And their side of the barricade was getting a whole lot less safe as the first of the Exin warriors leapt over the statue to land in their midst.
“Ssss-k!”
Time seemed to slow down for a horrifying moment as Dane saw that the Exin fighter had landed almost in front of the queen herself. The terrifying possibility flashed through his head that the warrior was going to dash apart the queen’s chains to free her—and then Dane and the others would have two irate and powerful aliens standing before them.
But no—he saw the four-armed Exin warrior howl in fury at their old monarch and then throw a curving fistful of talons straight at the queen’s head.
Dane grabbed the chain that was still attached to her and pulled in the opposite direction as the queen herself tried to slump out of the way. The combined effect led her to be thrown to one side as the Exin warrior swiped nothing but empty air. Now Dane was half crouching over the downed Isaias, right in front of the enemy.
“Frack!” Dane swung his rifle like a bat, catching the creature as it turned on him. He only managed to block one of the strikes from the four arms, as another one caught at his suit.
>Suit Impact! Left Shoulder-plate 70% . . .
These warriors were not only fast, they were strong too—even without their own exo-armor (like the AMP suits that Orbital Marines wore) the alien fighter had managed to crumple Dane’s reinforced metal shoulder pad.
Dane swung desperately again with the rifle, aware that Farouk was on his own behind them, firing a constant volley over the barricade to try and keep the others at bay.
Clang! Dane’s strike batted back the sweeping arms, but it was clear that the warrior was trying to get to the queen. Trying to kill its queen.
“Skragh!” With a sudden shout, the Exin pulled an unexpected trick. Dane had been trying to defend himself, Isaias, and the queen from the fighter’s claws. He hadn’t been expecting one of the creature’s multi-articulated legs to stamp forward and catch Dane under the rib cage, driving him back beside Farouk.
“Ssss!” The Exin hissed in exultant rage as its head snapped towards where the queen half crouched, half lay a few yards away. In a split second, Dane saw the creature tense, ready to pounce. In the state that the queen was in, there was simply no way that she could withstand any attack.
FZZT! There was a blossom of orange-yellow fire from the floor. Isaias had fired from where he lay, almost at point-blank range into the Exin’s abdomen. The fighter smacked against the still-closed door, and Dane was already turning to help Farouk.
“SKRARGH!”
Dane managed to fire point-blank into the climbing form of one of the Exin about to overrun Farouk—but the glisten and gleam of green-and-gray-blue scales was heavy on the other side.
How many are there? How many were in those tubes? Dane fired again even as he released the rifle with one hand and pulled his Field Blade from his thigh with the other. They were too close to target with any projectile weapons.
All of those warriors come after them? Dane’s questions were the only thing that were keeping him sane right now, as he stabbed and back-swung his blade, cleaving claw and scale and fang.
It was a large mother ship, a part of Dane’s mind didn’t want to admit. What if there were more of the Exin in cryostasis tubes littered here, there, and everywhere? What if they were about to fight a whole contingent of them?
Enough.
Somehow, Dane was now standing on top of the downed statue. He had dropped his pulse rifle entirely as he used his Field Blade two-handed. Farouk and Isaias were crouching on either side of him, still firing into the mass of aliens that pressed towards them.
Dane had never judged himself to be a great melee fighter. He hadn’t been an expert at weapons forms in martial arts, but he had done a lot of martial arts in his life, thanks to his previous career as a Mech-Brawler. Even though his primary method of fighting had been inside a suit, he had known that the suit only functioned as well as his body and his mind could. To that end, he had attended many MMA events and clubs, hoping to hone his intention and physical skills to the peak of excellence.
Well, and then the New Sanctuary Mech-Wrestler Dome had fallen on his head, but despite this small setback, he had retained the skills that he had spent his early life honing.
But no matter how good he was with a blade, Dane knew that he could have been better. And the fighter inside of him knew that when there were so many enemies, it was only a matter of time before a lucky blow—
Slam!
