Metal Warrior: Ring of Steel (Mech Fighter Book 7)

by James David Victor

  Ahead of them, the alarm-orange vectors of the incoming corkscrews were speeding closer and closer—but then, their cloud of chaff convulsed like a murmuration of bird cloud. The different rivulets and streams of chaff swept forwards towards the incoming missiles, as if guided by some intelligent force.

  Dane cast a look back at the Exin queen, but found her to be sitting stoic and with her mandibles flaring as they tasted the air, in a pose of what Dane guessed to be calm authority as the alien chaff cloud coalesced towards the missiles, and . . .

  WHAM! None of them could, of course, hear the sounds of the explosions that happened outside in the void, but they could see their brilliant flashes as first two, then three, four, six, eight of the corkscrew missiles were neutralized before they could hammer home into their already damaged hull.

  “Booyah!” Hendrix called out in victory (Regardless of his previous cynicism and disregard for everything that the Exin queen might do—his ire did not overcome his will to survive. Dane could grimly agree).

  “She’s still coming strong,” Farouk was saying, indicating that the opposing mother ship had not ceased their charge one bit.

  “No hail? No demands?” Dane muttered as he seized the two control sticks to the sides of his seat and tried to remember what the queen had said about how to use them.

  “It is not our way to announce our victories . . .” the queen sneered behind him. Dane thought that might explain why the Exin hadn’t made any sort of demands or ultimatums when they had first arrived in human history—merely appearing in Earth’s skies to rain down fire and ruin upon human cities.

  “Then neither shall we,” Dane growled, checking the small holo triangle that flickered in front of him. It flashed, and he hoped that meant that he was in range, as he pulled the triggers . . .

  Whab! Whab! Whab!

  Dane was certain that he could feel the recoil from whatever alien weapons that he was using murmur up through his feet, as somewhere along their thrusters a series of weapons ports opened and fired bolt after bolt of burning, unstable gases and super-heated particles.

  It was like firing a barrage, Dane realized, as the balls of burning pulse fire surged ahead of them towards their enemy, moving incredibly fast, but still seeming slow as they crossed the miles between their two crafts.

  Their spinning alternate fired its own sprays of chaff, and Dane saw the crackle of blue ionization—and then the momentary white ripples of light as Dane’s fire exploded in the defenses.

  Damn, damn, damn . . .

  But then at least two of the shots got through and struck the vessel. Dane saw the flashes of brilliant light like miniature stars and the convulsion of a shock-wave ripple that faded almost as soon as it had appeared. But he was gifted with the sight of the enemy’s craft wobbling and lurching in its spin and trailing a glitter of hull fragments.

  “Yes, Sarge!” Isaias congratulated him, as their craft did its best to move as fast as it could into an attacking sweep.

  “Not so fast there, Marine,” Dane grumbled. He knew that his strike was a ridiculously small amount of damage against such a large vessel. If that was the best that they could do, then Dane figured that they would be here for the better part of a week slugging shrapnel out of the threatening mother ship before they even approached any serious levels of harm.

  “Isaias . . .” Dane urged, and the marine beside him squeezed his own firing triggers (shaped, absurdly to human eyes, like the squeeze handles for staple guns) for a myriad array of thin fingers of burning light to lance towards the enemy craft.

  “T’chok!” the Exin queen growled, and Dane’s translator conveyed it as an insult, once again, at mammalian stupidity.

  “You have to use the sword lasers against the weakened structures!” The queen demanded of them. “They are too weak to do anything to their hull!”

  As annoying as she was, Dane could see that the queen was right. The thin pinpricks of light did little, if anything, to the oncoming nose of the Exin craft apart from fracture into glittering shards of lighted sparks.

  “Ignore her,” Dane growled in defense of his marine. “Pepper her good, Private Isaias. I don’t want to give them a chance to not be hearing warning alarms.”

  He was saying this just as there was a flash from the more advanced mother ship, as, from somewhere under the nose of the craft came a strong flare of light.

