Strange Company

by Nick Cole

  Maybe that’s why the Monarchs made sure this stayed a no-go zone. There was new stuff here and they wanted it for themselves when they got around to it. I couldn’t see the Battle Spire anymore as I stared off to the west, but apparently they had decided to get interested.

  She was nearby. The Monarch who called herself the Seeker. And was now a member of Reaper. Official standing in the Strange Company. File that under weird things Sergeant Orion never expected. She’d heard Hauser’s assessment of the tiny microscopic squids with thousands of eyes that emitted low levels of radiation and lived in a lake of boiling sulfur water. Water that was gold and purple and weirdly hypnotic. And I wanted to just bliss out and stare at it for hours.

  How much weirdness can one fit in a paragraph, I wonder, as I read back over this. And the answer is… that much. That much weirdness can fit in. Which, when you think about it, is a lot of weird. Lotta questions there. But hey, I’m just a merc. I don’t ask questions and I don’t play silly games.

  I kill. For mem.

  And I don’t believe in anything. That’ll get ya killed. Both sides of this war currently fleeing for their lives in every direction knew the Ultras had a no-discrimination policy during First Pass.

  “The Monarchs wanted this to be a no-go zone, didn’t they?” I asked the Monarch. The rest of what was left of my platoon was milling about, urinating, eating, or trying to rearrange their gear to lessen the torture the next several hours over bad terrain would produce.

  “They did,” she answered, and then realized the inadequacy of the statement. They were her. She could read it in my eyes. Seeing that I was silently screaming, but you’re one of them. Sensing this, she corrected the mistake.

  “We did, Orion.”

  We both turned away to watch the vast lake, me wondering how we were gonna navigate around and through it. It seemed shallow and there were land bridges out there we might try, but who knew if we’d end up in a dead end, or quicksand, if that was a thing.

  Her? I have no idea what she was thinking. She’s a Monarch. They ain’t even human anymore.

  “This…” she spread one alabaster arm, long and thin, muscles delicately sculpted to perfection, across the strangely hypnotic vista we were entranced by, “…this is the most important place in the galaxy. But there’s a caveat, Orion.”

  She paused. Like she was dangling a mystery in front of me. And asking me to bite. I truly despise vague statements like that and have a hard rule that I never bite. No matter what. I won’t give the satisfaction.

  I wanted to though. Real bad. But I was NCO cool. Which is really just a kind of grim resignation in which all hope of anything ever going right has been beaten out of you by experiences.

  “Oh, yeah. I think I know what that is,” I said sarcastically. “Caveat. I used to think it was a snack they served at rich people parties I’ve seen movies of. Then I found out it means… a condition to the premise of something.”

  I gave her a look I hoped indicated I was not interested, nor did I have the time to be played by vague manipulating statements. I was busy trying to save our butts out here.

  She didn’t bite. Just gave me a cool appraisal like she was considering whether she should buy me for some project she needed to get done. Not sure if I’d do the job. Not sure if I was up to the task. Maybe I was on sale. Or pass on by for some other better tool to get done what she needed getting done.

  Or at least that was my take on her look. Who knew?

  “Listen, does this place, and what you’re trying to get me to bite on, does it have anything to do with me getting done what you need done, and getting my team off-world?”

  “It does.”

  “Okay, then tell me. Why is this the most important place in the galaxy?”

  “It’s important if you accept the caveat,” she said patiently. Not condescending. Just calm. Patient.

  “And accepting that this place… is important… it helps accomplish the mission?” I asked, trying to clarify. Trying to get whatever I could to get what remained of my command out of here and somewhere safe. The Spider. If it didn’t get shot to bits trying to effect the suborbital rendezvous.

  “It does, Orion.”

  “Okay. So then what’s the caveat? Tell me. Daylight’s burning. Night soon and we’ll have to move slower.” I checked my rifle. Magazine. Port. Sights. If just for something to do to show I needed to be convinced and had important stuff to see to.

