Strange Company

by Nick Cole

  If we didn’t make it, then we’re probably dead. And the company’s over. And everything’s no longer our problem anymore. I got twenty minutes’ sleep after everyone cleaned their weapons and sorted the new gear, and that was the last thought I had before I drifted. I think I dreamt about that bar and John Strange. He didn’t say anything. Just looked real disappointed. And when I fell off a cliff and woke up with a start because the crawler’s engines were firing up and sounding like death by killer robots, I swore I hadn’t slept at all.

  “Get it done, Orion,” I muttered, and got myself up and moving. Tired was for another day. I was gonna do my best not to lose anyone else.

  The Kid handed me a coffee he’d gotten from the crawler before they closed up. I took a sip and looked at him.

  “Havin’ fun?” I said over the rim as I tasted it.

  “Yes, Sar’nt.”

  But I couldn’t tell if he was scared, or just Company now. Both are the same.

  All we had to do was survive killer apes. Infiltrate an alien starship that might be something more than what it was thought to be. Rob a bank. Hijack a dropship. Execute a high-atmo sub-orbital ship-to-ship transfer. And then blast our way into deep space before the Monarchs could catch us. But that’d be XO’s job and the Spider would have to handle all that. All good space marines know that sometimes the bravest thing you can do is just sit there during a ship-to-ship shootout and try not to lose your bowels as the guns open up and the hulls collapse. Death by vacuum is always sudden. But I’ve seen the look on people’s faces when they get sucked out through a hull vent. It’s not sudden enough.

  That’s all.

  That’s all that happened before the apes began to shoot at us with guns in the canyon as we approached the great mystery of the Crash.

  Chapter Forty

  In most combat situations, both sides sorta just start shooting at each other until one side senses an advantage and tries to assault forward and murder everyone trying to murder them. This often has only two outcomes. One or the other side gets killed a little too much, really slaughtered and there’s no one left. Or they surrender at some point before total unit annihilation. I’ve seen a third outcome once but that was just weird.

  My job, as the unit leader under fire, is to get all guns up and returning fire because we are now in a firefight. Then I assess the situation and try to exploit a weakness in the enemy position to bring the conflict to a violent and favorable end, for our side, as quickly as possible. Assault. Indirect fire. Flank with supporting fire. Options. These are some of mine in a normal firefight. Note, there are no normal firefights. Every one you remember forever, because of some singular weirdness that makes it a novelty.

  Dude gets his head blown off and keeps firing. Someone chokes on their gum when an explosive goes off and the concussion, or just before it, makes them suck a quick breath in because they know they’re about to get the wind knocked right out of them. Or you actually get the Needle D right when you have to relieve pressure on a wounded man’s heart or he’ll suffocate.

  Needle decompression protip. It helps when everyone’s got the Needle D tattoo in the right place. Murphy’s law. Some get the tattoo in the wrong place because the tattoo artist got it wrong and they didn’t know better. So yeah it was weird that one time under heavy fire when Hustle got it wrong because he was in a hurry but the tattoo itself was in the wrong place to begin with and so Hustle actually ended up getting it right and Super lived another couple of days.

  Hoser cut loose as the ape attack started, standing with the Pig blazing death as the first enemy rounds came in from low across the rocks, further down the winding canyon we were heading into. We’d been watching the scout high above us, hoping he didn’t spot us, this strangely bipedal figure that seemed to crawl across the rocks on all fours like it was the most natural thing in the universe, but it barked some war cry and seconds later the swarm of apes came from up the canyon we were headed into.

  Shooting at us.

  “Thought they were supposed to just be animals, lady!” shouted Punch as he dove for cover and the terrain around him erupted in whistling incoming. Rounds ricocheted off rocks, smashing fragments that came off in sudden dusty sprays.

  The Monarch didn’t reply and wisely took cover behind a long-ago fractured rock she could shoot from.