  “Sarge—I got a large energy output!” Farouk managed to gasp in a breathy voice, a moment before that flaring, growing light jumped forward into a solid beam.

  “Watch out!” Dane shouted an instant before it struck the lower right rear of one of their own three thruster pods.

  “WARNING! Thruster two compromised!” the Exin’s battle computer barked at them, as a giant tremor ran through their entire vessel. Dane felt even his seat rock a little as the pillar of light held for a moment and then suddenly vanished, leaving afterimages of burning blue and pink in the marine’s eyes.

  “WARNING! WARNING!”

  And now their entire craft was lurching to one side, rolling inwards and away from the turn that Hendrix had been desperately trying to bring them around into.

  “What the crap was that!?” Hendrix was shouting. “And why, oh, why haven’t we used it yet!?”

  There were warning alarms and bells going off all over their holo screens. Although Dane couldn’t determine precisely what was going on, he could assume that they were talking about their sudden loss of mobility and their impending damage to hull integrity . . .

  “Skrekh’la-ijg kah!” their captured queen was snapping at them.

  “We do not have the pillar beam on this vessel! It was always a stationary orbital defense weapon, and it seems that Okruk has found a way to mount it upon the new mother ships!”

  “Wonderful. Just wonderful,” Farouk was groaning as his hands moved across the alien controls. He called out as he did so that he was diverting power to positional thrusters and to the automatic repair services.

  Their ship was lurching and listing, and from the image in front of them, Dane was aware that they were half showing their unprotected hull to the oncoming craft.

  And it wasn’t firing at them.

  “Submission?” Dane wondered rapidly as he grabbed his own firing triggers and fired another round at them. This time, his bolts struck without the chaff defenses, and he was rewarded by more flashes of brilliant white light, and saw the enemy craft even shudder as it started to be pushed off course.

  No, not submission! Dane realized that their enemy hadn’t even done anything to protect itself. They hadn’t done anything, in fact.

  “Wait!” A thought suddenly occurred to him. “You said that pillar laser thing was an orbital weapon!?” he demanded of the queen. “How many times can they fire something with that much energy output!?”

  The queen’s mandible parts flared. “I doubt that they can fire it more than once a cubit without recharging their ship’s batteries!” She gloated, and although Dane had no idea what a cubit stood for in complementary human time-speak, he guessed that it was enough to press an advantage.

  “They’re lame ducks! Fire everything we have!” Dane shouted.

  He seized his trigger pins, as did Isaias, and as did Farouk, abandoning the navigation and technical board for a chance to seize two firing sticks similar to their own.

  The three marines hammered the opposing mother ship with everything they had, from the light storm of the thinner sword lasers to the bolts of the heavier pulse cannons. Unfortunately, the fact that their foe had overpowered itself did not mean that it was defenseless.

  As they fired, Exin security and tactical alerts went off up and down the holofields and control boards. The other vessel fired chaff, and its hull seemed to shiver and quake. At first, Dane thought that it was the effect of their bombardment, until he saw the flicker of bluish light race up and down the vehicle.

  “Es-kri-iah’aryh,” the queen explained, translating that they were ionizing th
eir own hull, creating what was, in effect, a disruption field that would have some success in countering the pulse blasts.

  “I’m picking up a rise in their readings!” Farouk called, indicating a holo of a green bar rapidly filling before them. “They’ve almost cycled up their engines again!”

  “Hendrix!” Dane called, as he continued to fire. “Get us moving!” More of his pulse blasts hit the enemy ship, but now the shots seemed to scatter and disperse more than they did explode—it had to be their ionized hull, Dane realized.

  Their injured mother ship lurched to the side and started to limp in one direction, Hendrix veering them on broken and stuttering thrusters up and to the right . . .

  But they weren’t moving fast enough. Their engines were firing badly at best, and, with a curse, Hendrix reported that at least three of the seven overall thrusters were malfunctioning.

