Strange Company

by Nick Cole

  The dark Little Girl who gave me the creeps was there, hunched over her knees and staring at me. She had big giant electronic hearing protection cans over her ears. Borrowed or scrounged. Gear from the guys in Strange looking out for her always seemed to find her. Now her big dark eyes watched me as Punch came over and gave me a count on casualties, KIAs, and available munitions. Then Punch was gone, and I tried to figure our next move while one of the Pigs opened up on an assault team that had moved in too fast and too reckless. Caught in the open they got murdered and I listened to the sitrep, planning our withdrawal.

  I checked my watch. Seven minutes to take the roof and establish an LZ. I didn’t want to be up there early and telegraph to the enemy our move, or the fact that we were expecting to get pulled out on incoming drops. Hauser had already plotted the route up. It was simple. A VIP escalator up to the top of the terminal where a fantastic lounge and bar had once been the attraction for Clipper and liner passengers coming in to depart the terminal. Through the back of the bar was a roof access stair. Three minutes’ hustle up to the roof and mark the LZ while establishing a defensive perimeter.

  At two minutes we moved.

  I alerted the platoon.

  We’d fall back by fire teams. I’d manage the withdrawal. Punch would lead to the LZ.

  I finished my orders and watched the girl. Wondering what to do with her. I’ve seen and done a lot of crazy things during war, battles, whatever you want to call a no-holds-barred bloody street brawl, which is what all military operations really end up being after the plan no longer matches current events outside the window. But the Little Girl, the dark waif staring at me, defied everything known. My natural instinct was to protect her. But she had proven she could protect herself. Well, that wasn’t totally true. She had a protector. But the thing… whatever it was, was just as dangerous to us as the enemy was, if not more. Strange Company had lost allies and company members to the little trick she could do to summon her playmate.

  She was dangerous.

  But for some reason the captain kept her around. Rumors whispered that it wasn’t his choice. She’d just attached herself to us and there wasn’t a damn thing we could do about it. And if we did? What were the consequences? There was a lotta dark speculation and superstition on that point.

  At least those were the whispers late at night between us when Strange Company wondered just how weird the galaxy could get when it wanted to.

  “He’s coming…” she said so softly I almost couldn’t hear her over the developing battle that was becoming the enemy’s next push. And our last chance.

  Below, the first flashbangs were thrown. Sprayed automatic gunfire, distant and harsh, echoing down through the dark maintenance levels below the main terminal, resounded. They were coming for us now. Our line was collapsing and in full retreat, probably now five clicks to our rear. Any army on the move and exploiting a breakout would now be sending in reserves, specially designated troops, to wipe out pockets of overrun resistance.

  That’s what we were now.

  A pocket of resistance that needed to be dealt with now that the lines had changed. The battle lost. Wiped out. Cleaned up. Someone’s planning indicated our fate.

  KIA. Killed in action.

  “What?” I asked her, knowing full well what she’d said. Electronic hearing protection augmented voice and softened anything above thirty decibels. Like gunfire.

  She bit her lip and looked at me like she felt sorry for an idiot. It wasn’t critical. It was more like pity. Pity for what was about to happen to me. To us. Reaper.

  “He’s coming now, Sergeant,” she said again.

  My skin began to crawl because I knew. I knew who she meant. But I was tired. Coming down off the retroviral drugs and the lingering effect of the psychotropic agent. And scared to death. It’s best to be honest about these things. And fighting for my life of course. All our lives.

  “Who?” I muttered.

  “Wild Thing,” she murmured. “He’s coming now, Sergeant.”

  Chapter Twenty-One

  Nether, the sanest Voodoo operator and by far the weirdest, physically speaking, thinks it’s a quantum entanglement of some kind. The thing she, the Little Girl, calls Wild Thing. Yeah, we discussed that one time during one of those late-night conversations when Reaper drew the night watch and the officer on duty was the Voodoo specialist Nether. The sergeants can handle the watch, but some old military habit prevents us from not having an officer to take the blame for whatever happens.

  The military, every military, has its religious observance of ancient duties and traditions of how things get done. And it’s the same religion they all abide by the traditions of. Ironic that we do these things so we can wipe each other out. Even though we serve the same concept.

  Still… we fight.

  So, if So-So had come in drunk, escorted by a couple of local law enforcement types, with cuts and bruises and promises that he gave more than he got, then a duty officer to handle the problem and take the blame was a good thing. For all sides concerned. Company and slighted locals.

  So-So. He liked to drink. Never told me his story. He just liked to have a good time. So maybe that was his story. Some stories are shorter than others. Not all stories are tragedies. I have to remind myself of that sometimes.

  But yeah, it was Nether and me in the TOC one night when things were real quiet. If I think back, we’d had the Wild Thing on our minds that week. We’d gotten into a pretty bad ambush in some no-name village that felt like all the villages of that type the galaxy could produce. Mud huts and starship salvage converted long ago to permanence. Tribes and elders. People who only knew of Earth as the entertainment capital of the universe, and not where they, their ancestors, had ever come from. Doe-eyed village girls who’d sell themselves for a ticket out of there, some rations, or just the dream that maybe you were something different than what they’d ever have.

