by Nick Cole
“So…” I tell him, real patiently. “Eat your bar. You’re going to need calories and I don’t need you getting all weak in the middle of a fight should we find ourselves in such later tonight. Which is probably going to happen sooner than later. Sorry about that.”
Still he doesn’t do anything. He just stares at me. I’m pretty sure he’s figuring out he’s just made the biggest mistake of his life in joining Strange Company. If the last two hours with the First Sergeant and his non-stop litany of death and injury life lessons he likes to salt indocs with haven’t freaked this kid out, then the energy tower that just exploded on the other side of the city, with close air support ripping the street and skies apart to boot, has done the trick for sure. Death is out there on the streets tonight. And there are darker things than just night on the prowl.
“First rule,” I say slowly like I’m talking to a child, or an imbecile. “Do. Everything. I. Say. Kid.”
Kid nods. Barely.
“Eat. The. Protein. Bar. I. Gave. You. Kid.”
The Kid looks at it. Nods again and begins to tear it open listlessly. If I wanted to double all my useless Astralonian Bhat I’d bet someone close by he’s going to hurl in the next two minutes. I don’t have very good leadership skills. But I’ve found betting against myself makes me play harder. So, call pessimism a survival tool.
“I’m gonna teach you how to survive this, okay?” I tell him.
Kid takes a bite and the taste of the bar does something to him. It settles him down. He chews slow at first. Then faster. There’s things in the bar that do that. Put you in the zone to get it on for the fight that’s coming our way. That’s why I make him eat one.
“Do everything I say and you might survive and get pushed to one of the other platoons. Got that? For now, you’re in the Reapers. We do all the worst jobs. We do those really well. You will learn to do so and either Ghost or Dogs will fight for your body to add to their squads. Or no one will and you’ll stay here and die doing something stupid. But doing it anyway. I’m pretty sure you got no medical training, otherwise you wouldn’t be here as both Ghost and Dogs lost medics this week. Tough business being a doc on this one. I’ll say that. Plus, Cutter’s a real crab and believe me you do not want to work for that man directly.”
Cutter’s the company doc. He’s also a mean drunk. But he’s pretty good at meatball surgery. Which, he tells everyone who has to get him out of trouble, is why he drinks. I’m pretty sure he drinks because he’s just a miserable human being and miserable human beings need excuses for why they’re miserable human beings instead of just owning that they choose to be miserable human beings.
See what I did there.
“And Voodoo… word of advice, Kid, just stay away from them and don’t even get interested when they come around. Trust me on that one. You’ll be a lot happier with all your marbles for as long as you can keep them.”
I pause and make a motion for him to hand me his Bastard.
He seems surprised to see that he’s even carrying the sturdy company S-16 combat rifle he was issued back at the supply crawler. He hands it over.
I run a systems check and find out Biggs has given him one of the good ones.
I hand it back.
“Okay,” I say, indicating the weapon he’s holding. “Now go ahead and load that. You’re in combat now. If you see the enemy, then you’re gonna wanna shoot ’em. And having the weapon loaded makes the process a whole lot easier.”
I don’t add a pedantic Okay like Player does over in Dogs. Because that would be pedantic and people would think I’m a jerk. Everyone thinks Player is a jerk.
Now, if Biggs has done his job, the Kid will pull a mag out of his carrier and load the S-16. Biggs keeps recruits for two days and shows them how to use their gear. He also downloads all kinds of myths that have nothing to do with actual combat, as Biggs, as far as I know, has never engaged in light infantry warfare of any kind. The drone guns mounted all over his supply crawler take care of most enemy interest in his continued well-being.
The Kid pulls a magazine from his carrier, slaps it in, pulls the charging handle back, and a round is in the chamber and ready. I note the Kid checks the safety.
The S-16 is a beautiful weapon system that’s probably as old as humanity’s interest in modern warfare. Way back in the primeval of Earth, a place I’ve never been but who has, the original design was called the Stoner weapon system for reasons I have yet to discover. It’s been improved on over the years and there are variants like the shorty some carry.