  “And one of our thrusters is so shot through with holes that I’m scared that if I bring us into full burn, our own thrusters will rip us in half!” Hendrix said as he wrestled with the flight levers.

  “We’ve got our suits,” Dane said immediately, thinking that even if their ship was seriously compromised, their Assisted Mechanized Plate should keep them alive for a short period in zero-G or atmosphereless conditions.

  But what about the queen, though? he suddenly realized with a snarl. She had no such encounter suit on. She was wearing something similar to the scale exoskeleton suits that other Exin wore, but it was only partial and had no helmet or breathing apparatus. And what was worse—although Dane was sure that this ship would probably have the available Exin full suits for the queen to wear, he didn’t want to put her in one, with access to all the armaments and measures that it might have.

  “Your Majesty.” Dane’s teeth caught on the words. He had difficulty thinking of their hostage as anything other than a totalitarian, tyrant murderer—but she will be a valuable source of information, if I can keep her alive, he thought. “We need to get you to one of the marine starfighters. Now.”

  The queen gasped with a fling of alien invectives. “Flee in the middle of battle!? Are you a coward, and you expect me to be the same!?” she ended on.

  “Coward!?” Hendrix roared back. “After you attacked Earth with no warning—no declaration!? How dare you . . .” The marine started to turn from his seat, his temper finally snapping.

  “Marines!” It was Farouk, on the technical board—his voice rising in alarm in the seconds before the pillar beams of the enemy mother ship reached their maximum and fired . . .

  WHAM! Dane turned back to look at the screens in the moment that they struck. He saw dizzying, dazzling brightness, and then he was thrown from his flight chair.

  13

  The Cavalry

  “WARNING! WARNING! Critical Systems Overload . . .”

  Dane’s eyes snapped open, and everything was in chaos. The ship’s internal computer was shouting at them in staccato, inhuman tongue, and the holo screens ahead of them were flickering and momentarily alive with the flashes of alerts.

  Where are they? Dane looked, first to see his crew scrabbling to lift themselves against broken-open control boards and flight chairs. They had been struck full force by the enemy’s orbital weapon.

  “Report!” Dane cried out, already moving to grab the groaning Isaias a few feet away from him. His suit that had once been so freshly sealed and galvanized was now scarred and decorated with new puncture marks. Sparks dripped from where the internal wall compartments had been ruptured.

  “Hull integrity breached!” his translation bug bleeped, along with a handful of other alarms that sounded technical and disastrous.

  “Farouk reporting, banged up but good, sir,” the first of his marines answered him.

  “Hendrix? Hendrix!” Dane was shouting, to see the shape of the man’s shoulder-plate halfway hidden by a collapsed flight chair. Dane checked his officer’s command controls on his suit.

  >Gold Squad / Hendrix, J (PFC) / Status . . .

  >>Compromised. Biological readings stable . . .

  “Good,” Dane breathed, already moving to grab the metal chair twisting over half his body and seizing it with the metal gauntlets of his own AMP suit. He started to lift, and felt the pistons and servos in his arms, shoulders, and back, heave and take the force.

  “Argh!” Dane grunted at the effort, as even his own arms and human flesh protested at the strain.

  Cree-ack! But then the broken metal started to bend and twist, revealing the stilled body of Hendrix slumped underneath.

  “Command override. Initiate Hendrix AMP-suit survival procedures!” Dane hissed. His own AMP suit pinged the other with the overrides that would start the process of analysis, diagnosis, and injecting the human it contained with the relevant painkillers or stimulants, as required.

  “Farouk—if you’ve got power, I want eyes on the enemy!” Dane was shouting as he reached to haul Hendrix backwards out of the way. He saw the man’s eyes flutter, and Hendrix gasped as the concoction of medicines rushed through his system.

  “Sarge! What hit me . . . ?” He was groaning and blinking weakly.

  “I think the entire control room hit you, Marine,” Dane murmured, checking the man’s vital signs. “You’re going to be all right. One hell of a headache, maybe.”

