“Because they can’t commit a huge force if nothing is wrong!” Sarah Hughes said dryly, making it clear that she didn’t exactly approve of this decision either. “What do you want them to do, commit all of the Marine Corps defenders here and leave Earth wide open to attack?”
“No. No, I guess not . . .” Michael said.
>T-minus 00.00.07 . . .
“Lancet, repeat: Are you flight ready?” the flight coordinator said, his voice sounding a little terser than normal.
“Uh yes, yes, we are good to go, sir!” Michael found his voice as the Deployment Gate spun faster. There, in the blur of its spokes, a crimson glow started to appear . . .
It’s happening. I am about to be transformed into a series of subatomic particles and beamed across half the unknown universe . . . Michael licked his lips.
>SYSTEMS ALERT! ALL SYSTEMS STOP!
Suddenly, the alarms throughout his cockpit blared, and Michael gasped in shock. “What is it! What happened? What did I do!?”
>Central systems override . . .
“Calm down, pilot,” spoke a voice over the speakers. A holo of a woman with an eyepatch and frizzy red hair scraped back into a bun appeared on his control desk screens. The woman had a close-fitting, deep-blue military form, with lapels and badges that Michael didn’t recognize.
“Who—who are you?” Michael whispered.
“And more importantly, what have you done to my ship!?” Sarah Hughes said in a much angrier voice.
“My name is Captain Otepi of the Joint Operations Task Force,” the woman said in a tight voice. The sort of voice that meant that she was way higher in rank and importance and capability than any of the people that she was addressing right now.
“We have just received a distress call from the surface of Planet 892. Either join us and fight—or get out of my way!” the captain said.
The scout ship Lancet quickly swerved to one side, as the crimson hues of the Deployment Gate deepened, and the stars nearby seemed to blur and haze . . .
19
Cornered
Dane stumbled, sliding along the forest floor and jumping over tree roots, with Bruce just a few paces ahead of him. The Exin behind them were fast approaching, racing through the jungle with more agility and skill than the sergeants in their Orbital AMP suits could perform.
Suits which are already pretty banged up! Dane had to seriously consider as he ran. His Assisted Mechanized Plate was making terrible crunching noises. Now and then, his shoulder-plates would jar awkwardly as the frayed rents of metal caught and clutched at each other.
“We’re almost there,” Bruce said encouragingly, just as another volley of purple pulse fire smashed into limbs and trees around them.
Through the gaps in the trees, Dane caught a glimmer of light, the ship lights of the Expedition Base Camp.
So close! Dane gasped. Another volley of purple shots hit . . .
>Suit impact! Backplate 15% . . .
“Agh!” Dane was thrown forward as one of the alien pulse weapons found him and struck the already twisted and weakened overlapping scales of his backplate. He felt a moment of intense, flaring heat as he flew through the air, tumbling to crash through a mess of vines and skid across the ground.
“Williams! Dane!” A moment later, he heard Bruce’s voice as the big guy turned around, ran back towards him . . .
“Go! Get back to the ship!” Dane snarled, pushing himself up on his arms for his back to suddenly scream in agony. It felt burning hot, as if some god had thrown a thunderbolt right into him. With a strangled gasp, he hit the ground again, trying to remember the breathing exercises he had been taught on how to deal with the pain of the Exinase virus that was running through his system.
“Not a chance! Get up!” Bruce fired off a trio of shots into the noisy trees as he skidded to a halt beside Dane, reached down, and grabbed a hold of his arm to pull Dane half to his feet.
“Ack!” Dane cried out involuntarily in pain. “Bruce,” he hissed. “You’ll get yourself killed!”
“Not dead yet,” Cheng snapped, just as the first wave of the Exin broke through the surrounding trees . . .
“Dane—get behind me!” Bruce roared, firing a trio of bolts at the coming Exin. They weren’t the warriors, Dane saw thankfully—but there were still a lot of them. Two went down, wounded, as Bruce stepped in front of his fallen buddy.
