Strange Company

by Nick Cole

  And I was okay with that as I walked toward the seam. The crack. The thin place in reality.

  Which is not a good frame of mind for a combat leader to be in during battle. Not ever.

  So, I’m writing down what happened because this is an account of the Strange Company’s meeting and eventual association with a being called the Seeker. Who we would meet shortly. But this is important too. All these events leading up to that moment. Don’t ask me why. I just know they are important somehow. Whoever reads this… maybe you’ll figure out why. How we lost ourselves and became what we weren’t. How the universe got ruined.

  How we met a being called the Seeker.

  That’s an odd thing to say. Technically the Seeker, or just Seeker as it is called, is just as human as I’m supposed to be. But it’s a Monarch. So there’s that. And they are different from the rest of us. They are the best of us. Of course. And there’s really no disputing that. Especially if you’ve met one. Then you would know it. There would be no lies you could tell yourself to convince anyone otherwise. Or propaganda that stands up in the light of such knowledge. Some people are just better than you. As I’ve said, it’s best to be honest about these things.

  Remember what I said. It’s best to be honest. Lie to the universe, just don’t lie to yourself. Why? Because you might believe it. Might believe the lie. And then where will you be…? Well, let me tell you. Then… you’ll be totally lost.

  At first John Strange, the founder of our little murderous family, or mercenary outfit called Strange Company if you prefer, private military contractors, PMCs, wasn’t there in that strange little dream I was having. Or trip. Or vivid hallucination. The seam that opened up in the firefight. That thin place in the universe I’d just walked into. Call it what you will. Call it whatever you want. I won’t judge you.

  Just don’t judge me.

  “What it’ll be,” asked the bartender at the bar beyond the sign that said Cocktails in neon red script. A middle-aged man with iron-gray hair. Dressed in a neat red barman’s jacket. He said this as he flipped a thick cocktail napkin, white and embossed with a logo, down onto the dark wood-grain bar between us. A wood-grain bar that seemed to shift and twirl like milk in dark coffee if you stared at it long enough.

  I looked around in disbelief, muttering so.

  I didn’t feel like I was under the effects of any drugs now. I felt clear and relaxed even though things were weird. Inside, things were settling down. I looked at myself in the mirror behind the bar, past all those colorful and pretty bottles of hot liquor in strange colors lined up dress-right-dress like soldiers on parade.

  I was still wearing my battle rattle in the dark gold-flecked mirror back there. Shadows moved all around me in the mirror universe. But when I turned to see them they were gone. I wondered for a moment if I’d been killed. Back in the firefight. If this was death. Had I taken a stray round from one of the hallucinating enemy troopers firing wildly and blindly and everywhere as we stormed the terminal from the boarding lounge? Tossing flashbangs and grenades. Trying to turn our job into cleanup before it became an assault on a series of fixed positions.

  Had I taken a rando stray round and this was just shock before death?

  Had I let go of all the endless duties that were all mine as I bled out? Call in a sitrep to the First Sergeant and tell him the terminal was clear and that the rest of the line could come up now. They’d need to do the rest without me.

  That had been our job. Clear the terminal.

  I didn’t care anymore here in the bar inside the seam. Death after life. Or at least that’s what I told myself.

  The bar was dark. Tables with universe blue, like midnight on a full moon, tablecloths waited in the mirror dim dark behind the bartender and where I was seated at the bar in full battle rattle, my slung Bastard hanging like it didn’t care that it was a thing that shouldn’t be there. Small little red hurricane lamps glowed like dying suns in the darkness all around the empty place. Like each table was endgame solar system gone red dwarf. A small model of what it would look like when the heat death of the universe finally came for us. Soon to collapse into nothing but a blank. Fun, huh? But then there were the black holes where matter gets crushed down so tight and thin, some speculate that the incredible suck there leads to other places not known. Or dreamed of.

  But feared might be a better term. Who knew?

  Interesting to find out if one could survive such a trip. But that’s sci-fi as old as the Trek. And look how much they got wrong there. So, like I said, who knows.

  “Scotch. Rocks.”

  The bartender turns to his work once I’ve declared my weapon of choice.

  “What is this place?” I ask as the not-smiling businesslike man works pleasantly. Filling a glass with one large and perfectly manicured cube just slightly smaller than the cut crystal bucket. Then the scotch a’splashing.

  Some brand I’d never had the money for. Ho ho… good times ahoy. Death ain’t so bad, I tell myself.

  The amber splashes over the giant frosty cube and I’m thirsty just looking at it all. I smell the hint of peat and smoke and for some reason I look around once more, for her. Whoever she was that I once knew and couldn’t remember now. And have tried to forget in all the wars since.

  She was the blank space in my universe where once there was something meaningful. But that’s probably standard issue for every private contractor. Every soldier. Every man.

  I remember though, that her kisses tasted like scotch.

  I remember it took a long time to forget that detail. And drinking scotch since hadn’t helped.

  People join the Strange Company for all kinds of reasons. Even me. Yes. I have mine. And they’re not exceptional. If you think this is some account where the narrator is going to present himself as brave, yet fated, or heroic and bold with an answer, tool, weapon, or quip for every occasion, I’ve got news that won’t move or shake you. That ain’t me, bub. Maybe the quip part though.

