 8)

by James David Victor

  “Hold!” Dane hissed. He waited beside one of the giant steel pillars at the base of one such stilted tower, looking across and upwards to where he could see a complicated gridwork of walkways above, between this tower block and the next.

  The buildings flared and flashed with the neon lights, and past their dark heights, Dane could see the flicker of stars in a midnight sky. Maybe it was always like that here, an eternal night thanks to the thin atmosphere . . . Or, Dane had to consider the possibility that those flashes of distant starlight up there were actually the flashes of a dying fleet. His fleet.

  There was movement a lot closer to the ground, as well—as another swarm of drones suddenly flashed through the sky on their green-and-purple propulsion fields, whipping past the buildings in seconds. Dane saw the sweep and flare of light in the distance as he took a half step out, looking down one avenue to where there seemed to be a lot of noise and commotion a few blocks away.

  “They’re at the crash site,” Corsoni whispered as he emerged at Dane’s side. “It won’t be long before they realize we’re gone, and that there’s nothing worth picking from the ruins.”

  Dane nodded tersely, once. And then they would flood the area under the streets with more of those drones, he presumed. His men would be the only non-Exin signals on the entire planet, and thus easy to track.

  Wham!

  There was a tremor through the ground. A sudden lance of light shot up from the roof of the lower, smaller building across the street from them. It pierced the sky and held a line of brilliance as if trying to cut a vertical line through the very fabric of the universe. It stayed solid and dazzling for a couple of minutes before flickering out, and Dane knew that at the other end of that laser could be another destroyed Marine ship . . .

  “There it is! That’s the laser facility!” Dane was saying, looking for a gap in the sweeping floodlights.

  “Go, go, go!” The gap he was looking for came several moments later, and Dane and Joey were running across the open avenue of metal to slide into the tight darkness of the building’s shadow.

  But there was a difference between this building and its fellows. It was far smaller, for one thing, and it was not seated on stilts, but rested on the ground itself.

  “Probably to brace better against the reverberation and the displacement waves,” Corsoni explained as they hunkered between giant metal pipes that ran up one side of it, waiting for the others to make their own desperate dash across. Hendrix came next, and finally—Farouk.

  “Can you find a way in?” Dane was saying to the pilot-engineer, who nodded quickly.

  “I can if I have access to a scan of the facility, but my suit . . .” He shrugged at the much lighter carapace of the encounter armor he wore.

  “Got it,” Dane agreed.

  >AMP Suit 023 / SGT WILLIAMS (Dane) / Scanners and Sensors . . .

  >>FULL SPECTRUM Test . . .

  Dane leaned out from his hiding hole to swivel slightly. Differential waves of orange, green, or purple washed over his screen as his suit scanned the building for its physical dimensions, radionic outputs, energetic outputs, thermal, organic—and just about anything in between.

  “Here.” Dane reached out his hand for the power relay in his wrist to pop open, so Corsoni could attach a jack to it and start to download and read the data.

  “Suppressors. Insulation,” the engineer was saying as he scanned the information. “Uh huh. I see that—power couplets, relays, air filters . . . There!” He suddenly said, turning to point over their heads and back to their left.

  “Those are the air outlets, where they recycle the stale air from inside. It should lead to fans, and, well . . .” Dane saw him pat the industrial laser cutter he still wore at his hip.

  With a nod they were off, with Dane flexing his arms as he remembered that he was in an AMP suit, not a Traveler Mech.

  >AMP 023 / SGT WILLIAMS (Dane) / Environmental and Technical . . .

  >>Grappling/Climbing Equipment . . .

  He remembered the protocols, and from the boots of his feet emerged the auto-studs and spike, and the gauntlets of his suit activated their magnet locks. With the addition of his Field Halligan in one hand, he started to grapple with the connective edges of the nearest pipe. This allowed him to haul himself up its side to the place where the pipe sunk into the wall.

  Good! Up here was a slight ledge, and another a few feet above his head, meaning that the entire building maintained a low, ziggurat-style appearance.