  The apes leapt over rocks like huge gray acrobats. With guns. Flying and firing weird small submachines at the same time as they washed over the terrain like some system virus suddenly wiping out all the root command files. Others of their ferocious and hairy kind scrambled around larger boulders, covering and firing as they streamed toward us like a river of gnashing nasty yellow fangs and animal barks that were about the worst thing I’ve ever heard. All of these things didn’t go together. Yes, here they were coming to kill us all. These were the cries of wild animals on the hunt. Hooting and barking. Grunting and bellowing war cries that curdled your blood and reminded you that you only had so many magazines of the good stuff. There were no cages. No fences. No zookeeper between you and these savage animals. These things were coming straight for us and their intentions were clear.

  And did I mention they were firing off bursts of automatic weapons fire? Wild sprays. Sudden staccato barks. Rounds smashing into the blood-orange rocks we were crossing along, sending up sprays of sharp fragments that raced for your eyes and exposed skin. Other rounds hit the sandy bottom of the canyon, throwing up grit fountains. These rounds made tactical-me wonder if they had snipers in the mix.

  No time for that, Sergeant Orion, because we were literally about to get very overrun. And I’d be surprised if they had a hard and fast policy on surrender and captured prisoners.

  Hoser unloaded, screaming, “Rock and roll!” as he burned brass and bled linkage, cutting down the first and fastest apes scrambling and leaping over the broken boulders. “Rock and roll” was Reaper Platoon code to anchor on the gunner until we figured out how to deal with the mess we’d just walked into.

  SOP. Standard Operating Procedure.

  I hunched down and duck-walked back, burning rounds to cover Punch and Choker as they tried to cover behind two sides of the same rock forward of our position in the tight, twisting canyon. Both were dumping mags danger close on targets I couldn’t see from my position. Meaning… the swarm of apes with automatic weapons had moved much faster than I would ever have thought possible.

  “This is just great!” shouted Choker as he shot down an ape that scrambled around the rock on all fours, fangs gnashing, the great gray thing barking viciously as it came for him. Choker shot it several times and it was still thrashing. Then he shot it some more and it lay still, bleating at the sky amid the blood it had sprayed across the sand and rock. Its black-skinned hands opening and closing pathetically like it still wished with all its savage heart it could throttle the medic who’d killed it.

  “Black on belt!” shouted Hustle, who closed in with our gunner to link up more belt-fed ammo and keep the gun working. I shouted for Hauser to move forward and cover the Pig as the reload went down. If Hustle was fast enough, he’d get the next few links up and connected before Hoser ran dry on 7.62, then we could maintain a base of fire along our forward line.

  I looked back, poking my head over the rocks, and spotted Hauser opening up on a flanking attack of smaller apes with daggers and spears coming down the walls of the canyon to our rear. We’d walked into a trap, or they were fast enough to break off into separate elements and try a pincer movement from asymmetrical directions like the sheer rock walls of a canyon.

  A second later I popped up, tagged a fast mover, and nailed him with two high-power APs we had for the Bastards in our thirty-round mags. We each had a full combat load, but it’s hard for a sergeant to stop counting. The thing went down in a tumble of dust and sand but there was no way I could confirm the kill because things were so frenetic.

  A huge ape, bigger
than the rest, a giant almost, massive chest covered in some kind of leather armor, leapt up on top of the rock Punch and Choker were fighting from the sides of. It beat its chest and gave a primal roar that raised the hairs on the back of your neck. The thing looked like it could rip all of us to shreds as it glared angry animal hate and intelligent menace both at the same time.

  The captain, who usually was only armed with the matching Hardballer 1911s he carried in the pockets of the worn brown leather trench he always wore, strode forward, leaving the Monarch in their temporary fighting position to defend against everything coming at us from the left flank. Her light machine gun hummed on quick, brutal, suppressed notes as she spat fire at multiple incoming targets while the captain closed with the big ape.

  I knew her rounds were having some effect only because we hadn’t yet been overrun. In the space of ten seconds, the battle had gone from eerie silence to sudden circus of death threatening to envelop us all.