  “The caveat requires that you believe in something, Sergeant Orion. And as you said, you don’t believe in anything.”

  A Monarch who wants me to believe. Get religion or buy some subscription. Of all the things I couldn’t imagine about such a meeting, and I never did because I don’t think situations like this are supposed to happen. It’s unnatural. We don’t mix. Monarchs and anyone else.

  But the universe is a strange place. And these are strange times indeed.

  That book I finished. The book about the scout who discovered this world. The mystery that sucked me in and made me finish the last part of it in one night when everyone else in Strange was off drinking and playing cards.

  It ends with a clip. The last recorded image from the flight logs of the scout ship. Airlock door. The first few seconds are just Amos in his environmental suit, getting all adjusted. Breathing heavily. It’s dark and there are few lights inside the airlock. Then he taps the door panel, and the airlock slides open, top to bottom.

  Daylight on a new world. The first look. The scout is now a silhouette in a spacesuit. An image as old as spaceflight. The new world beyond, in the grainy and bad feed, is burning white sands. Burning blue sky. And in the distance, the Crash itself. All you can see is black smoke venting out of the gleaming white desert. And perhaps some alien structure inside the boiling black. An engine? A fuel tank? Aft bridge? But the oily smoke swallows it as the wind shifts.

  I rewound that image a dozen times just like countless others had. You see something different each time. And really, you see nothing concrete. I’m sure it’s been analyzed ad nauseam.

  “Well, here goes nothin’,” Ol’ Amos says. Famous last words. And then exits the airlock. Him walking across the burning white sand toward the black smoke is the last image we see.

  He was never heard from again.

  “The caveat requires that you believe in something, Sergeant Orion. And as you said, you don’t believe in anything.”

  Chapter Thirty-Seven

  We drove away from the lake, skirting its event horizon edge. It was hard at times to tell where the hypnotic waters and orange creamsicle sky met. It was like we were driving into a hallucination and the only thing we could keep track of was the ghost trail of the old smugglers’ run we followed. Archived drone data said there was a system of land bridges we might take to get around its milky vastness.

  I’d walked away from her, the Seeker, the Monarch, after she said that last bit about me needing to believe in something. I didn’t need that right now. And honestly, I didn’t know if I needed that ever. That part about believing in something which felt specific and which was going to change my universe-view. I wasn’t entirely comfortable with that. What she was asking. In fact, I was downright uncomfortable with what she was asking. Most who’ve seen my face say that’s some kind of natural state for me. Default uncomfortable. But in my defense… there’s always something to worry about. You learn that early on being a soldier. So there’s that. Also, I didn’t have time for her Monarch power games. Or any games at all. We didn’t even have any more time for this break beside the lake of unending hypnotic illusions. I wasn’t interested in mysteries because I wasn’t paid to be interested in them. Except, if I’m going to be honest, as I keep saying throughout this account that we have to be honest about certain things… then, yeah… I was bothered. Some small voice whispered to me that mysteries are like history, which is really nothing but a myst
ery in the age of the Monarchs, may it never end, and that’s why it’s my jam. That need to know the truth even if it’s uncomfortable. Even if it’ll get you killed.

  You have to be honest about these things, Orion.

  Shut up. Shut your pie hole right now, I told the whisper and knew it was like trying to throw sand at the ocean.

  You don’t want to end up like Ol’ Amos, do you, I silently yelled at myself. You’re surrounded by mysteries and none of them are as important as getting your men off this dog of a world, Orion. We don’t need to get involved in mysteries, causes, or know the big picture. We need to get it on and get off this mess.

  Above my pay grade.

  Not my monkeys.

  I lived my life, in combat, front sight forward. That was the best I could do to keep it working. Give me something to go kill and the right equipment to do it with and I’d try to make that happen for whoever was doling out the mem on that one. That was what I did.

  That didn’t feel right. Caught myself.

  That’s what I do.

  Right?

  That’s what I do. Past tense is for the dead.