“Let’s leave that safety on until we got someone to shoot at,” I tell the Kid as mobile artillery begins to level a block to our west. “If we get hit, don’t panic. Keep thinking and shoot back when you can. The rest of us would appreciate that. Also, it has a tendency to discourage the enemy as far as their initial intentions are concerned. Makes ’em nervous. And we can use that to our advantage. Welcome to Reapers, Kid. Welcome to the Strange.”
Chapter Three
I’m half-listening to the squad comm that’s always in my ear when Junkboy shows up after I asked him to report to my little command post at the center of the artillery-shell-ruined bank. I’m going to assign Junkboy care and handling of the new recruit who will simply be called “Kid” for the foreseeable future until he does something stupid enough to earn the tag he will come to live with for what will most likely be the rest of his life. In Strange Company.
Junkboy’s tag, for instance, was acquired thusly. He has been with the company in So-So’s squad for six months. Joined up at Ryan’s Cross and managed to convince the First Sergeant and Biggs that he was drug-free and hadn’t been kicked out of the Monarchs’ own Expeditionary Snipers on a failed drug test. It took him all of two weeks to teach us that was a big old lie. Go figure: drug addicts lie. Amirite? One night we caught him railed to the gills and shooting prisoners of war from a tower three blocks west of the prison camp the people we were working for were running.
To be fair the people we were working for were not treating the people inside all that well and there were already a lot of dead bodies lying around due to starvation and various rage beatings by the new victors in this mean-spirited little conflict on that world. To be further fair, the people who were prisoners had been earning that particular reward for about twenty years while in control of the planet by running a totalitarian overstate in which ninety-five percent of the population were openly considered slaves.
They were really into this old Earth philosopher called Nietzsche or something.
So Junkboy was up there with a .308 Marcotti that Sleeper used for infiltration. Canned and all, so his shots were going unnoticed for the most part. He was mainly shooting down prisoners who were grubbing for grubs in the bloody dirt where their own had recently been beaten to death…
Yeah, it was really that bad and the general consensus in Strange Company was that we didn’t like the gig and were looking for the first dropship that could get us all back up to the Spider.
Sleeper shows up looking for his rifle because it’s missing, and Junkboy, who we were close to calling “Shiny” because he was always so up and ready to pull any op at all hours of the day or night, had been interested in said missing rifle hours earlier. Intensely interested. It caused note among the normally taciturn mercenaries we’d all become during the darkness of that gig. Sleeper checked the duty roster and saw that Junkboy was pulling twelve to two on the OP tower that guarded our little ad hoc barracks. And there our preeminent sniper, he is basically the rock star of Ghost, finds his weapon being employed in the commission of some serious war crimes.
War crimes we will have to pay for. If we’re lucky they just come out of our company bonuses. If we’re not, and we’re caught, the Adjudicators could have us spaced just above planetary orbit.
Yeah, war crimes don’t mean much out here on the rim of human space, but given the right ci
rcumstances and some government types from Central out here on a fact-finding do-good mission, heads might just roll. Or burn up in atmo.
Or our paymasters could use it as an excuse to cheat and/or extort us. Trust me, it’s heads-up ball all the time being a private military contractor company.
So, two things happen. One, we get that weasel Junkboy sober. Within the week he was off the junk and headed toward a really annoying sobriety that bothered all of us coffee-drinkers of late. Long story short… we just PT’d him to death until he was very clean, and very clear that we would not tolerate his habit any longer. Two-hour smoke sessions on the hour. Every hour. Or at least that’s how Strange Company corrective PT was supposed to feel. Spoiler: it felt worse. Every sergeant had to go through it to know how it felt, and how it worked. Fun, huh? And two, Junkboy got assigned to Ghost because even though he’d committed war crimes, he’d committed them really well. Sleeper acknowledged that Junkboy possessed a certain unrefined affinity for the sniper trade which could be brightened and honed to Sleeper’s standards.