  And of course, young local men with murder in their eyes.

  Old local men with murder in their hearts also.

  We rolled into that village and dismounted to sweep for weapons. Whoever it was we were working for on that one wanted it cleared for no reason I can remember as of the writing of this, whatever it is that I’m doing within these logs.

  I remember the village was full and swollen and doing market day business when we came in just after noon local. Nomads coming in from the ice. Yeah, there’d been ice on that world. Vast stretches of it. Big mines that reached way down into the crust to get something valuable I could never quite pronounce or spell. I just knew it was important to the Monarchs’ economy.

  I remember all that being important. But that doesn’t mean it’s important to private military contractors.

  I remember being on the dismount just before it went down and suddenly noticing that the entire village, which had been swarming with traders ten minutes before, was now pretty lonely. The last of them scurrying off down alleyways made of old hull plating that had probably come from one of the big lifters straight from a place called Chi-Nah back on Earth. I had no idea as the wind from off the ice began to pick up and blow. Whistling as it came through the tin and metal structures. Spraying us with ice. Cutting us with its cold. I remember the old markings on the remains of these ships looked a lot like Pan Scrawl. I remember suddenly noticing the absence of indig life and getting that sick feeling in my stomach like today was not going to be easy.

  That it wasn’t just going to be bad, but real bad. I get that a lot. I’d like to learn to ignore it. But it’s saved me on more than one occasion. So I’ve learned to listen to it when it starts talking.

  I remember Hoser hefting his Pig and muttering in the sudden silence and absence of local village life, “Here we go…”

  Then a goat barked.

  Then there was lead everywhere. A hurricane of lethal intentions.

  It was an ambu
sh and we got pinned fast.

  A two-hour fight turned into a running gun battle through the village as we tried to make it back to the transports and work our way out of there under fire. Amarcus and Dog Platoon got hit almost at the same time over near the station that ran the whole place. The captain was running the QRF and they went in to relieve Dog who was getting hit real hard. Daisy-chained IEDs devastated one of the Dog squads. Killed everyone except the AG. We called him Two Fingers after that until he got killed a couple of months later.

  Anyway, we were in it deep right about then. The whole village was completely radicalized. And of course, armed to the teeth. Our intel had been rotten. We were supposed to be looking for a small faction running guns out into the ice. Instead we walked into the equivalent of a whole tribe of berserkers. Those girls who I said would have sold their bodies for whatever we could offer out of our rucks, suddenly they’ve got AKs and they’re shooting with the local men from good cover. Someone opens up with a Stuka and kills two of mine. Punch led a team into a building and cleaned it following some immediate and extremely violent CQB. That saved our bacon.

  But we were surrounded and it quickly looked like they were gonna burn us out if the quick reaction force didn’t get us out fast.

  That’s when Stinkeye comes rolling in with the girl, and the thing that she does happens. The Wild Things spools up and wastes half the village in about two minutes. We didn’t lose anyone, but it was pretty horrible to watch. Even if the dead who’d been done badly like that had been trying to kill you the minute before the death whirlwind started. It was an awful thing to bear witness to.

  Like I said, Nether, who is literally a floating specter wrapped inside a gray kaftan that looks more like grave rags, told me that night that he thought it, the Wild Thing, was most likely some kind of quantum entanglement effect that allows what she, the creepy Little Girl, can do, to actually happen in our current space-time. He thinks it was close to what was done to him back when he was human In the Monarchs Dark Labs.

  “Not sure, Orion,” he says in his disembodied whisper to me as we watch the comm that’s doing nothing late at night and hope no one piles up a vehicle and kills some locals around the base. ’Cause then we gotta wake the Old Man and that’s never good. Plus, I’m not sure he actually sleeps. I think he just lies on his bunk and smokes, trying to figure out all the ways we’ll get killed and how to avoid that. That’s a commander for you. But Nether tells me that night, “I’m not totally sure if it’s Monarch super-science from the Labs, Orion…”

  The Labs that don’t officially exist and are responsible for ninety percent of the freaks in Voodoo.

  “… or if it’s some kind of… mutation… that she has. Courtesy of the galaxy. But I’m pretty sure all it really is, is she can open up a gate to somewhere not good. Where that gate goes, I don’t know. And I don’t wanna know, Orion. I suspect the future. And for some reason she’s able to pull one specific and very tormented individual through. And that’s what the Wild Thing is. An individual, a warrior obviously, from some future, or alien race, or the extreme past before humans ever left the home world. Whatever it is, it’s stuck. It’s tormented. And it’ll kill to protect her for as long as it can, and as fast as it can, because I’ve never seen it stick around for longer than two minutes. But that’s not what bothers me, Sergeant,” said Nether as we sat there in the soft darkness watching the comm.

  I placed a lit cigarette on the table between us that night. His hand, a null space in the universe that looks exactly like a human hand, reached out to touch it. Picked it up and began to smoke it as the cigarette began to fade. I’d lit the cigarette. He usually only gets a couple of drags before it ceases to exist. Pro tip… don’t think too hard about it when you see it for the first time. Even the smoke ceases to exist.