  I’ve always found it helpful to have a sense of humor about whatever suck you find yourself in. It makes things pass a little easier. So when you find yourself in some crossfire hurricane and you’re afraid your number’s up this time, just tell the guy next to you as you both fumble for magazines and try to keep putting as many bullets between you and those trying to kill you, just tell him, “I guess they’re not fans.”

  I always laugh. And it puts things in perspective even if the other guy doesn’t get it and thinks you’re just weird.

  The top-shelf scotch on the rocks, just one, is placed in front of me. I watch it because it is beautiful and perhaps death wasn’t what I’d been expecting it to be all along. Somewhere in the bar I hear an old-school jukebox click and hum as it warms up to play. I look over and see it in the corner. Purple lava light whorls and twists along its antique face. Just like the one in that bar from a long time ago when I was no one else.

  I pick up the scotch and hold it in front of me. And for just a moment I see the logo and name of this bar, expecting it to be the same one from that long-ago bar, because this is just a hallucination, a drug trip, right? Isn’t it? I’m just having some kind of weird flashback about a critical event in my past while most likely half my own drug-addicted platoon gets killed because of a severe lack of leadership. For which I am responsible. I’m tired, honestly, of being… responsible. Of leading. Badly.

  I sigh.

  Yeah, I’m pretty tired of it all.

  I’ve been tired for a real long time. It’s best to be honest.

  How long, I ask myself as I stare at the name of the bar on the napkin beneath the cut crystal glass of scotch I’m contemplating.

  I hear a female voice. Not the one from long ago. The one whose kisses once tasted of ice and scotch. Do they still? Good scotch because her family had the kind of money that could afford good scotch. In good times, and better. Ice because it wa
s always hot where we were then. Always around her. But maybe that was just me.

  They never had bad times like the rest of us. Where she came from. Whose she was.

  But the voice of the Falmorian party girl is the one I hear as I stare at my beautiful drink. Her electric purr with the husky French accent.

  I remember you, estrangier.

  Yeah.

  I sip the good scotch.

  It’s good. Real good, in fact.

  Yeah, I tell myself. I’ve been tired since then. And running on fumes for a long time before Crash, or Astralon, or whatever you want to call this mess. This tragedy… If I’m honest with myself.

  I sip again.

  So, this is just hallucination. And I’m probably hit and dying badly in a firefight going to hell by the second. Hopefully Choker is working on me. Checking my condition. Tourniquet to stop the bleed. Pack the wound with quick clot. Pressure dressing. Call for dustoff.

  Eight minutes to a rear main casualty care unit.

  This is just shock I tell myself and finish the scotch.

  The bartender is right there with the bottle. Hovering as though his very existence depends on it. Yeah, of course. It’s the good stuff. The real good stuff.

  “I… uh…”

  I laugh at myself. How am I gonna pay for this? I didn’t bring any mem cards into battle.

  “It’s on the house, sir,” says the bartender softly as one of my favorite jazz songs begins to play on the purple haze jukebox no has made for sixty years.

  The Very Thought of You.

  I laugh again. Laugh at myself because if you gotta get hit, and die, then this is the way to do it. I’ve seen guys screaming in pain, crying for their mothers. Bleeding out in horror as they watch their guts spill out and you stand there helplessly because there’s so little an IFAK can do at that point for what everyone standing around will call a “gut shot.” You can’t tourniquet guts.

  Hey, maybe that’s me. Maybe my number was really up. And maybe that wasn’t so bad.

  I taste the scotch and again, I have no idea that John Strange, intergalactic rogue, wanted criminal, reckless adventurer, and mercenary captain, is about to walk in. He’s been dead for about six hundred years. So of course he was the last person I was expecting to see as I sat there hallucinating. I was just drinking expensive scotch and probably just dying.

  Plus, I’ve never met him. He’s a historical figure. Ever met George Washington? William Yan, first man to break the light-speed barrier? Or serial killer Cruise Reynolds?

  The slender man with combed and slicked-back hair, graying at the temples, and wearing a great well-cut suit, walked in and slid onto the barstool next to me.

  He had a wolf’s grin. Big teeth.

  There is one picture of John Strange in the company logs. Remember, he was a wanted criminal, which was really saying something back during the near-lawless days of early expansion of humanity out into the greater galactic community. Before we’d met the Krugga and the Sandies in their long ships crawling the midnight gulfs.

  “G and T,” the ghost of John Strange said softly, and crisply, and held up two long fingers indicating he wanted it made as a double. Again, the patient and unsmilingly calm bartender bent to his work behind the bar. His craft. His art. His calling. The soft crunch of mineral-water ice. The burble of bored gin in a boldly translucently blue like the fogs of Azul Falls. The fizz of a softly energetic tonic. The fresh acid of a sliced lime and a carved twist scenting the air of the bar for just the waft of a moment.

  Pro. This was a really great bar. If this is death, then I think I’ll stay for a while.

  I stared at the logo and name on the crisp white napkin once more.