  Except she was dangling the real dark fun mystery-history stuff right in front of me, a wannabe scout who hadn’t had the currency to scrape together to get out of there, like she had a window into my brain and she could see that part that liked history. The knowing part of my mind. The part that had wanted to be a scout if things had shaken out better, except they hadn’t. The mystery addict part. The curious part. She could see it like it was a window into my skull.

  Hey buddy, I told myself. Maybe this is the universe paying you back for all the sacrifice and service. A last chance to solve the big questions before you buy it in some ambush you shoulda seen coming, or dropping on a world where the odds are stacked against you. Last chance, Orion… going, going… past tense. It’s waiting for everyone.

  Don’t they say curiosity killed the vaporcat?

  At least on Cyria they say it. I don’t know about the rest of the universe. I don’t know if they say it on other worlds. But there’s probably some equivalent. That’s the thing about the universe. Everything’s different, and the same.

  I sat there stewing in the TC seat as we drove on, not wanting to play, knowing I needed to. Passing melted terrain and forests of strange crystals that grew like low shrubs and sang on the notes of the wind. Singing crystalline plants. In harmony. On pitch. To some score that reminded me more of mysteries all around us. That there was more to see if you were willing to open your eyes. And that whisper was calling me a chicken. For all my big talk about wanting to know, about history, about the truth and the clarity of war, here it all was… and I was ducking my head in the sand because the ticket was too expensive.

  Except that I always thought it was cheap. Belief, that is.

  We hit a serious hole in the trail we were following once we made our way across the lakes. Crossed strange yellow salt flats where the sun beat down on us, and then made our way into a series of badlands ravines that took us lower and deeper into the Crash Wastes as we picked up an old smugglers’ road.

  We hit the hole and I was jangled out of my brooding self-doubt.

  The Kid looked at me and shrugged guiltily. I had no idea what his story was. I knew he had one. Everyone does. Everyone in the Strange Company has got a tale to tell before whatever’s gonna happen… happens. He’d joined up for some reason to get away from somewhere he wasn’t wanted anymore. That was my bet. But only because I’d seen it a dozen other times. He was a bright kid who learned quick. Handsome. Women would’ve even called him beautiful. Except now he was dragging that scar he got from the hot graze where I thought he’d bought it. He had too if the look in his eyes was anything to judge by. But he was still beautiful. Handsome. Being a merc would take care of that in time. Endless hard nights, long patrols that turned you into nothing but the walking dead. Bad food more than good. Hard liquor just to kill the pain. Scars from laying wire across defenses during cold windy bitter rainy days that always seemed to require such work. Mind numb. Fingers too. That’s how you get those keeper scars. Flying hot brass burns and the occasional gunshot wound when it was funnel time. Add in some frag and spall, and he’d look like the rest of us given time. First tattoo parlor would take him right down to our level with something that meant nothing to anyone not him. Then he’d be the kinda guy young girls don’t look at anymore unless you pay ’em to. And then all they see is something else.

  But looking at him shrug guiltily now about hitting the pothole in the smugglers’ trail and disturbing my personal anxiety fun coaster, good-looking and with enough future ahead of him that he could play mercenary and maybe not get hurt too bad on this one, I wanted him to stay gold. Read that in a book one time I couldn’t make sense of. Story about old Earth before we really got out there in the universe and pretended we were something to take seriously. Humanity that is. It was about kids. Bad boys. Greasers. Reminded me of the Strange Company in certain ways. Tags. Battles. Noobs and veterans. Outlaws. I can’t remember the tag of the one who was supposed to stay gold. But I remember the why. And as I looked at the Kid driving us toward our arranged meeting with destiny, I wanted him to stay gold. I looked back at Stinkeye and the rest. We were already damned for sure. But maybe the Kid wasn’t damned yet. Not fully. If there can be such a thing as halfway damned. Maybe he wasn’t all gone. Maybe this whole thing had scared him straight and he would get out of the Strange before it was too late, and he was stuck forever. Like we were now whether we chose to admit it or not.