“Dammit, Bruce!” Dane snapped, reaching for his Field Blade . . .
He didn’t have it.
His pulse rifle—also gone, and his laser pistol he had dropped when he had hit the roof of the Exin War Mech. Moving with a speed borne of adrenaline and fear, he snatched Bruce’s laser pistol from his hip as he got to a crouch and started to fire short, quick bursts to the right and left around his friend.
“Fall back! We have to fall back!” Dane shouted, casting an eye behind them to where one of the giant roots provided a temporary barricade.
“Sckrargh!” One of the Exin workers launched itself through the air at him from his left, and Dane had to swerve in the mud to fire a volley into the thing’s chest. His attacker went down with a screech, and then Bruce was seizing his shoulder and picking him up bodily to throw him back over the root as he turned to vault it himself.
“Agh!” And two of the Exin crashed into Bruce, their smaller forms dragging the big man in the big suit to the ground right in front of Dane.
“Bruce—no!” Dane popped back up, fired at one of the Exin workers, and flung it from the body of his friend just as it was thumping its strange, shell-like gun into his chest.
Dane’s shot was too late to stop the point-blank blast of purple fire to the chest, but his next shot sent the second Exin worker flying.
>Suit impact! Breastplate 50% . . .
Without thinking, Dane vaulted back over the root to grab Bruce’s Field Blade from his back. He raised it in one hand as he shot the next Exin worker to come charging at him, and then he dashed the Field Blade against the next. The enemy was all around him, and it was only a matter of time before they overran him.
But a red mist was falling over Dane’s senses, and a terrible certainty was giving strength to his bones. He swept this way and that with the blade, stabbing and firing to keep them at bay . . .
But even a highly trained Orbital Marine could not parry energy bolts.
>Suit impact! Breastplate 40% . . .
“Ack!” He was thrown backwards by a direct hit, striking the tree root with a thud of pain over his already burning back and with a ricochet that made his head bounce and see stars. He groaned and lurched forward to find that he was on the ground before the body of his buddy, and that he was surrounded by a tide of Exin, chittering and gnashing their mandibles as they lowered their guns at him. He looked, but he had dropped the pulse pistol when he hit the root. It lay a couple of feet to one side, too far to dash towards in one grab, and all he had was his friend’s Field Blade still clutched in one hand . . .
“Skrekh!” A different, deeper croak of a voice burst through the din, and all the rest of the Exin workers fell silent save for the clicking of their mandibles and scales. Moved by some invisible impulse, they suddenly parted, admitting the alien speaker into their midst.
It was the tallest Exin that Dane had ever seen, and he recognized it as the one who had been carrying the king egg from the mother ship.
The alien stalked with an awkward grace into their throng, as the Exin workers peeled back from it in a sort of stunned silence. Dane noticed that several of them were starting to sway a little, as if crooning to it.
What is this? Some kind of leader? A king? A queen?
It stood taller than Dane or even Bruce would in their Orbital-AMP suits, and it had a strange midnight-blue robe covering most of its form and giving it a liquid quality. But what was perhaps strangest about it was the way that its head was different than all of the others. It had an elongated, flared backplate that replaced the usual oval of the Exin head, and which ended in a
flare of bony horn shapes.
It held up two impossibly long arms with altogether too many tendons and joints, showing the slightly lighter scales of their undersides. In response, a deeper level of stillness settled over the crowd of Exin workers.
And then, emerging from its robe, there came two more slightly smaller arms, one of which uncurled its jet-black talons and pointed them at Dane.
Dane heard himself growl back in response and rose into a crouch as the crowd watched.
“You want me? You come here and get me!” he snapped at the Exin leader. In return, the leader merely cocked its head to one side as if it had been asked a baffling, but rather amusing question.
“Skrakh!” the being called. Although Dane could barely make out one inflection from the other in the alien tongue, he knew that this one sounded victorious. Mocking, even.
