Strange Company

by Nick Cole

  He smiles at me. Making sure I got the message. I nod. He drains the last of the gin and tonic and gets up from the barstool he has sat down next to me on.

  My mouth is still open, so I close it.

  This isn’t happening. I’m dying. And I’m enjoying it. After six months on this nightmare I’m finally getting a break from leading, fighting, and losing.

  I just had to die to get it.

  So, who cares… I say to myself and grab for my scotch as John Strange, dead man, walks toward the exit. The seam in the universe. Calling back over his shoulder, “Don’t believe in anything, Orion. It’ll just get you killed, mate. Understand me, Sergeant. Mercenaries don’t believe in anything. We just get paid…”

  He’s almost gone. He’s in the seam and fading from my wounded drunken drugged hallucination.

  “And that’s how we go on, Sergeant. That’s how we go on.” His voice turning to echo as it fades. That’s how we go on, he seems to whisper across my reality like some bad ghost in a terrible horrothriller.

  Whatever, I swear bitterly. Fine.

  The scotch is gone from my hand and I’m lying on the terminal floor. Dying. My chest hurts like hell and Cook and Choker are standing over me.

  Yeah, I think. I got hit.

  “Amihit?” I groan sluggishly up at them. “How bad?” I manage.

  “Aw shucks, Orion. Ain’t bad at all. But you’ll never entertain a lady ever again… if you know what I mean.” Chief Cook laughs above me, finding my surgical emasculation funny.

  Choker hauls me upright as I grab for my junk.

  “You’re cut up pretty bad by the spall and frag. Took one from one of their big rifles, probably 7.62… right in the plate, Boss Man. Then someone landed a flashbang near you and you just kinda went lights out for a few.”

  I check my junk. It’s still there.

  The medic is telling me this, that I’m fine, as he tries to get me to my feet. I could barely breathe on my back. Now my lungs feel like they have the Denga flu and are filled with hot and burning liquid fire. I gasp and my eyes water as I try to take a deep breath. I can see the Little Girl nearby pulling off her gas mask and I want to tell her not to. She’s still a child even if she does scare the living hell out of me. The terminal’s still filled with deadly hallucinogenic gas. But then I notice everyone’s got their mask off also.

  “Terminal’s clear, Orion,” says Cook as he lets the medic take my full weight. “We’re just cleaning up now. Bad news is we’ve got an armored QRF inbound in the next ten. Ravens spotted it coming in. Main attack’s stalled and we’re hanging out in the wind way out front. Guns up, Sergeant. Fun’s about to begin again.”

  And for a while I forgot all about the ghost of John Strange’s warning in the Bar at the End of the Universe. About not believing in anything. Not until later, when the Seeker showed us what we were really gonna do, did it make sense. But by then it was too late. We were involved whether we liked it or not.

  And how a dead man from six hundred years ago could come forward and give me a message is one of them mysteries I’ll never know. But it happened. And it’s here in the logs. Check the date and time stamp. That can’t be forged.

  He called it all before it happened.

  Before everything got crazy.

  Real crazy.

  Chapter Fifteen

  We held the central terminal hall that ran boarding operations for the main executive lounges serving incoming and outgoing ships like the now almost fully engulfed in flames Neptune Clipper.

  “That’s gonna be a problem, Sar’nt,” said Punch, staring out the bullet-shattered glass as we held a quick squad leader meeting and tried to organize our defenses. We were putting Third with both its light machine guns on overwatch on the inner ring of the terminal. First was with me to ORF down below in the maintenance levels and the main cargo entrance to defend there. Second and Fourth would hold the main terminal.

  Raven drones were showing an armored convoy made up of Badger halftracks coming from the inner terminals. Breaking off from the main defense that had clearly stalled the Resistance attack we were supposed to be the preemptive tip-of-the-spear first strike for.