Junkboy did most of this conflict on Astralon and did it well with Ghost as a scout-sniper. Not a hint of drug use. So much so that he was placed back into Reapers as an assistant squad leader so he could train the indocs to serve as squad-designated marksmen and select for talent in sniping.
Sleeper is too valuable in Ghost to be bothered with training indocs. And like I said he’s a bonified rock star. So why would he ever want to leave his little kingdom in the Ghost?
Only an idiot like me would want to stay in Reapers forever. But I have my reasons.
So, as I was saying, I was just about to turn the new kid over to Junkboy right there in the abandoned bank we’re operating out of inside the big apartment block we took away from the now-defunct Grau Skull and covering the approach to the starport, when Junkboy takes one right in the head. The enemy snipers had been crawling in close to take shots. Half his skull came away and painted the new kid and me in brains and bone matter as we talked. But I was already bloody and dirty from close to thirty-six hours of fighting for that section of the small city.
The enemy now knows we’re going for the starport. So of course, they’ve tried to counterattack for the last three days.
I told myself I’d take a good two-day coma once we got off this whack world. If we got off.
If Junkboy had been wearing his helmet, like he should have been, he might have lived. But hanging with Sleeper and the snipers had convinced him of the folly of such life-saving measures. So now he was dead. And dead was dead as far as the company was concerned.
Now the whole CP was under fire.
The bank was along the outer wall of the massive structure. A great place for snipers to shoot into and assault teams to try to take. So of course, Reaper got it.
The sound of distant artillery mechs moving through the streets three blocks west to the LZ was the only sound just seconds before the sudden cacophonic firefight broke out as once again the enemy tried to storm the bank.
I swore and tackled the Kid, dragging him to the ruined floor and pulling my weapon with me while Junkboy’s corpse just lay there and twitched. In the company you always know where your weapon is. You could find it blind in the dark at midnight. Why? Because you have to, otherwise you’re dead.
“Snipers!” someone shouts out lamely from the fighting positions along the northern ruin of the wall as an enemy heavy machine gun firing AP and mixed tracer opens up on what remains of the bank’s glassy facade. A moment later, the massive shattered windows that faced east and probably allowed the golden sunlight of this world in and onto the marble and bronze of this place, conveying a sense of wealth, propriety, and stability, come apart as suppressive fire rakes that side of the building.
I tap the comm and tell the Old Man we got incoming at Reaper.
“Acknowledged,” he says. The reply is characteristically terse in his tired smoke-stained voice. But it’s calm and not at all worked up about the situation. Which is exactly what you want in your leaders. Imagine asking for support from some guy who’s as freaked out as you are once you start getting pushed by the enemy. The captain’s orders always reassure me when the incoming starts incoming. I guess that’s why he’s in command of the company and why everyone just calls him the Old Man even though every company commander has had that title for hundreds of years of the history of our little outfit as near as I can find in the deep logs.
“Stay close to me,” I tell the Kid lying on the floor next to me. Tracer rounds are streaking through the building above our heads and I hear most of Reaper open up in reply. If we have wounded, the best way to treat them in the middle of a firefight is to return fire.
That’s good.
“Got movement in the streets!” It’s Punch. He’s my best squad leader and he generally works well with me to hold the platoon together. All the squad leaders have served in other platoons and they’ve either been identified as teachers who can help me get the indocs up to speed, or as problems no one wants in the other platoons. Punch is a teacher. He’s excellent at battle management and tactics. Combatives and shooting skills, too. One time he flanked an ambush back on Golus and pushed them off their axis of attack all by himself with just his rifle, a bandolier of grenades, and seriously bad intentions. He read the battle right that day and tonight he’s reading it and I hope it’s right.
“We’re pinned from the north by sniper fire coming from ruins across the street, Sar’nt Orion. Suppressive from the east. My guess is they’re sending in an assault team from the north.”