“Frack you!” Dane started to move—just as one of the warrior Exin emerged from behind the leader and settled on its haunches.
This one wasn’t as tall as its master, but it was wider and meaner. It didn’t have any pulse weapons either, but it did have two long, curving blades in its hands. It appeared to heave a pleased sigh at the sight of Dane, and its mandibles flared expectantly.
“What, is this your champion or something?” Dane stood up taller, flicking Bruce’s Field Blade at it. “What medieval barbarity is this . . . You’re going to watch me fight this guy, and if I win, your goons will just shoot me instead!?”
In response, the leader flicked one taloned hand as if in a shrug, like it had understood every word that Dane said, and found him ridiculous.
The Exin warrior lunged forward, one of its blades held high, the other low, with its two smaller arms clutched tight to its chest.
Dane, despite his outrage, reacted, swinging the Field Blade as he dodged to one side, parrying the curved blade of his foe with a clang as he dodged the sweep of the other. He ended up on the other side of Bruce’s body, panting hard as the Exin warrior hunkered a little and flared its blades at him.
“Come on, then! You think you got what it takes?” Dane whispered to it, and this time he was the one to break the standoff. He jumped forward onto one foot, bending his knee and twisting as he went down, sweeping his friend’s Field Blade in a lightning-fast arc that glittered through the night air.
“Sckra!” The blade swept under the two cuts of his foe, and instead smashed into one of the Exin’s smaller arms, sending off a splatter of dark-black alien ichor. Dane jumped back, panting, but grinning viciously as well.
“First blood,” Dane whispered. He felt that same quiver of excitement in him that he used to feel in his old Mech-Brawler days. That thrill of the challenge, the concentration and the mental focus required to entirely inhabit the moment for a short period of time and to react automatically, to let his own body act as it had to, before his mind did . . .
>Suit impact! Breastplate 15% . . .
“Argh!” Dane was thrown to one side as a sweep of one of the Exin’s swords met him. He had been certain that he was in the zone, that he was prepared. But the being flicked its double or triple- jointed wrists, and one of the blades neatly curved in his direction, slamming home into his already tortured breastplate.
Dane was wheezing and coughing as he rolled over on the ground, pushing himself off again quickly. He expected the warrior Exin to come and finish the job.
Only it didn’t.
His enemy was still standing where he had struck him, appearing to pant as well with the exertion.
So . . . Dane frowned. There were rules to this new game, weren’t there? Perhaps some strange form of alien honor was involved in a formal duel like this. Or maybe his opponent was simply taunting him, giving its human opponent a chance to stand just to strike him down again. Dane didn’t particularly care which, but he was glad, at least, that he wasn’t dead. As he slowly pushed himself up, his eyes fell on the form of Bruce Cheng, his friend, now a few yards away on the floor as their fight had carried them around the clearing.
Bruce. Dane couldn’t see any flicker of movement from the man’s frame. Had the shoulder risen, just a little? Was there some life in him yet? There was a terrible blackened mark on Bruce’s breastplate, and the overlapping scales of the Assisted Mechanized Plate were rucked and torn apart as if a localized explosion had gone off. The chance that his friend had survived the attack at such a close range was next to nil, Dane thought.
“But I’m not going to leave you behind,” Dane whispered to his friend’s stilled body. That was not what happened. That was not how this was done, or how Dane wanted to live his life.
First in, last out . . . he thought to himself, remembering the unofficial code of the Marine Corps. It was a response that was always quickly followed by no one left behind.
Dane had no idea how long it was going to be until the Deployment Gate opened, and if it would help him if it did. Maybe Corsoni had completely failed to rebuild the Federal Beacon and instead had been killed by more of the mutated expedition staffers, or the giant insects, or the flying bat things, or the Exin themselves.
All Dane knew was that he had to fight. He couldn’t let Bruce down.
20
The Contest
“Skrargh!” The creature threw itself forward, spinning as it did so.