  “Looks like we’re hangin’ in the wind,” said Jacks from Second. A few others agreed with him. I did too. But being the NCO in charge, I felt it better to lead than just go ahead and admit we were either going to die in place here, or surrender and end up POWs eventually turned over to the Monarchs. Then we could bargain for our lives or twenty on a re-education ring somewhere in a dead system with no hope of escape, ever.

  Life was looking pretty good right about now. Not.

  “Listen,” said Chief Cook, hoisting his pistol belt off his lanky hips and swaggering forward to the rude sketch I’d just marked out on the floor of a terminal I’d never have had the money to fly out of. Broken glass littered my map. Shell casings were enemy. We were marked in permanent.

  If only just for the motivational effect.

  “The way I see it,” he said with all the bravado in the universe, “we got the good side of this. Targets in every direction means it’s a target-rich environment. Hell, we can’t miss. We do this right and we get some medals and maybe even become real live heroes of Astralon. Maybe even get a statue or two out of the deal.”

  He posed for a second. I kid you not.

  Everyone was silent. No one cared about statues or medals. Mem. Hard mem was the best. Hard mem and lead was what we dealt in. But right now, I was betting survival was payment enough.

  The Badgers, fast-attack armored vehicles that looked like armored high riders sporting mounted twin fifty-cals, came in fast, shooting up the terminal with great flair and enthusiasm, but little effect. They were using armor-piercing rounds, and much of the outer terminal wall got ventilated. The huge high glass windows that were the very essence of optimism and adventurous space travel long ago shattered as the first chattering passes were made.

  “They’re here,” said Cook drolly, and went to take command of the main terminal. I took First and we staged to support Second and Fourth above in the main terminal. We’d hacked the terminal’s security systems and I had a feed I could make a gesture at and expand to show the attack going on beyond the terminal walls.

  The Badgers came in fast, driver and TC low behind an armored cockpit. Gunner in the rear and raking the terminal wildly with outgoing fire. Shemagh flying in the wind, combat engagement goggles down like some actor on Desert Warriors of Red Five. A show that had been popular a few years before our last jump between worlds.

  Shoots, the squad designated marksman in Second, managed to nail one gunner from an open hatch that ground personnel used to access the ramp. That guy flopped over, missing his arm, and the Badger peeled off for the rear, breaking off from the main attack.

  “It’s a screen, Orion,” noted Punch as he watched the same feed I was studying. “See the troop transports moving in now?”

  He was right—I saw it too now that he’d spotted it. Irregular technicals were now surging across the ramp to reach the wing of the terminal to our right. The building mainframe had that area as under remodel from before the war. It had a departure date nine months old still blinking in the sys admin. I brought up the schematics and moved Third into a greeting position for the troops that were about to try to breach there in the lower maintenance and cargo areas.

  Six minutes later they came in, managed by pros from the special operations units that had been training up the Loyalists. Strip charges blew the outer doors, and troops came from stacks along the wall, organized and swiveling like they were running a shoot house for the sixth time that day.

  That’s when Hauser and Third began to ruin them hard.

  The sound of both Pigs in Third Squad opening up in sudden blurs of high-cycle fire was ominous even hidden deep in the terminal’s shadowy guts ready to react to any crisis
situations along other ground floor entries.

  So far there weren’t any, and I was feeling pretty good about that.

  Two minutes later, one of the spec ops pros used a flamethrower and reminded me why feeling good about a battle when it got started was always the fast track to heartbreak.

  When Hauser and what remained of Third pulled back from that terminal wing into baggage claim, the situation was rapidly changing. Disintegrating in fact. If we didn’t plug the breach, we’d be overrun from that flank pretty quickly.

  “Let’s get it on, First. On the double for baggage six. Punch, pick up the rear and let Second and Fourth know we’re on the move now. Hold the main terminal at all costs.”