>Suit Impact! Left Leg-plate 80% . . .
One of the Exin warriors had darted forward, keeping low as it pounced and swiped at his leg, causing a line of sparks to cascade from just below his suit’s knees.
“Ach!” But it wasn’t the strike itself that was the most threatening thing. Not even with the creature’s hardened claws that were more like sharpened steel than they were like bone.
It was the momentum and the weight behind the swing that caught Dane off-guard and sent him crashing into the statue and slithering to the floor before the enemy . . .
No! Dane had a moment to open his eyes and view the gaggle of Exin warriors surrounding him for a second. His stand had managed to clear a wide circle filled with Exin bodies—but now they were all about to rush in once again.
“SKREKH!” (‘Traitors!”)
But before the Orbital Marine and Sergeant of the Assisted Mechanized Division could be totally eviscerated before everyone’s eyes, there was a furious bellow. None other than the Exin queen herself landed beside Dane’s body.
Snap! There was a crack of metal and bone as she whipped one of her larger arms out and flicked the end of the metal chain, as practiced and as perfect as a circus performer. The heavy chain smashed against the top of the nearest Exin warrior’s head, cracking scale-plate and sending it chittering backwards.
But the chain of her incarceration was not the only weapon that the queen had. In her other hand, she held a four-foot pillar of metal, which she was stabbing before herself and twirling between outer and inner arm like a short spear. It took Dane a few moments to realize that what he was looking at was actually one of the arms of the Exin statue. It must have been wrenched from the rest of the statue’s body when it had fallen.
“Treacherous pond spawn!” The queen was roaring at all those before her (which, Dane had to admit, was a little hypocritical of her, considering that she was fighting beside a human, her sworn enemy. However, he wasn’t going to be the one to point out this irony to her right now).
“You dare to lay a hand on ME!? Your queen!?” She snarled and snapped at them as she raised herself to her full height of almost nine feet and swung both metal arm and heavy chain about her, driving a wide arc around herself and Dane as she held her previous subjects at bay.
“We’re through!” There was a crash. Hendrix had finally managed to get the main doors to buckle and open behind them, before adding his own fire to Isaias’ and Farouk’s barrage against the enemy.
“Sarge!” Isaias skidded Dane’s pulse rifle under the pile of statue legs at him, and Dane snatched it to fire at those that menaced them.
“Continuous volley! One second delay!” Dane was shouting as he fired the three-burst shots and then took a breath before firing again. All of the marines were doing the same at their own pace, and so, even when any particular marine was taking his second to retarget, there were at least two other marines firing bursts on either side of the swinging and lashing-out queen Exin.
FZZT! Flash—flash—flash—flash! The light of the laser fire was constant, like being in the middle of an electrical storm. Even through the filters of Dane’s suit, he started to smell the burn of metal and ozone. And flesh. The thunder of the blasts was mixed with the tight snarls of the Exin warriors—
And then it was over.
Dane’s rifle was whining as it cycled empty, with a heavy kerchunk of the battery unlocking. His hand was instinctively moving to the next replacemen
t at his belt when he realized that there was nothing left to kill.
“Sarge. Sarge, stop it now.” It was Isaias’ hand on his suit’s shoulder, and Dane blinked inside his faceplate. They had done it. The last of the Exin warriors must have broken off when they realized that they were facing a firing line. He could still hear the echoes of claws skittering back into the darkness.
Dane could feel his heart hammering in his chest, and then he realized that the Exin queen was standing before them, illuminated in the glare of their suit lights and panting from the exertion of the fight. Ichor dripped from the metal arm she wielded, and the chain hung from her hand.
She turned to face them and hissed.
“Don’t,” Dane said, picking up his Field Blade and pointing it at her. He had heard the whine of several of his other marines’ pulse rifles reaching empty, so he didn’t know how much firepower they had left. Would it be enough to take down someone so formidable if she decided to turn against them?
