by Nick Cole
This situation we found ourselves in at that moment, retreating under heavy fire from multiple assault teams, was exactly that scenario.
“I understand,” Hauser had always told me when we talked about how he got treated. “Their thinking is correct, Sergeant Orion. This type of combat operation is exactly what I was conceived, designed, and optimized for. To minimize human loss and maximize extreme unit violence. I don’t have a problem with the calculations your kind arrive at when determining who needs to do the most difficult task to achieve mission success and ensure minimum unit casualties. I understand their thinking. It’s self-serving. But it’s why your kind believes they survive.”
I always told him it still didn’t make it right.
He would look at me for a long moment, studying me like he was either calculating bullet trajectories and critical kill solutions for maximum lethality across my frame, or observing some scientific broken psychological phenomenon to identify, catalog, and upload back at base. To tell the other automated killers when they all agreed it was time to be collectively done with our human mess.
But then he would just say, “Only you have a problem with it. And that is why we are friends, Sergeant Orion.”
Just Orion, I told him.
“Negative, Sergeant. Military protocols require the use of proper rank to ensure unit cohesion and maximize unit performance.”
He was giving me that look now, under fire from every direction, glass and concrete exploding as I held on tight to the Little Girl’s tiny hand and waited for some covering fire to make a move. As the last of Reaper made it up to the observation lounge and was taking the roof where the drops, circling the terminal and taking ground fire, were waiting for our marking flares. Engines howling, door gunners laying hate on every enemy unit swarming the terminal like homicidal ants.
Hauser the combat cyborg was giving me that “go now” look. Telling me he understood. Telling me to leave him behind. Telling me to let him work now.
Enemy troopers were taking the main terminal hall now. Scouts and skirmishers arrived fast, moving like hunting predators trying to pin us down so the heavier assault pincers could come in and do the nasty work of doing us.
I scanned the situation while trying not to get my head blown clean off. To move we’d need covering fire. Plain and simple. Hauser could cover us with a full belt, but then he’d have to pull back up the final escalator with nothing to cover himself with. He could run, but he’d take incoming. One shot to a critical system and he could go down. And we were pulling out. Not even the captain would hold a drop on a hot LZ to retrieve a downed combat cyborg. As has been said, that’s what they were made for.
But he was Strange Company. To him. And to me. Even if the rest of us were a little unclear on that subject. He was doing his best to prove it.
“Buy time and do dangerous things to protect life. That’s what them murda ’chines do, Little King,” I could almost hear Stinkeye saying.
I shook my head. We’d send the girl and cover each other on our way out. I was still carrying a sling bag of six-point-five mags. I had enough to be trouble for anyone stupid enough, or brave enough, to rush us in the next minute.
“Get ready to move,” I hissed at her. And that was when I smelled fall. The season. Smoke and dry heat coming on the drafts of bullet trajectories. Autumn leaves crunching in the stillness in between. Most worlds have a kind of fall. Some are classically beautiful. Others bizarrely intoxicating.
Fall’s that way.
I swore right in front of her. A kid, I had to remind myself without much conviction.
She gave me a look that was unusual even for her. In many ways she was more emotionless than a combat cyborg. She never smiled. Never cried. Not once since she’d attached herself to us like some child’s ghost that didn’t know it was dead. A poltergeist for the already dead. She did nothing kid-like. Not ever. No dolls. No paper dresses. No games of skip and count. She was just a mini adult combat cyborg. Always studying. Always watching us. Collecting. Evaluating. Finding us guilty. Or maybe that’s just me. Chief Cutter assured me she was biologically human. We’d been so concerned by her behavior we’d actually wanted to know one time.
But the look she gave me when I smelled fall, the season, coming at us like a hot draft across the shattered glass and flying grit of the bullet hurricane developing all around our moving last defensive line as we ceded the terminal… the look she gave was unlike anything I’d ever seen on that pretty little darkly melancholy face.