  The Old Man had brought along another weapon we rarely ever saw him carry but which was known to us all. His Beretta 1301 combat shotgun. An ancient weapon he’d gotten off a freighter we’d found derelict in deep space carrying a lot of five-hundred-year-old weapons in stasis containers. The ancient weapon and others had been stored factory new. Pristine and still smelling of gun oil. Now he strode right at the huge raging beast atop the rock roaring at us and started firing slugs into the thing’s chest. Six shots in two seconds from the semi-automatic combat shotgun and the thing had gaping holes and ragged flesh wounds where the slugs had torn into it.

  It bellowed, gasping like a drowning ghost, and even that was still terrifying.

  At the moment, I was engaging another fast mover that came out of nowhere to leap at the captain. I burned a half a mag and got him as the captain pulled his off-hand .45 from his coat pocket now that he’d burned all six slugs in the shotgun and shot the giant beast right in the head, blowing off half its skull with the Hardballer.

  Crude spears arched over the rocks we were defending in a rough circle and one shattered against my plate carrier. The blow drove the air right out of me. It wasn’t like getting hit by a round. But it was like taking a thrown hammer right in the neck.

  I staggered back, hacking and gasping for air, grateful the Monarch’s hidden munitions and equipment stash had included new state-of-the-art advanced small-arms protection plates to replace our old and basically unserviceable ones after nine months of on-world combat. She’d said these new plates were rated to stand up to rocket launchers. I’d never heard of a SAPI plate doing that. We had to take her on her word. Not that it mattered. If you got hit in the plate, which covered your very vital pump and pipes, and the rocket exploded, it was going to blow off your head, legs, and arms.

  But your heart and lungs would be okay. Theoretically. According to her. So there’s that.

  “What about gel sabot rounds?” Punch had asked. She’d ignored that. Gel sabot burned through mech armor. No carrier plate was going to stand up to ferro-dicyanoacetylene rounds that cooked vehicle armor. Once that gel splashed on impact, even heavy armor melted like butter.

  I answered my ever-curious assistant squad leader for her.

  “Punch, you get hit by a gel sabot round, you’ll wish you were dead for about five seconds before you are actually dead. The secondary explosion will be a mercy as that stuff melts your chest cavity. Or guts.”

  He nodded. That made sense to him. He’d packaged the universe and placed it on the mental shelf where it needed to go once more. Now he could drive on.

  The new plates would do this, but they would not do that. I could read that in his eyes. He’s that way. A sergeant must know how his men think. If only to avoid how they might get themselves killed thinking on their own.

  Forward, we’d broken the armed ape attack, but the flanks were now in big trouble. I tapped the captain as he thumbed shells into his combat shotgun and scanned for more apes to engage. Hooting and barking from the armed animals echoed off the walls and rocks of the canyon all around us. It was like listening to a chorus of insanity and feral death. Surreal until you realized it was very real, and very close.

  “Sir, moving to check on Team Two. You got it here?”

  “Get it on, Sergeant,” said the Old Man tersely and moved to pull back Punch and Choker now that we were getting a break forward. Incoming was still peppering the rocks here, but it was unaimed. It was more like they were trying to get into position for another attack here while at the same time keeping our heads down.

  It was hard not to fixate on the fact that the animals, the apes, were running tactics.

  Hoser stalked forward to a better rock to fire from and took a round in the arm. He didn’t notice and instead opened up with a blur of high-cycle from our right. His face was hard-set and mean and it was clear he intended to do as much harm as possible to our enemies with time remaining. Hustle trailed behind the big gunner getting another belt ready, crouching low and staying back and to the left of our Pig gunner.

  I would’ve killed for a gun run from a close air support dropship right at that moment. But beggars can’t be choosers, can they? I headed back to the rear and passed the chief and the Little Girl crouching behind a rock.