  The vent was some thirty feet along this edge, and Dane started to inch his way along it, the hooked studs holding onto the ledge underfoot as one magnetic glove held onto the walls by his face.

  He felt his stomach turn over, which he immediately thought was ridiculous. He was used to flying around in a complete vacuum, with nothing but an abyss of stars above and underneath him.

  Yeah, but then I was in a ship, he told himself as he edged halfway, and then a little bit more.

  “Right behind ya, boss.” It was Corsoni, who had reached the top of the pipe and the ledge above it in record time. Climbing was clearly something that the engineer was perfectly used to. Dane inched forward some more . . .

  To feel his boot slip just a little . . .

  No!

  He dropped the Field Halligan and slammed both palms against the wall as the weight of his suit threatened to pull him back down to the ground below. It was not that he was particularly worried about the fall, as his AMP suit could probably take the tumble—but the noise and the complication could cost them dearly.

  “Sarge!” he heard Corsoni saying in alarm. Dane’s hands slid a little before they held, and he scrabbled with his boots to find the ledge once again, reach out to the edge of the air vent, and pull himself tight to it.

  “Phew!” Corsoni reached him, moving as easily as if clambering around on alien buildings was a thing that he had done all of his life. Corsoni worked quickly to melt through the outer metal strips of the air vent as the others climbed up the pipe and to the ledge. With a grunt, Corsoni kicked the fence inwards to clang with a muffled echo inside a large, octagonal metal tube that extended into the body of the building.

  Dane spared a moment to look at his marines. They were crossing the ledge in good order, and down the avenue of Exin streets, he could still make out the glow of drones and smoke. No one had noticed them. Yet.

  14

  The Orbital Defense

  “After you, boss.” Corsoni threw him a sharp grin from behind his faceplate visor, and Dane made a face.

  “How kind.” He unslung his heavy pulse rifle and started to creep forward into the laser defense building. The inside tunnel was dark, and its smooth metal walls were made of the same dark, midnight-blue metal that the Exin made most of their infrastructure with. The only lights in this place came from their suit lights, and each human form had to hunch to fit inside.

  “T-junction,” Dane whispered over his suit-to-suit communicator, for Corsoni to consult the scan data once again. Then he tapped Dane’s shoulder on the left to indicate the direction that they had to travel in.

  This corridor looks pretty damn well like any other, Dane thought as he scraped and pushed forward. There was a low, vibrational hum that rang through his suit’s pickups that seemed to come from the building itself, and the sounds of the distant Exin city faded to nothing the further inside the building they went.

  Wham!

  Suddenly, the hum increased in pitch, and a ripple shook through the entire building.

  “Frack!” At first, Dane thought that they had been discovered, but as the shock wave subsided and the silence returned, he realized that it must have been another blast from the building’s orbital defense lasers.

  “We gotta move faster!” Dane hissed to himself. Each and every one of those shots could mean the deaths of hundreds of his fellow humans, fighting for their lives somewhere far above him.

  Dane pushed himself harder, following the engineer’s guidance as
they took another right turn, and then a left—to realize that the tunnel was starting to slope downwards. His suit sensors were picking up a constant breeze.

  “We’re getting close,” Corsoni confirmed as they slid and shuffled forward in the tunnel—just as there was a strangled sound of alarm from Farouk, at the back of their column.

  “Urk!”

  A light flashed from behind his back. Dane tried to turn, but the space was so cramped that he couldn’t see what was happening. There was light, and movement, and . . .

  FZT!

  A flash of brilliant green pulse laser.

  “Farouk!” Dane shouted.

  “It’s a drone!” Hendrix said, “It’s got Farouk!”

  Dane swore, shifting to his face visor so that his command protocol allowed him access to the rest of the suit cameras, and then he saw the predicament. There was one of the Exin spider drones in the tunnel, with three of its five metal legs curled around Private First Class Farouk. It was attempting to drag him backwards up the tunnel. Hendrix was directly behind him, and he was attempting to reach over the struggling Farouk’s shoulder to shoot at the Exin drone.