  The Bar at the End of the Universe.

  That’s what this place was called.

  “Guess I got nailed,” I murmured to myself and the bar, watching as the dead man’s drink was set down on the napkin in front of him. “Finally,” I said with a sigh and drank.

  The ghost of John Strange, founder of Strange Company, laughed, swiped up the drink, toasted me, and took a long, thirsty gulp. Ancient logs indicate he was a drinker. Several mention reckless and daring attacks against fortified habs during the Saturnian Conflict. Under the influence. The first armed conflict in space of any scale larger than a gunfight inside some rando station.

  That’s where John Strange entered the histories. Supposedly a sergeant in the Colonial Marines. Promo’d to captain six months in and leading guerilla raids across the frozen tundras of Titan back before it became the economic powerhouse of early expansion. Once boasting a navy of a hundred dreadnaughts that went toe-to-toe against the Monarchs.

  And of course, we all know how that went. And if you don’t, then spoiler… it went badly. Real badly. It always goes badly when the Monarchs are in town.

  Back to the ghost of John Strange.

  Side note, even though we call ourselves Strange Company, and that’s what the galaxy knows us by, pronounced just like you would when using the word strange to indicate something bizarre or weird, that’s not how the founder of our private military outfit pronounced his last name way back when.

  Straang. I’ve listened to audio records in the ancient logs of him giving operations orders. Or speeches to conquered worlds. Or pronouncing death sentences and leading firing squads executing those judgments he had made. The sound files that weren’t corrupted by the nano-attacks during the Sindo and some other wars tell you what he sounded like. And how he pronounced his name for the official record.

  He pronounced it Straang.

  “John Straang. Captain. Strange Company, Commanding.”

  But “Strange,” as everyone pronounces it, seemed to add more mystique to the company. And perhaps, as a wanted war criminal among other things, John “Straang” didn’t mind the confusion.

  “You’re not dead, mate,” said the ghost of John Strange as he drained his glass and shook it at the bartender. It was tall and frosted. He wiped the gin from his lips with the back of a tanned and manicured hand. He looked the opposite of the hard-bitten, desperate, and wily mercenary captain the universe, and history, knew him to be.

  He seemed at ease, but about business. Time was of the essence. But that was his manner. I was dead, what did I care.

  “Not dead, mate. Not yet.”

  Still, you couldn’t convince me I wasn’t dying on the floor of the main green ring terminal. So I sipped some more scotch because that’s what you do when you’re dead, right?

  “Something big’s about to happen, Sergeant Orion. Real big. I’m here to deliver a message… tell you blokes you’d better be damn careful with my company. You’re getting involved with something dangerous whether you like it or not.”

  The new gin and tonic was set down. John Strange picked it up and just stared into it. Contemplating it and the universe he found inside its bubbles, gin, and chipped ice.

  He died on Caspo. Like I said. Six hundred years ago. Back when there was nothing but sub-light dumbthrust with forty- and fifty-year hauls between the worlds. Where the company might fight a whole generation on just one rock. Where we’d been both kings and villains at one time or another. Riding between the stars on big mining vessels the size of small cities. Hauling up to sub-light for six months just to get out of the system. Viruses and alien predators stalking humanity with each journey. Death constant. Rewards that verged on the mythic.

  And of course, the rumors of all the ghost ships those slow-crawling star-cities would find out there in the dark.

  There’re missing logs where the company found one en route to Caspo. But all those logs got deleted and what they found was always a mystery if you looked hard enough.

  All we know is that one platoon survived Caspo.

  Reapers.

  I always thought there was a mystery there. There were no Dogs and Ghost t
hen. No Voodoo even. There were other platoons with different names. But after Caspo they were all gone. As though their deaths had been so bad that to even resurrect the name had seemed unlucky and an affront. To whom? I like reading the ancient logs late at night. They comfort me. In a galaxy trying to kill me every night and day, and all the time, I find their permanent record comforting in some weird way I cannot quite put my finger on. But that’s just me.

  I open my mouth and start to ask him about the missing log files from the Lorelei encounter. That was the name of the ghost ship star-city they found on the way to Caspo. On the way to history. Eternity for some. The Lorelei. Nine-hundred-million-ton energy freighter and bulk cargo hauler fifty-five years overdue on Simmaro.

  But I don’t get a chance to hear a ghost story.

  “Listen, not a lot of time, Sergeant. Tell the captain to watch his step. Something big is about to happen. It’s gonna change everything. Whatever you do… don’t believe, mate. Don’t you get caught up in it. Understand me. The galaxy can burn. Worlds can catch fire. Nothing’s gonna really change, trust me, Sergeant. But this company, it’s me. And I want to see it survive what most likely ninety percent of the galaxy isn’t going to. Got it, Sergeant Orion? You’re the keeper. You keep the official records, man. And that’s as old as the company itself. Go back and you’ll see it was me that kept them first before I gave it to Corporal Pepper. It’s really you who steers the company, if you haven’t figured that out yet. History repeats itself and you know the histories. The real ones. Not the fairy tales of our betters. Don’t listen to me… and you’re doomed, mate, as they say. Roger roger?”