  “Hey Orion,” said the chief good-naturedly as he ejected a magazine from his pistol and slid in another. His face was red and sweating. His tone familial. As though I’d just passed him on an evening walk through the neighborhood. The Little Girl was squatting down in the shadow of the rock they were covering behind. Her big clompy boots dug into the sand. Her dark coat making her a kind of rock all unto herself. She had the big used hearing protection muffs over her tiny skull and was pressing them together to block out the gunfire all around.

  Her dark eyes watched me as I moved past the two of them, heading back to check on Team Two. I was waiting for the smell of autumn. The burning leaves. And the wind suddenly coming up to howl and moan that the two points in space-time were connecting. That her friend was coming…

  “We’ll hold until relieved,” said the chief as I went past, leaning over the rock and beginning to blaze away at something forward.

  I danced back through the rocks, following the sound of Hauser’s light machine gun and the sounds of the other rifles in that team. Jacks and the Kid. Not really trying to avoid incoming. How could I? It was so wild and unaimed by the apes. Yeah, they were ferocious and fast, but they weren’t great shots. Maybe firearms weren’t suited to their hands. Their manipulation of such weapons wasn’t pro. But I’d seen speed and volume, and savage ferocity, turn lost firefights around in a heartbeat. So they had that going for them.

  To our rear were piles of dead apes here and there. I shouted at Hauser that I was coming from their twelve and to hold fire. The attack there was petering out as I managed to get up to them. The apes had suddenly begun retreating back into the crevices and up the rock walls of the canyon.

  More fire was suddenly starting up forward and I could hear the boom of the captain’s shotgun mixing with the burping bursts of the Team One Pig. Choker and Punch adding in single shots here and there to pick up targets of opportunity.

  Team Two had been knocked around good as I assessed our rear flank. The Kid was sitting cross-legged in the sand. His rifle across his knees. His head down. Hauser had strips of his synthetic flesh ripped away, as was much of his chest rig. It had been shredded to uselessness by terrible animal claws when the fighting had gotten danger close. Real danger close in fact.

  Now the cyborg was scanning the distances. Waiting for them to come at us again as the smell of burnt cordite hung heavy in the air.

  “We killed twenty-two, Sergeant.”

  Jacks was near the Kid, watching the rocks with his shorty Bastard up and ready to engage if they did attack again. The ruck on his back was strapped with claymores. I wondered how close he’d gotten to detting the whole bunch. The spent brass and b
lood-spattered sand, along with the carcasses of the dead apes draped across the rocks and torn to pieces by gunfire in the dirt, told me Jacks had been pretty close to a last stand.

  “He okay?” I asked the former Second Squad leader.

  “Got his bell rung for sure,” replied Jacks, still watching the rocks and the last of the retreating savage apes. “One of ’em jumped in and got ahold of him. Started banging him around on the rocks.” Then he stepped close and said, “Kid pulled his knife and went after it like a real psycho just to get it off him. Stuck it right in the brain and it ran off with his blade still sticking out of its skull. I shot it just to get the knife back.”

  Jacks took the recovered combat tanto out of his carrier where he’d stuck it, wiped the blood off on his pant leg, and handed it back to the Kid.

  “Here ya go, Psycho Killer. Try and hold on to it next time.”

  Then Jacks looked up at me. “Hey, anyone ever tagged Psycho Killer in the unit? That’s a good one for him. Better’n mine.”

  I didn’t think anyone ever had.

  “We’ll have to keep that in mind,” I said. “He’s still the Kid for now. But that’s a good one, Jacks.”

  “Man, he earned it,” he said as he got ready to move. “Gotta have some real stones to attack one of those things with just a knife when it’s trying to pulp and throttle you at the same time. Those things are pure nightmare, Sarge. Worse than that stuff Chief Cook gassed us with. Hope we don’t run into anymore, that’s for sure.”

  But I had a feeling we would.

  Chapter Forty-One

  We were on the move down-canyon again. Hustling as best we could while trying to move with some sense of awareness about what we were running into. Cautious urgency I’ll call it.