  Nether is also a product of those Labs that don’t officially exist. Just as they all are. Voodoo Platoon.

  But that’s not what bothers me, Orion. That’s what he’d said before he got his three drags in and the cigarette ceased to ever exist. We’re quiet when he gets to smoke because that’s more important than what’s being said. The smoke is amazing. It turns blue like the gas nebulae of the Arms of Orion for which I sometimes wonder if I was named. And then it seems to reverse and become something that never was.

  It’s beautiful to watch. Just as those light-years-long gas clouds are when you’re moving through them out beyond the Orion Khanate Worlds. It’s worth coming out of the coffins just to get a look at one of the Nineteen Wonders of the Universe. To spend three days or so alone in the Spider while everyone’s sleeping. Just watching the nebulae pass. Looking for ghosts. Beautiful ghosts. Glimpsing strange worlds no one will ever find because nebulae are too dangerous to navigate to be worth exploring.

  But that’s not what bothers Nether. About her. About the Little Girl. Who bothers me.

  “What bothers me, Orion…” He never calls me Sergeant and no one ever calls him Chief. “… is that for some reason she chose us. For some reason she chose Strange Company. I’ve asked her why. She doesn’t answer. Just says this is where she’ll be safe until something happens. The captain knows something about all this, but of course he doesn’t say.”

  Why of course? Nether knows something about the captain’s past. But he won’t say what. Says he can’t.

  I remember we didn’t say much after that. We just ran out the hours of the night watch until it was dawn and Nether faded. He becomes completely invisible in daylight. He’ll go to his room before the sun rises and spend the day there. That’s best for company sanity. Everyone knows he does that, so they don’t think he’s just hanging around being invisible. It was late when we’d talked about the Little Girl and what she can do. About the Wild Thing who might be a tormented individual trapped and brought here because of some weirdness about quantum entanglement which was supposedly the theory behind the fold engines of the Monarch Battle Spires. The implications of the Wild Thing were too creepy not to contemplate. And too crazy to wonder about aloud. I ate pancakes, scrambled eggs, and drank milk in the chow hall that next morning as the day started and I would head off to rack out. Thinking about what Nether, a transhuman being who had been made into what he was in the labs that didn’t officially exist, had said.

  “What bothers me, Orion, is why she chose us.”

  Chapter Twenty-Two

  We spotted the incoming drops and began to move for the roof of the terminal, falling back by fire teams and spending all the brass we could afford in short, violent bursts so each team had enough covering fire to move to the next cover.

  Three Valkyries, two configured for troop transport and one in the hunter-killer dropship mode, bristling with defense guns and anti-armor missiles, appeared through the drifting black smoke and yellow haze of the battle out there beyond the shattered windows of the disintegrating terminal. The hot afternoon air smelled sharp and acrid. A mix of burning fuel, roasting flesh, burnt cordite, and CS gas.

  “Captain says mark the LZ in two,” shouted the First Sergeant over the comm. I could hear the chatter of fifty-cal nearby in the feed. Probably the Mule’s gunner.

  I got Reaper up and moving and jerked the Little Girl along with me as we fell back even though she gave me the creeps. She was still a child.

  “He’s coming now…” she yelled up at me over the voluminous gunfire within the cavernous and shattered space of the once ornate terminal-cathedral as she allowed herself to be carried along in my wake. Oversized coat flying, big boots clopping against the marble and crunching shattered glass. I dragged her as fast as I could, carrying my rifle and ammo ruck, dodging fire. We passed Hauser, who was holding the rearmost position in our last line of defense and ducked behind a terminal sculpture that had once held pride of place in this section of the building. Meaning something to someone a long time ago. Some dead someone no doubt.

  No one had problems leaving Hauser on
our six. Covering our retreat, calling it a retrograde if you were an officer. But I did. I still thought of him as a human even if he was a real live killing machine. I had big problems leaving him behind.

  Hauser ducked. I could tell he’d been hit several times. His synthetic flesh was torn to shreds in several places, exposing raw machinery and a gleaming combat skeleton beneath. Much of it was covered in the synthetic red syrupy coolant his system ran.

  “Hauser,” I chanced over the blare of incoming and outgoing fire.

  He turned mechanically and gave me a thumbs-up as he loaded in his last belt. Telling me he was still good to go. Still combat effective. Still alive. He didn’t need an AG to carry resupply for him. He knelt, his massive frame hunkered over the dry water installation he was covering behind, slipped a gleaming belt of linked brass off his shoulders, and got it fed into his weapon. Quick and efficient in a slow, almost smooth way, his methodical economy of movement a kind of tireless relentlessness that shrieked competent lethality even as everything came apart under intense fire all around us.

  He didn’t say anything. Just gave me a look that said everything was still under control. And that reminded me of all the conversations we’d had on the subject of him. Half the company treated him as just another weapons system. The rest knew him as a friend, or at least a sentient being when they needed something.

  I saw him as a person, regardless.

  I didn’t like that even those who saw him as sentient defaulted to the “just a weapon system” position when it came time to do really dangerous stuff. Like hold the last position in a retreat under fire. “Let Hauser do it” was a constant solution to difficult problems with low survivability rates. Often right in front of his face.