  Addicted to da juice, Stinkeye likes to crow when he’s good and drunk. Feeling like making trouble for someone on a cold and windy night when there’s no moon and no mercy. Because da action is da juice, as dey say, Little King.

  I smiled at the Kid and indicated it was okay. And to just keep his eyes on the road. We had a long way to go. And a short time to do it in, as the First Sergeant always says. There would be other potholes.

  Some electric feeling ran all over me. Like I was still good. Not as far gone as Stinkeye. Going, going, not totally gone yet. I still saw that some could be saved. And that made me better than the worse. Right, Orion? Nah. That’s just a lie. Even I know that. Like I said. You have to be honest about these things. Especially with yourself.

  I tapped the comm for the Monarch, who was sitting right behind me. Wedged in between the door and Hustle, who was smaller than the rest of us. I’d catch him staring at her. He’s small, but ambitious. I’d seen him bag statuesque Amazons in soldier bars with nothing but determination and solid game.

  “Pretend I believe… why?” I said to her over the comm. The private channel between just the both of us. “As in… why is this the most important place in the galaxy?”

  “Universe, Orion. It’s the most important place in the universe. But I know you don’t believe. So. How much time until our next turn? And maybe I can convince you. If you’ll let me.”

  I told her the time to the next turn. Then added another six hours on that course track before we’d begin to think about a place to stop for the night, so we were in striking distance of the rally the next day.

  “Then we have some time. Maybe I can’t make you believe in something, Sergeant Orion…”

  “I said just Orion.”

  “Orion then. But maybe I can show you why you might want to rethink that position. We have time. Some. So I’ll just walk you through the entire history of modern post-humanity and how we got here. Then maybe you’ll understand what I’m trying to do now. What I’m trying to make right. Okay… Orion?”

  “Go,” I said irritably and tried to get comfortable. My back and legs were killing me. I drank water and listened to her. Sometimes I burned a cigarette and tried to pretend what she was saying didn’t mean anything to me.

  But it did.

  Why?

  Because everything she
said explained why my life was the way it was. I was getting all the forbidden history. Straight from the mouth of a Monarch. No redactions. No blank or missing pages. No mysteries. No reminders that this kind of inquiry is not permitted by order of the Monarchs. To understand what this is like… take it back to when mankind didn’t know what the universe was like. Who was out there. How much life was teeming on a lot of worlds. Then have an alien show up and lay out a stellar star chart and show you how many civilizations are within galactic striking distance of our most basic interstellar travel options. I didn’t want to believe her little story. But that was because I told myself not to. Made myself. Mind over matter. You don’t mind, it don’t matter, Sergeant Orion. Later, when I believed, then everything that came after was my fault just as much as it was hers. Because maybe I was the first to believe what would, eventually, destroy all of us.

  “Pretend you lived a long, long time ago, Orion. Back when humanity was first colonizing the home system. And I mean… barely colonizing. We had robots on a few worlds. And big dreams about establishing exploration teams there. Not the Military Industrial Complex Rings of Venus. Or the Sky Cities of Mars and the mineral plantations that cover the entire surface and even the seas there. Mars was a desert world, to put it mildly, not what you’ve heard it is now. A world of endless green oceans and islands like tropical paradises where we Monarchs live in tech-pyramids that would have made the pharaohs looks like vagrants cobbling together junk homes from the dumpster in the worst part of the city. Venus was violent then. No one would survive the surface for more than a minute in our best-rated ships. It was living hell on Venus during those first few years. Trust me. I was there. But we tamed it. Made it our own.”

  She paused and I watched her in the side mirror, the wind whipping stray strands of red hair across her beautiful young face as she gazed at the horizon and talked about events a thousand years ago as near as I can tell. History gets murky the further you go back. The Monarchs don’t want you getting too interested. Knowing too much. There’s danger there for them. Look long enough and you can see that plain as day.