  There was nothing that Dane could do. Nothing he could do but watch, as . . .

  “Boss!” Corsoni’s voice alerted Dane just in time to his own proximity alarm, ringing and warning that just ahead of him was movement.

  Dane snapped around just in time to see one of the wall panels up ahead opening and a drone flinging itself into the tunnel, reaching out with its prehensile metal arms to latch onto one of Dane’s ankles. With a strength that belied its size, it pulled Dane forward easily by several feet, making him fumble for his pulse rifle.

  “Gah!” Dane snarled, kicking at the thing with his other boot to dislodge it—but it was too quick. Its reflexes were built on cold algorithms and operated far faster than anything that the human mind or body could do.

  >Proximity Alert!

  His alerts were lighting up as he fought, and the drone was rising itself over him, exposing its face that was really the concentric rings of weapons ports.

  “Sarge! DOWN!” Corsoni shouted. Dane did his best to flatten against the floor of the tunnel, but a part of him did scream silently that he already was lying on his back anyway.

  A bolt of purple-white light flared over the top of his faceplate and into the face of the thing that was coming for him. There was a brilliant flash and a deafening crack of thunder as it was thrown back.

  >Suit Impact! Faceplate, Breastplate 85% . . .

  The explosion of the Exin drone was close enough to hammer at Dane’s suit like a building had been dropped on him from a great height.

  “Boss, boss—you alright?” Corsoni was at his side.

  “Urgh. Friendly fire really isn’t nice,” Dane croaked. “Farouk?”

  “We got him back, Sarge!” Hendrix was saying, and Dane could see that their health bars were compromised, but that they were still functional.

  “But we still got company heading our way. Check the long-range sensors!” Hendrix was saying. Dane saw a cluster of vectors rising around them, seemingly through the walls itself—but what he presumed must be the secret deployment tunnels that he had just seen the Exin drone use in front of him.

  “The exit is just up ahead!” Corsoni was saying.

  “Move! Move!” Dane shoved himself forward, clambering over the open vent where already more drone lights were spearing upwards. He heard pulse fire erupt from behind them as Farouk and Hendrix opened fire on the approaching drones.

  Clang! Their way was blocked by a metal grate, looking down into a bare metal corridor that ended in a set of double doors.

  “Rargh!” Dane swiveled and kicked out at it with both feet. Once. Twice.

  FZT! FZZZT! More flashes of brilliant explosions behind, and Dane heard grunts of pain from his men. Farouk’s visible status bar was growing dangerously shorter by the moment.

  “C’mon!” Dane shouted, kicking the panel grating one more time, and again, and . . .

  CLANK! The panel fell to the floor of the corridor beyond, taking Dane with it.

  “Ugh!” He narrowly managed to roll out of the way before Corsoni and the others fell into the corridor behind him—and the sergeant of the Orbital Marines was already bouncing up to the balls of his feet and turning to fire returning bolts of fire back up the service duct at what followed them.

  “Let’s get this shut!” he was shouting. Corsoni was already holding up the grate, Hendrix was grabbing it, and they welded it back to the wall, the Exin drones hammering on the other side.

  “Whoa!” Dane leapt back as two of their mechanical arms broke through the frames and twitched uselessly after him through the holes.

  “We did it. We’re here . . .” Hendrix said through clenched teeth as Dane finally breathed. They had—but they were still neck-deep in enemy territory, and the lights of this corridor were flaring bright orange in repeated short bursts. Dane was sure it meant that some internal alarm had been triggered.

  How long before the might of the Exin military on this planet get here? he thought, as he nodded to the broad doors ahead of them.

  “I got it, Sarge.” To his surprise, it was Farouk who volunteered immediately, taking out one of the small explosive charge capsules loaded into the equipment harness of his suit and awkwardly jogging to set it up at the door.