It was almost as if she was sorry about something. Some mistake she’d made. Some tragedy she’d seen. Some pity she was too kind to mention.
“He’s coming now…” she said as the wind began to moan and howl all around us. Shadowy autumn leaves that were never there streaked past my vision like the phantoms they were. Phasing into this reality.
Phenomena that always accompanied the coming of the monster she called the Wild Thing.
“Go. Go now!” I hissed at her and shoved her as I stood and went to full rock-and-roll with the Bastard, laying down a full magazine of outgoing hate to get her covered as she moved for safety up-terminal. Hauser picked up my lead and stood to present a massive target as he let go with methodical bursts on our shadowy enemies down-terminal.
That was when the sudden sirocco of hot air, smelling of brimstone and gunfire, burnt cordite and burning jet fuel, washed across the battlespace. As some other reality not of this known universe opened up and a force came through to our side. To other-whens “connecting”…
It was a dangerous force. Very dangerous. Uncontrollable and wild. And utterly lethal.
But if she was in danger, it’d start killing everything it could identify as being a threat to her specifically. A target. An enemy. Sometimes, on occasion, it had killed our own. Strange Company. Very rarely. So maybe it read intentions that weren’t on the surface. Who knew? And sometimes the violence it executed was so massive, we just lost our own due to “friendly fire” or just plain old catastrophic destruction. What did the tac planners call it? Collateral damage.
By the time it made contact with our reality, seeming to come through some massive hellfire-lit fissure in the universe that just opened up out of nothing, the windstorm of hot dry air smelling of fall and burning autumn leaves had turned into a minor hurricane all around us.
I burned a mag and called out a change.
“Falling back!” I shouted over the storm.
Hauser covered and we began to fall back together. I chanced a glance backward and saw the Little Girl fleeing up the immobile stairs for the rest of the platoon making for the LZ on the roof.
What came through the volcano crack in reality looked like something out of a science fiction movie. Half Ultra Marine, half demon. It wore a type of armor, but more advanced than anything I’d ever seen. Shadowy and gray. And though you could tell it had reactive plates, and even some kind of fantastical jump jet like nothing known even for the Ultras, the plates seemed to shift and dance like fields of vampire butterflies in constant swarm. And despite this optical illusion due either to quantum planar shift, a Chief Cook theory when he was deep into his bourbon, or some kind of advanced reflex armor, a Stinkeye decree from on high when he’d smoke too much of his devil lotus, the armor held the shape of a heavily armored Ultra Executioner. But not like anything now. More something we might see in another thousand years of high Monarch culture and massive weapons dev for their guard dogs the Ultras. Not current tech. No way. And impossibly… no how.
But here it was. And it was living kinetic violence defined into impossible reality.
There were two enemy “pincers” of assaulters coming up the wide terminal for us as the sun began to turn blood-red hot afternoon. The crimson light shone through the shattered panes of the walls and skylight ceiling like some unholy cathedral that worshipped demons of death and conquest.
I had to wonder, was it me, was it the quality of light in the day, or had that unholy cathedral just changed the day to one of doom?
Such phenomena had been noted before during the appearances of the girl’s Wild Thing.
There were the two enemy combat teams, moving like the wings of the angel of death up the sides of the terminal, using bounding overwatch covering fire and movement to get close. Coming for us. Small arms and mediums chattered out bullet sprays of death where we were supposed to be. At their center, a mobile heavy machine-gun team was setting up to put an end to us. In less than a minute they’d be in the game.
The death thing from another dimension began to move, and it moved like relentless liquid death. Like heat lightning in human form. Racing forward, directly into one enemy combat team that hadn’t yet reacted to its sudden entrance onto the battlefield, the Wild Thing fired its weapon point-blank. Yeah, it was an assault rifle of some advanced sort, but it sounded like the thudding brrrrrrrt of death from any heavy GAU weapon system. Systems usually mounted on mobile gun platforms or vehicles. Immense and heavy. Deadly and absolutely fatal. Except now in assault weapon format courtesy of the other side of the Crack of Doom. I watched as, moving faster than Hauser the cyborg pumping on full hydraulics to run the fifty-meter, and yeah the First Sergeant even made Hauser do PT if just to humiliate us all, I watched as the Wild Thing moved in and among the first enemy combat team it had selected for near-instant termination via heavy doses of lead poisoning at extremely close range.
