Tales of B-Company: The Complete Collection

by Chris Pourteau

  Who the hell does he think he is? her inner voice raged. But she remembered their agreement and knew he had every right to be angry.

  After a breath: “Understood.”

  “Movement in town,” said Hawkeye over the comms. “Heat signatures with okcy readings moving toward the big warehouse.”

  “About time,” grunted Stug.

  “How many, Corporal?” asked the captain.

  “I see six so far. No drones. Yet,” answered Hawkeye.

  “Echo, chain three bursts over Objective Two,” said the captain.

  “Over the warehouse, ma’am?” came the reply.

  “Did I stutter? We need to minimize civilian casualties whenever possible. See if we can warn those half a dozen porters off.”

  “Understood.”

  Three bursts from each chain gun thwacked the atmosphere. The bullets fired so fast, they sounded like three long, loud whips cracking together. Somewhere beyond the town, 250 new holes pockmarked the mountainside.

  “Corporal?”

  “They’ve stopped. For now, ma’am,” he said.

  She looked at Hatch. It was his show from here.

  “Stug, you’re first in. If you survive, I’ll follow you with Bracer.” Then, after a moment: “And the QB.”

  “Sure … send in the bald guy,” gruffed Stug, no whine evident in his voice now. The odds of getting to hit someone had just significantly improved. He opened the door and, crouching, went in. Not waiting for his sergeant to call it clear, Hatch folded in right behind him.

  The warehouse was long and flat, with a curved, almost elliptical roof. Though morning sunlight streamed in its windows, the interior was dim. Dust hung in the air, defying gravity.

  Stug took up position behind the nearest cargo crate, Hatch on his heels. Their three-count recon of the interior—as far as they could see, anyway—revealed a whole lot of nothing. The lieutenant motioned Stug forward to a second crate about twenty meters farther in, then took up a guard position to cover the advance. When the sergeant reached his cover without incident, Hatch accessed the company-wide comm channel.

  “Alpha Squad to my position. Hawkeye, join us.”

  As the QB and Bracer entered the warehouse and Alpha’s spotter made his way, berm by berm, to their position, Stug stole a glance over his cover. What he saw made him wrinkle his forehead again.

  “There’s nothing in here,” he sent to Alpha Squad. “This place is full of jack. Wait, no—he’s gone too.”

  “Cut the commentary,” said Hatch. “Once we—”

  “Porters on the move again,” said Looker from the tree line. “They’re inside Objective Two.”

  “Orders, ma’am?” clicked in Echo’s Lieutenant Gray.

  “Hold your position,” said the QB.

  Bracer and Hawkeye had both joined Hatch and the captain inside. The spotter followed SOP and scanned the interior of the warehouse they’d taken.

  “Nothing but a handful of these cargo containers. Not so much as a rat chewing on one, according to heat sigs,” he said.

  “Drones!” barked Looker. “Sweeping around from the … at least … orders?” His report was broken up by the all-too-familiar fuzzing of their comm system by Transport jammers.

  “Delta Squad, come in,” tried the captain. She knew better, but… “Bravo, Echo squads, respond.”

  Nothing but static.

  “Reduce your comms to minimum,” she ordered. “I want them kept on, voice only, in case someone takes out that jammer. For now, we’re on our own.”

  “Secure the warehouse,” Hatch said. “Bracer, get up to the second floor and deploy at the window with the best fire arcs on Objective Two. Hawkeye, go with Bracer. See if you can get any heat sigs on Two from his position. Stug, get over to the door, the one beneath Bracer’s position. I want eyes there.”

  “And what are my orders, Lieutenant?” asked the QB, emphasizing his rank.

  “You watch my ass,” he replied, observing the deployment of his men. He failed to notice the rare look of amusement that briefly lit up her face.

  “I see movement over there,” called Hawkeye. Objective One’s size and shape amplified his voice. “They’re fortifying.”

  “Of course they’re fortifying,” answered Stug from the side of his mouth. He never took his gaze from the window that looked out on the larger building some twenty meters away.

  “I’m more worried about those drones,” said Bracer, locking his 18-millimeter gun in its tripod. He’d already broken out the window overlooking the kill zone between the buildings. Now he surveyed that still-empty space with his machine gun barrel.

  Rapid fire erupted from the tree line where Delta Squad was emplaced. The Authority drones had engaged, and the thritt-thritt-thritt of Delta’s machine gun responded.

  “So much for my B-grade vid plot hope that those were actually our drones returning,” sulked Stug. “We’re flanked.”

  Hatch sidled up to position on the opposite side of the door from the sergeant. “That’s one way to put it,” he said. Between the two of them, their vision arcs covered the sidewalk connecting the two objectives. They were positioned directly below Bracer and Hawkeye, whose vista view guarded the same approach.