  Dane looked around him to see that there was no cover on this side of the corridor—just a blank walkway (with the flailing, twitching arms of enraged Exin drones, it had to be said).

  There has to be at least some sort of Exin fire team on the other side, he thought to himself. In the best instance, there would only be a small group of firing engineers—but in the worst case, it could even be a military squad.

  And his men were already fatigued. And injured.

  But what could he do? What could any of them do?

  “Get ready.” Dane hunched over his rifle as Farouk sprint-hobbled back behind them.

  “Three . . . two . . . fire in the hole!”

  The door blew inwards with a deafening explosion and a flash of dizzying brilliance. Plumes of smoke filled the corridor in moments, as Dane’s and all the other Orbital Marine’s scanners glitched.

  “Sckrargh!” And dark shapes jumped out of the smoke at them.

  “Frack!” Dane let one knee fall to narrowly avoid having his head cleaved from his shoulders by one of the curving Exin blades. They were facing at least three of the Exin warrior caste. Four armed, and as tall as he was inside his Assisted Mechanized Plate, with hardened metal scales atop their own naturally plated bodies.

  Dane pitched forward into a roll as something slammed onto the floor behind him. The Exin warrior was whirling and lashing out with both blades and claws like it was frenzied, but now Dane was jumping up again—

  “Hyagh!” The quarters were so close that all Dane could do was use his rifle in two hands to slam it into what would have been a kidney on a human. On the Exin, however, it merely staggered forward a few paces at the same time as it winged a clawed hand behind it.

  >Suit Impact! Faceplate 70% . . .

  The strike was like being hit by a sledgehammer, and even inside his suit, Dane felt his head bounce as he bit his lip and tasted blood.

  No time to think. He stomped forward with one boot, hoping to cripple or at least trip it up.

  No luck either way, as the Exin twisted away with alien grace and speed, whirling the blade overhead, straight for him.

  Dane barely managed to pull up his rifle in time to protect his head as the sword crashed and sparks rained down. He felt something mechanical give in the bulky military rifle and knew that he shouldn’t try firing it again. So instead, he reversed his grip and slammed it, butt-first, into the four-part mandible maw that drooled alien slobber and screeched in fury right in front of him.

  “Ur’skt!” That, at least, appeared to hurt the warrior caste, Dane saw, as a spout of blood spattered across his own face pla
te, and the thing staggered back. This time, Dane’s stomp kick wasn’t avoided, and he sent it backwards into the firing room. Then he leapt after it, rifle raised like a club.

  The command room of the orbital lasers was roughly circular, with two broad chairs raised on their own dais in the middle, and banks of screens and readouts along the side. Dane saw a flash of targeting symbols, and a brief blow-up of what looked like the Orbital Marine Dreadnought far above them before he ended his killing leap—to discover that his intended victim wasn’t even there.

  “Huh?”

  Dane looked up.

  As an Exin blade crashed into his breastplate.

  >Suit Impact! Breastplate 35% . . .

  With a croak of pain, Dane crashed to the floor, wheezing and with a line of fire awakening over his ribs. His pulse rifle had skidded out of his hands and across the floor. His outer plate had been torn by the powerful enemy, and the softer inner metals were terribly crumpled, applying pressure on his own body inside the AMP suit. Dane took a juddering breath, felt the burn of pain—and the difficulty in fully filling his lungs with oxygen.

  “No!” He managed to look up. The Exin warrior, limping to stand over him, was raising its blade high over its head, ready to bring it down in a killing blow right over his heart.

  “Tsssk!” The creature hissed its murderous promise at the human invader to its world—as Dane kicked it between the legs.

  Not much was known to Dane as to how, what, or where the more vulnerable parts of Exin physiology were located—but apparently his double-shod metal boots had found something of value to the Exin, as it suddenly squealed in pain and staggered backwards.

  Dane rose and moved forward, pulling his own Field Blade from the side harness of his AMP suit and swinging it in a deadly arc that removed the creature’s head from the rest of its body.