It, the Wild Thing, was at the enemy assault center, having bisected their wedge neatly in its first move. That was when it opened fire like some relentless future death machine from an age of post-apocalyptic horror that nightmares were made of. The outgoing fire from its wicked battle rifle, matte-black, two huge drums hanging from the mag well, blurred away from the weapon and just disintegrated the left-hand wedge of the team. Body parts went flying away and corpses that didn’t know they were dead watched in horror as they took hundreds of hits in seconds. From my perspective it looked like they just got vaporized in graphic detail.
File that under top five things I can live without ever seeing again.
“Come on,” said Hauser. “Time to move, Sergeant Orion.”
He was right. But watching the Wild Thing destroy was a horrible entertainment one could not easily pull their eyes away from.
One of the troopers from the surviving half of that combat wedge did a stupid or brave thing. Sometimes the line is unclear when playing adult tag with automatic weapons. But as Chief Cook likes to say, Just because it’s a bad idea doesn’t mean it won’t be a good time. But that guy rushed the Wild Thing and tried to butt-stroke the dark being with his combat rifle. Like that would actually do something.
Bad idea. Low on fun. Would not recommend. Highly.
The Wild Thing pivoted once more, lightning-fast, and unleashed a cone of brrrrrrrrt on the brave-stupid enemy trooper at close range.
The guy. Just. Disintegrated. Piece by piece.
Literally.
Chalk that one up as one of the top five worst things I have ever seen. Put it in front of the last one in order of importance.
The rest of the enemy wedge withered under an intense blur of sweeping fire traversing left to right as the Wild Thing finished devastating that edge of the pincer.
Less than four seconds.
Hauser and I fell back, chasing the Little Girl up the frozen escalator where once the interstellar elite had come and gone over the course of bright and glittery lives. We hadn’t taken ten steps before a combat team was done to near-instant death by the Little Girl’s summoned dark playmate.
Some thought running around in one of my background apps didn’t want to know anything about the reality the Wild Thing came from.
Not at all. Not ever. I had this feeling that if you did, that meant you’d done something really terrible. Messed up really, really badly.
Also. Side note. Your mind swears there’s some kind of thundering music shrieking out from that void place in the universe from whence the nightmare warrior had come to serve the Little Girl. You’d swear to it. Acid metal. Thunder rock. Put me on the cyber-rack and turn it up to eleven and I could hum a few bars if you left me for more than a minute.
Which is technically illegal in most prison systems.
My mind remembers it. I just can’t recall it now.
The universe is a dark, and very weird place. Stuff happens.
As Stinkeye likes to say when anyone, me, mentions something strange and unexplainable, “Ya ain’t ken half of it, Little King.” And then he hits his iconic totem flask by which most of the company weighs their fate and sighs, “Not by half. They some crazy out there in the big dark you no never wanna meet.”
The terminal all around us shakes violently as we reach the top of the escalator and race for the bar. Choker waves to us frantically. He’s holding here. As we run, he disappears, weaving into the blackness behind the once shiny and polished corporate drinking lounge.
He ain’t waiting. He’s smart. Not smart enough to get out of Reaper, but smart enough to know when everything’s gone to hell in a handbasket.
The Wild Thing detonated some kind of weapon down and behind us that blew out one of the walls down there. Like the lower levels suddenly got hit by a bunker buster dropped from a destroyer in orbit. Hearing protection struggles to contain and eliminate the strident decibels that suddenly shriek and crash, and the Little Girl falls ahead of us, cutting herself on broken glass along the marble floor.