Dane caught one of the blades with a parry of his own, but had to give all of his energy to ducking the other instead of countering if he didn’t want to get diced in half. It left him staggering to one side, panting, as his back, his chest, and now his legs started to ache. He was having problems breathing. He knew that was a sign of a fight about to go bad. A buildup of too much lactic acid in the muscles. Not enough oxygenation in the blood to clear it. The pain was like an anvil on his back, and now his legs were starting to twinge too, as his nervous system, long since damaged by the Exinase virus, woke up to the fact that he was a dead man walking.
Wonderful.
But still, in the few exchanges that he’d had with this warrior Exin, he’d done well. The alien opposite him was similarly staggering and apparently shaking in response.
Dane stepped forward, and—
“Ack!” A line of fire surged up through the marrow of his legs to his hips before radiating out in a burst of pain along his central nervous system.
Dammit! Dane staggered to one knee, looking for all the world like he was kneeling in homage to the alien creature before him. It was the infection. The Exinase virus had apparently woken up, and without his medical injector of Doctor Heathcote’s Vito-neura, he would be in crippling agony. Dane knew that it was a miracle that he was still alive, and also knew that he was essentially living on borrowed time.
If I survive the next five minutes, of course . . . He growled, pushed himself up to his feet once more.
“Sckrakh!” The Exin warrior leapt across the cleared space towards him once again. Dane barely had time to lift the Field Blade to counter the first of the swinging blades—
>Suit impact! Right shoulder 45% . . .
Dane only managed to half turn away before the Exin’s second blade caught him. He felt the crunch of pain against his upper arm as the blade threatened to separate two of his armored plates. He was falling to one side as his legs locked up. But he still threw a sweep of his Field Blade, catching the turning, retreating Exin on the hip and causing it to snarl in fury as it staggered to one side.
“Dear fracking heavens . . .” Dane had to shove the tip of his Field Blade into the ground to stop himself from falling over. He heaved a lungful of air and pulled himself upright again. What he wouldn’t give right now for a gun!
The Exin before him seemed to be lurching on its long legs, trying to remain upright too. Had he managed to cause some serious damage to it?
“Ssss!” With a hiss, the creature had thrown itself across the ground towards him in a rush. It threw its two blades down, as Dane desperately urged his body to respond.
With a clash that set off sparks, he managed to p
arry both blades as they bore down on him. The Exin had clearly thought that Dane was down and out. That he had nothing left in him. But you have no idea what I’ve been through to get here. Dane pushed the blades back with the force of his parry, and then released one hand from the pommel of his Field Blade to jab out at the Exin.
Crunch. His metal fist snapped the being’s head back as it gave a chittering snarl . . . and suddenly they were too close to use their blades. The Exin was trying to turn to get the range needed to sweep at him again, but Dane hammered the pommel down on one of the thing’s approaching arms, hitting the creature’s double-jointed wrist and making it drop one of its blades.
We’re even now, sucker! The thought flashed through his mind—just before the two extra arms that this warrior breed of Exin had punched out from the thing’s chest to grapple with Dane’s breastplate.
“Ag!” The sergeant felt the smaller arms claw and clutch at the metal. They didn’t have as many fingers as the warrior’s main arms. Instead, they ended in three heavier, brutal claws that caught at Dane’s suit like grappling hooks.
>Suit impact! Breastplate 15% . . .
Dane felt a wrenching sensation. Even as he grabbed the Exin’s wrist that held the sword and used his other forearm (still holding the Field Blade) to bat away the Exin’s other main arm—he shot a look down. Dane saw that the creature’s two smaller arms were starting to peel back the plates of his armor!
Heat burst across his chest. There was a fizz of sparks as the Exin found and tore through some vital component. Dane gritted his teeth against the sudden pain.
>SUIT ERROR! Internal heating unit malfunctioning . . .
Metal Warrior: Precious Metal (Mech Fighter Book 5) Page 12