Dane could see the flicker of indecision across the alien queen’s body, the proud way that she held her chin defiantly up, as if daring them to even try to finish her.
“You might be a good fighter, Your Majesty,” Dane muttered, his voice menacing and low, but loud enough to be heard as his suit amplified it through the darkened corridor. “But you’re still on a crippled ship and surrounded by enemies,” he said evenly.
“So are you, human,” the queen returned obstinately, but he could see that she had already backed down by the way that her arms drooped.
“Then take us to the command bridge so we can get the hell out of here,” Dane growled, nodding back to the now buckled-open door behind them. “And on the way, you can tell us what happened here.”
The queen paused, looking at him for a long moment before she appeared to make a very humanlike shrug. “It won’t stop the Tol’rumaa when Okruk decides to use it against your puny world.”
“Maybe,” Dane was equally uncompromising. He stood up and started climbing back over the statue barricade, as Hendrix took point on the door. “But I can guarantee that you’ll be dead by then anyway,” he said easily, not even bothering to look behind him as he followed Hendrix.
He was rewarded by the sound of the queen’s feet clicking as they followed him.
9
The Sacrifice
“This is the Royal Access Port,” the queen announced with a growl in her voice as they emerged on the other sides of the ruined door. They found themselves in a large, almost octagonal room, with a metal floor the color of burnished copper, contrasting suddenly against the dark and moody midnight blues and steels of the rest of the ship.
“Fancy name for a lift,” Hendrix muttered under his breath, as the queen gestured to a column that stood in the middle of the room.
“Easy does it.” Dane’s Field Blade flickered warily in the queen’s direction as she stepped towards the columnar control unit.
“Fools. It only goes up and down.” She gestured, showing the line of small blue rubberized pads above and the line of greenish pads below. “This one.” Her claw hovered over the lowest of the green pads. “This is the Royal Command Chamber.”
The queen herself did not use words like “royal” or “fools”—but the ingeniousness of the translation bug managed to somehow synchronize the meanings of her words with ones that the human wearing it could understand. Another technical wonder, Dane thought. He was starting to understand how the Brotherhood—the secret cabal of Exin sympathizers and collaborators—might want to ally themselves with such an advanced alien empire.
A galactic alien empire, Dane thought ruefully.
“This one?” He pressed the button himself. The entire bronze-colored floor, with them standing on it, started to drop downwards.
First, their previous floor level rose past head height and then disappeared upwards. They saw only the insides of a metal tube for what Dane guessed might be thirty or fifty feet—the bulkhead spaces between the mother ship’s levels—and then it opened out again to the floor below. Dane saw something like an audience chamber of a lobby, with four Exin statues guarding doorways leading further into the ship. The lift platform itself had no natural sides, and quickly, Dane saw a possible vulnerability.
“Defensive perimeter!” he said, nauseous and aware that any open level they swept down through might be harboring a waiting party of more Exin warrior caste.
“Your previous subjects seem mighty annoyed at you,” Dane reminded the queen. “You promised you were going to talk. About what happened here. To you. Is Okruk in charge now?”
“Promised?” The queen turned her head as they swept down past that level and through the next, which appeared to be a giant hangar bay, still with the darkened shapes of Exin seed craft intact. The queen didn’t appear to know the meaning of the word, and Dane wondered if the queen had even had to put her word, her dignity and integrity, on anything.
“An oath,” Dane said, as Farouk gestured for his attention.
“Sir . . . The seed craft,” Farouk was saying, a note of worry in his voice.
“Loud and clear.” Dane understood. The seed craft might be used against them by the surviving Exin warriors. And they had to find a replacement fuel for Dane’s fighter, still tethered and attached to the side of the mother ship (hopefully, he had to think).
“Halt the lift!” Dane ordered.