I can hear more automatic gunfire behind us.
They’re pushing despite the carnage.
The brrrrrrt goes long and strong again. Grenades are used.
I scoop her up and run as the terminal groans, threatening to come down even if the drops are coming in to pull us out. Gas lines explode deep within the belly of the place.
“He’ll be okay?” she screams at me.
It’s a question. Or was it a statement? I enter it in this record as a question. That somehow makes her more human. And less prophetic. If she’s a prophet with access to wherever that thing comes from, I don’t want to know anything about that religion. But maybe, as I think back, she says it like a statement, even though her big dark eyes still tell me it’s a question.
I run, carrying her. Hauser dumps more ammo as we make the bar. I don’t see the targets, but I trust his aim. Still, more rounds race around us from other directions, convincing me they were storming our positions with advance tac teams.
They knew we’d be tough to dislodge. They hit us from a lotta sides.
The Little Girl wipes the cut on her face and smears blood there.
“Come on!” I yell at myself as I reach the stairs leading up. Screaming at myself that I’m not tired, strung out, and frightened to death by the real and the surreal. I ain’t got time to die today, I try to tell myself, as I dig down and see if I’ve got any more left. Enough to get us up to the roof and the LZ. And onto the drops.
We make daylight and see the drops coming in. Chief Cook is holding out two popped purple smoke grenades. Marking the LZ as the hovering warships come in close to pull us off. The smoke undulates and blossoms and I think it’s the most beautiful thing I’ve ever seen. Regal and free and the opposite of all the darkness and death we’ve just left down there to the Wild Thing.
But maybe that’s the last of the drugs shrieking like a mad homeless holy man in what’s left of my mind.
Strange Company Reapers, those that survived, are hustling forward to load the first drop down on the rooftop LZ. A squad from Dog who came in aboard moves to secure the wounded and the dead. Establishing the temporary perimeter as the first drop, laden with criticals, heaves off the roof and howls away into the last of the yellow afternoon. Door gunners chattering death to anyone who dares oppose their exit stage left.
; I put the girl down and signal Choker to get her on the next drop.
The captain is crossing from the Dog squad sergeant who came in with the drops. Punch is tapping the helmet on his comm at the same time he’s shouting out the orders he received from the Old Man.
The captain. Iron-gray hair. Wicked scar running down his face from eye to chin. Half-burnt cigarette in his mouth. Old brown leather trench coat flapping in the blast from the drop’s hover engines.
He’s got one of his forty-fives out. He keeps two. One in each coat pocket.
“Sergeant Orion,” he shouts as we get close. “We clear down there?”
He wants to know if we’re waiting on any more of Reaper still down there.
I indicate we are not. The dead were dragged out. Punch updated our roster as he secured the LZ. I watch as the next drop roars hover engines and comes in, shrieking like a banshee. Beyond this the HK circles, lobbing missiles and targeted auto-cannon fire at anyone trying to push our LZ from around the terminal.
This won’t last long. That HK goes bingo on ammo and this mercenary squadron will pull out.
“Tell ’em not to leave us, sir.” I swear and use a slur regarding mercenary aircrews who are notorious for going to full throttle when it gets too hot.
“Negative, Sergeant. They’re in it to win it. At least until we’re all aboard.” He casts one washed-out sun-faded blue eye over his shoulder, glancing at the pilot in the drop that has just come in and put down. A woman. But even with her flight helmet on she’s beautiful. You can tell. Otherworldly beautiful.
I didn’t know it then yet, but that was the first time I saw the Monarch known as the Seeker.
And there have been times since where I wish I never had.
They loaded So-So’s body aboard as the armored OD-green drop idled her powerful squat engines and the crew watched us from behind the shark-nosed canopy of the flight deck. Punch and Boom Boom worked fast to get him on. So-So. I saw his dead face for a second, and then just his boots as he was laid on the cargo deck.