  “I’ve had worse,” Private Hendrix grumbled, dragging himself to his knees to pant for a moment.

  “Farouk?” Dane was asking, looking up to see that all the holoscreens were filled with static as the other marine worked—difficult, because the entire control room was now canted to thirty degrees of its origin.

  They must have taken out the stabilizers, Dane realized.

  “I’ve still got scanners. Enemy vessel is in battery cycling again, but as for us . . .” Farouk sounded spooked, “Well, we’ve got a whole lot less spaceship and a whole lot more space.”

  “Weapons?” Dane asked, as he ordered Isaias to see to the queen, who was growling awkwardly to her feet. She had already been near-mortally injured before the strike, and now, even more of her natural scales were fractured and dripping with dark ichor. Without the safety of any sort of encounter suit, it was amazing that she was alive at all—and Dane had a moment to fear just how tough these Exin were.

  “Nothing, sir,” Farouk confirmed his fears. “Not even the sword lasers and no thrusters. We’re dead in space.”

  “Dammit!” Dane snarled. “Fall back to the starfighters!” he ordered.

  “But sir—your ship, the Gladius!” Farouk was saying, and Dane remembered that his own ship, the unofficial flagship of the Orbital Marines, was still crippled.

  But sentiment was not an emotion that was favored in any marine training.

  “Leave her!” Dane said immediately. “There’s room enough on the others. Keep the queen covered. Fall out. Go! Go!” He was turning to help Hendrix to his feet, when Farouk’s shocked voice paused him.

  “Sarge . . . Outside!”

  Dane was about to shout that they had no more time for whatever fresh hell the enemy was doing—but when he turned around, he saw that one upper section of the holoscreen was blinking and alive.

  “Incoming Transmission . . .” the Exin computers blared, at the same time that each and every one of their AMP suits was also awakened by the message.

  “Marine Command to Gold Squad! This is Captain Otepi, and we have Strike Group 1 through 3 engaging with the enemy. Hang in there, marines—we’ll get the job done.”

  Dane felt the relief course through his body as strong as the stimulants and medications that his suit could provide.

  Their message to Central Marine Servers had been received. The cavalry had arrived.

  A spray of moving stars fanned out across the silence of space, three groups of five moving in a wide arc, forming a net between them as they closed in with their prey.

  The Exin enemy mother ship listed to one side and rode forward on the ghost of its previous thruster flare alone. Its engines w
ere momentarily stilled. It did not glow with rocketry or pulse fire as they cycled steadily back towards fullness and back towards the release of their deadly orbital pillar beam.

  And there, a few miles in front of it, was a similar vessel—or once similar, as it now had only two of the three outboard thrusters, and its entire rear half was a slowly expanding cloud of shrapnel and ruin. The last strike of the enemy vessel had struck it at its most weakened spot, causing it to lose a hundred feet of its rear carriage in a mess of jagged metals, pipes, trusses, and supports—and it was still disgorging internal elements into the space around, flaring as pressurized engine parts and stranger alien technologies gave themselves up to the void.

  The once-royal vessel was a dead hulk in the vacuum. No hope that it could be saved from its demise . . .

  And yet, the fifteen triangular fighters of the Orbital Marine Strike Groups tried. They were smaller and sleeker than the larger marine starfighters like the Gladius and its brethren. These vessels were half the size and shaped like darts, with geometric-shaped panels in dark matte blacks and midnight blue as they shot forward on brilliant pulse engines.

  And they fired.

  Tiny pinpricks of light detached from hidden weapons ports, as each of the fifteen vessels fired their most impressive weapons first—the Nova missiles of the Orbital Marine Corps. The missiles flung themselves forward even faster than the ships could move and hammered home across the thrusters and hull of the alien vessel.

  Their strike could not have been timed any better than this. If it was luck, then it was miraculous, and if it was skill, then it was prodigious. The enemy Exin vessel was a sitting target for their loving destruction, and the sudden flashes of brilliant light rippled across its hull like rainfall causing ripples in moonlit water.