The queen refused for a moment, but another gesture from Hendrix’s pulse rifle forced her to begrudgingly comply. Dane gave Farouk the okay to race from the platform to the Exin seed craft and start to sabotage them any way that he could.
“I’m afraid that we just can’t have this sort of alien armature hanging around on the edge of our solar system,” Dane said.
Farouk’s chatter over their private channel told him that he had no idea what he was doing, but that there appeared to be central power lines going into each one.
Each seed craft was being held by pincered arms that extended from the hangar walls, lightly placing them against the floor. Dane reckoned that this hangar must extend along the lower belly of the mother ship, and that, when the seed craft were raised and released, they would move through various chutes at the sides to scream out of the mother ship’s hull.
There have to be many such hangar bays like this throughout the ship, Dane thought, remembering the sheer number of Exin fighters that had come out of the mother ship that he had seen before.
Which is bad news, Dane thought. He couldn’t tell just how many of the Exin warriors were left inside the mother ship, alive and capable of flying one of these seed craft. There might be more than enough Exin fighter craft available for them to escape or attack the hulk.
There was a sudden flashes of pulse fire, followed by the venting of hissing gasses and steams. Farouk came running back from the line of seed craft, carrying over his shoulder what looked like a massive belt feed of strange, crystalline tubes.
>Suit Warning! Hazardous Atmospheric Content . . .
>>Adjusting Filters +45% . . .
“I don’t know if that was enough to get the job done, sir.” Farouk shook his head. “I’m no expert in alien technology.”
“None of us are, Private,” Dane muttered, before nodding at the crystal tubes. Each one was almost the length of a regular human torso, and about ten inches in diameter. They appeared to be made of a frosted type of crystal—or in fact, upon closer inspection—a lattice of crystal threads woven into a tube shape.
But their composition did not hide the swirl of purple-pink material inside of it.
“My scans say that this is a pretty damn close match for stable-state plasma, sir,” Farouk said proudly, tapping one of the bottles attached to the wide belt. “If we can hitch it up to the Gladius fuel converter, then it might just do the job.”
“Good work, son,” Dane congratulated him, turning back to the queen. “You were saying, Your Majesty?” he said as they all got back on the lift to make their final stop.
; The queen looked at him silently for a moment, and Dane could have sworn that he saw her sneer—or perform whatever was as close to a sneer as he could translate from her three-part mandibles.
“Look.” The platform lift moved downwards, between the floors once again, and then they were descending into less what Dane might call a spacecraft’s command room, and more of a throne room.
The lift locked into place at the far end of the room, which rose before them on several levels before ending in a wall of curved glass that looked out onto stars and the distant orb of bleached, bone-white Pluto.
Each of the levels that spread around them, rising up to the glass, had their own attendant command chairs and desks. It looked to Dane for all the world like the offices of ministers and lieutenants in the queen’s regime. But at the heart, the highest dais was reserved alone for the grand throne of the queen Exin herself. It was large and looked as though it could comfortably fit two humans—even those wearing the eight-foot-tall Assisted Mechanized Plates—side by side. Two arms of the chair flared upwards and appeared encrusted with screens and buttons, toggles and crystals.
“What am I supposed to be looking at, Your Highness?” Dane said as he stepped off the lift plate, rifle up.
In response, the queen followed him, raising a hand as she did so and letting out a stream of Exin speech. In return, there was a flash of the lights from the command chair, first a bleeping orange, before they turned a dull green.
“I have no authority here,” The queen said dispassionately, but, if the controls of the ship had been turned against her, then the queen merely ignored them. She walked nonchalantly up to the chair and raked her claws across its foot, opening up a panel were there appeared to be sets of crystal-laced sheets.
“Luckily, one does not become a queen of her people without also knowing how to get things done on my own ship!” the queen snarled, quickly jabbing and moving several of the connectors before slamming the whole thing back into the holdings under the command seat. She made to turn around . . .
Metal Warrior: Ring of Steel (Mech Fighter Book 7) Page 6