  Chapter Sixteen

  There was a growing feeling in my stomach that we were in way over our heads. Over seventy-five percent of one of my squads had been wiped out in a firefight that had gone from serious to out-of-control in under two minutes. Listening to the casualty reports and the chatter of the comm, broken by high-dosage automatic gunfire and troopers speedballing on adrenaline and fear, I knew Third Squad was wasted. They’d taken a direct hit to the jaw and they were staggering to get their feet underneath them. Even with Hauser the killing machine running the show.

  “Pulling back to main baggage claim on level one,” updated Hauser mechanically. Everything going to hell in a handbasket and the combat machine was doing its thing. “Butch is hit. Gunshot wound to the arm. Radius and ulna shattered. CAT applied. Burns across his chest and other arm.”

  I advised Choker as we shifted to main baggage claim to support the defense there. Down here on the lower level power was out and only emergency evacuation signs flashed in the ominous dark. Second and Fourth Squads were laying the hate from the main concourse down onto the tarmac below and facing toward the inner rings of the giant starfield. But reports were coming in from the First Sergeant watching the main battle at the Division Tactical Operations Center that the Loaylist raiders in more light attack technicals and some enemy walkers, Assassins, were breaking through now that our main assault had been stalled.

  If I need to spell it out for whoever reads this one day, we were being surrounded in the terminal as our friendly lines collapsed.

  Four minutes later, Loyalist troopers, supported by flamethrowers, tried main baggage claim. Most of us barely got out of there alive.

  I had about a minute and thirty seconds once we linked with what was left of Third to set up a defense in main baggage claim. Hauser’s combat and tac plan algorithms had correctly identified this spot as an excellent hold to protect the main terminal in the levels above our heads where Second and Fourth were engaging from the main terminal and trying to hold the drop pad on the roof.

  I had a feeling we were going to need that for our escape I was sure the Old Man was arranging now to pull us out.

  The main baggage claim was a wide sprawling area that connected to other smaller baggage claims along this lower level. Much of one wall was absorbed by the standard-at-every-starport customs and immigration offices. The center was absorbed by a series of small baggage “fountains” where passenger luggage appeared from conveyor belts emitting from the floor and then began to circle the “fountain.” The area was dark and abandoned, shadowy in parts, and dotted with enough cover to make for a good defense.

  Hauser took the left flank near the customs offices, with half my squad, while I took the right and what remained of the claim area and the various luggage fountains. Interlocking fields of fire were established by little more than knife-hand motions in what direction everyone was to set up using cover.

  Butch was bad. Not only was he groaning in pain from the shattered arm, but his carrier was cooked and he had second-degree burns across much of his chest, arm, and one side of his face. Thankfully he’d been able to shuck out of his gear when the hot jets of flaming liquid fuel covered the gunner’s nest they’d tried to set up. He lost the belts and Third lost their other gunner.

  Gains had also bought it.

  Gains had told me his story once a long time ago. Between missions. He had nothing to be ashamed of. But he wanted it down and I’d obliged and put it in the permanent record. That’s what I do.

  We had Nox, the other surviving member of Third, take the wounded assistant gunner to the rear of our lines, which really weren’t the rear. The center. It was really more of a center now that we had incoming from almost every direction and fast movers all out across the runway out there beyond the terminal.

  “This ain’t how it ends, boss,” said Punch, coming up beside me in the last fifteen seconds before the enemy walked right into our kill zone. I guess he could read the faraway look in my eyes. The “Here we go.”

  The sound of outgoing gunfire upstairs was cacophonic now. Out there beyond the sturdy walls of the terminal I could hear the missile strikes whooshing away from the Assassin mechs approaching our defenses. A distant main gun, ours or theirs, erupted off a tank, and I heard the shell moan and strike something that exploded like a thundercat’s shriek.

  Down here in the shadowy and dark baggage claim beneath the main terminal above I nodded and watched the first shadowy outlines of their assault force move into the far end of the massive sprawl of baggage claim. Weapons sweeping, heads on swivels. These guys hadn’t gotten this far by being dumb.

  “Hold,” I whispered.