I’m low-crawling across the grit of the floor and getting cut to shreds by glass and debris. But at least I have my assault gloves on. I’m also spiking hard on adrenaline, so it doesn’t matter. I hope the Kid’s following because it would be a real waste for the First Sergeant and Biggs to have done all that work only to have the Kid get killed without contributing in the least.
“Orion to Chungo…” I wait for the comm AI to redirect to the indirect squad leader in Voodoo.
“Go for Chungo, Orion. Sounds like you’re in the stew.”
“Copy. Yeah we’re in it for sure. Need you to drop something across TPs one through six I marked out for you. Got anything that’ll do the job?”
Pause. Maybe he says something smart, I don’t know. I’m close to Hoser who’s managed to get a small space in the rubble of the bank with which to engage the snipers’ teams to the north. Hoser’s Pig makes a lot of noise and burns a lot of brass. But it does tend to keep heads down.
“Whatchu facin’, Orion? Say again… Whatchu—” It’s Chungo over the comm.
“We got assault teams coming out across the kill zone,” I reply. “Anything anti-personnel would be mucho appreciado at this time!”
I crawl up right behind Hoser and the assistant gunner, Hustle.
Hoser is laughing his butt off because he’s cutting Front Loyalist irregulars to shreds within his small window of traversing fire death. Problem is the rest of the squad is telling me the irregulars are all across the section and the Pig can’t hit ’em. Still, the heavy gunner is having the time of his life shooting whoever he can whenever he can. It’s almost obscene. But I’ve never been one to spite a man for his passions. No matter how simple they are. We all have ’em. I’m sure mine would be just as weird to them.
“Shot out,” mumbles Chungo over the comm.
The volume of incoming is so heavy there’s no way I’m chancing a look to see where anything lands. I’ve already got wounded. If what he has doesn’t work… we’re fixed for up-close and personal battle.
What happens next sounds like a thousand angels screaming from far away to suddenly close. And then there’s like two thousand thumps. Yeah, my ears aren’t that accurate, it was later when I got the ordnance specs that I can add the numbers to the account. But the thousand screaming angels are indirect fire from a one-shot anti-
personnel system Chungo had been holding back for just such a special occasion. The one thousand thumps were the munitions splitting in half just before impact.
A second later the entire battlefield lit up like a camera flash. Comms went down and it was clear there’d been some sort of EMP disruption effect in the mix. If they were running night-fighting gear, they were now blind out there. But these were irregulars, and chances were they’d gotten their rifles, NVGs, and a bowl of rice before the attack. So they were really just armed civilians with lots of guns being funneled straight at us to try and do something about our refusal to die. They were still dangerous, I’m not saying that. The Front Loyalist pros were running sniper ops and watching from the heavies suppressing on our right flank, looking to exploit a breakthrough with probably more reserves. They were going to overrun our line inside the bank and break us up for a moment. Then they’d send in a freight train of irregular troops to exploit our momentary weakness.
We got lucky—the freight train arrived a little early while we could still kill it. The Voodoo indirect team came through for us.
But back to Chungo’s special.
The first segment of the air-deployed munition was similar to a flashbang grenade. Irregulars who’d probably been taught to crawl and rush in teams, rudimentary movement to contact, were suddenly deaf and blind out in the open and their ears were probably bleeding. They’d even be having trouble standing up. Even trained pros do the thing you shouldn’t do at this point if they’re suffering from these effects. Which is lie there and let your senses come back online. Some of them just start shooting wildly, probably hitting their own more than getting anywhere near us. Others stand up and scream something in the local dialect to the effect of, “I can’t see!” convinced they’ve been horribly wounded.
That’s when the second phase of munitions went off. A variation on the time-honored mine system as old as human history, the claymore. Except this phase is run by a one-shot AI that’s scanned the strike area, determined the targets, and commanded all the munitions be feather-dropped via small drone batteries before activating their smaller grav batteries to readjust their kill arcs for maximum efficiency across the front of our line.