  I needed the dudes with flamethrowers to show up so we could do them first. But since these guys were good, they were holding them back with some kind of reserve force. It was easy to see the lead element would pin us and then they’d call in for support for the flamethrowers.

  I waited until the last second and then opened up on those inside the kill zone of our interlocking fire. I tapped two and knocked them down and out of sight. No update from my combat lens to tell me if probability and hit tracking had determined I’d gotten kills. Like I said, we don’t run premium gear. It’s prone to come and go based on whims that cannot be calculated.

  Punch was engaging across the claim area, dumping fire onto one of their shooters, and when he ducked down, I popped out from the far side of the baggage carousel and nailed the dude as he tried to spot us. The dot on my Bastard’s sight danced, and in the darkness down here, it landed on that one’s upper torso. I squeezed, knowing as I let it go that I’d gone high. But sometimes high was good.

  Not safe.

  But good.

  Brain matter and blood painted the pristine white wall in the darkness behind that one and I didn’t need any fancy tech to tell me he was done for good.

  Hauser was working over the main element off to our right. That’s how we wanted it played. We wanted them to think most of us were concentrated down at the far end of the main baggage claim where their entrance doglegged into the main hall. If they were smart, that reaction force would come in and sweep right into my flank as they tried to set up for an assault to the left. I crawled along the floor behind the baggage fountains as I sensed where they’d set up their line, leaving Punch to anchor the counterassault. I was hoping to shoot them in the back.

  I passed the Kid, hunkering behind another conveyor feed that accessed the main carousel. Ricochet and direct fire was everywhere. But I’d been here before and I could feel the way the firefight was going.

  I tapped him and told him to follow. It was time to get him in on the action.

  We slithered a good thirty meters across the polished floor, down in the darkness, hearing rounds caress machinery and sing off into other directions. I turned, pointed two fingers at my eyes, and knife-handed the direction I wanted him set up in. Then I slithered another ten meters and slid into a nice fighting position to shoot from. We were the far end of the line of our defenses down here in the claim area, and what the enemy didn’t know is there was a gap, a sizeable one at that, between my line and the Kid and me. They could exploit that, but they wouldn’t. They’d go after Hause
r relentlessly unloading the Pig on them.

  Two enemy squads came in and staged. I could hear the chatter of their comm, but it was too low for me to overhear anything distinct. And I couldn’t pop up to scan and see who was carrying the flamethrower rig.

  Not until the last second.

  The ripe smell of pungent gas, old and dirty, washed over me. Hauser’s machine gun rang out. His onboard radar had their location’s tag, so he knew where they were, but that didn’t mean he could hit them. There was some heavy-duty cover courtesy of the conveyers in the way relative to his position. So he had good cover.

  I looked at the Kid. His eyes were wide, but he was in the game. I watched as he flipped the selector switch on his Bastard from safe to semi.

  I held up two index fingers to indicate the number eleven. Every space marine knew what it meant and that was company SOP on hand signals. Eleven. As in turn it up to.

  Full auto, rock and roll.

  This was one of the few times when we went there. We wanted to put up a sudden wall of fire, throwing as much lead at the enemy as we could in as short amount of time as possible.

  I unhooked a frag grenade, one of the ones I’d marked in permanent marker with Have a Nice Day. That wasn’t company SOP. But we did it all the same. The messages ran the gamut from Get It On to the ever-dark Hug Me.

  I motioned I’d toss.

  We’d wait for the detonation.

  And then pray and spray and hope we ruined their line.

  I clacked the bio-keyed spoon and watched the five countdown rings at the top of the explosive start to subtract. I let it go at three and covered, basically just skyhooking the thing over a few carousels and right into their midst.

  The explosion was dull and underwhelming. The guy carrying the flamethrower rig, which started to jet gas-slash-fire, and whose body had just been torn to shreds by needle-sharp fragments, stumbled around and then exploded in every direction as his fuel tank suddenly detonated.