  Stug began to thump his left index finger to a beat only he could hear, an old song from a long time ago. It made him smile, and his lieutenant caught the expression.

  “Well?” asked Hatch.

  Tap-tap-tap-tap-tap. “Should we stay or should we go now?” the big man half-sang.

  Hatch turned to the QB. “Well, Captain? We seem to be standing on that blurry line between strategic goal and tactical execution.”

  “Hawkeye, what are you seeing over there?” asked the QB.

  There was silence while the spotter completed a second survey of Objective Two. “They’re in there, but shielded,” he said.

  “Neoprene suits?” asked the captain. Halfway through the war, both sides had quickly discovered that one way to hide their heat signatures was by wearing neoprene skinsuits, which masked the body heat of the wearer. The temperate climate on New Pennsylvania made the suits impractical most of the time, though.

  “Nope,” said Hawkeye. “You’re not gonna believe this—I think they’ve built glass into the walls.”

  Another masking strategy, though TRACE had never run into it on this scale. Enterprising war patrons in the tech industry had long ago adapted infrared wavelengths to pass through most walls by modulating them closer to radio wavelengths. But glass distorted those wavelengths just enough to filter out the part of the spectrum used to spot heat-producing sources. Sometimes before an urban engagement, Transport soldiers would even carry body shields made of glass to mask their heat signatures, then discard them once the battle started.

  “I can see something now and then, when someone moves behind a window, though,” Hawkeye continued. “They’re definitely in there.”

  “Gotta hand it to Transport,” said Hatch. “They planned that building from the ground up. Literally.”

  The captain thought about it. If they stayed, Transport would eventually tighten the noose on the smaller warehouse, killing them all. If they moved, at least they could retain the initiative and not simply wait to die. It wasn’t the first time they’d faced this situation. Her response was what she named B-Company’s shark strategy: keep moving or die.

  “We go,” she said.

  Hatch glanced back at her approvingly. This was why they called her the QB. She was daring and didn’t mind making a tough call that overrode an ineffective strategy. Their colonel thought of it as impetuous. But Hatch and his squad had recognized it long ago as courage.

  The firefight outside intensified. Delta Squad had drawn off the drones. Now was their chance to move in the open.

  “Bracer, lay down suppressing fire. Hawkeye, stay with him and watch our backs.” Hatch stared at Stug and smirked. “You go first.”

  “Again. I go first again,” the sergeant grumbled unconvinc
ingly. “It’s the price I pay for refusing to become an officer. And fair enough, I might add.” It was an old joke between two old friends.

  “As for you,” began Hatch, turning to his captain. Then he stopped. He’d almost told her to stay put. In the flash of a few seconds, he questioned himself as to why. If she were any other soldier, he’d have ordered her to charge the no man’s land with Stug and cover the sergeant’s left while Bracer’s machine gun pinned down anything to the right and front. That was the correct tactical answer here. Baggage notwithstanding. “As for you, go with Stug. Pin down the left. I’ll coordinate with the boys up top and follow.”

  A loud explosion erupted behind them, in the open ground between their building and the tree line. Delta Squad was getting hammered hard in the woods. Everyone inside the warehouse held their breath a moment. Then thritt-thritt-thritt, followed by another blast, smaller and grinding. Drones were known for their silence. Except when they died.

  “That’s one down,” said Stug.

  “We need to move,” said the captain. She knew, like everyone else, that Delta Squad wouldn’t last much longer against the drones.

  “Right. Bracer, count it.”

  “Three!” barked the heavy-weapons man.

  Laser blasts outside, followed by the thritt-thritt-thritt of Delta’s gun. It was crazy to think it, but to Hatch, the machine gun sounded the slightest bit desperate.

  “Two!”

  They could hear Echo’s chain guns now, opening up on the left from the fortified position at the guard post. Probably trying to keep more porters from entering the primary objective. The captain prayed there were no civilians in the way.

  “One!”

  Bracer opened up with his machine gun, one long chug of rapid fire. He blasted the windows first to force the porters’ heads down, then traced a line of bullet holes along the right outer wall of Objective Two to warn away any would-be heroes that might be around the corner.

  Hatch yanked the door and Stug charged, a bull moose with his head down and screaming a war whoop better suited to charging a hill somewhere in history. The QB followed, aiming at the window opposite them on the left, shattering its panes inward.

  “Report!” shouted Hatch, straining to be heard over Bracer’s continuous fire.

  “Suppression successful, sir. Heads are down,” said Hawkeye.

  Hatch leapt after the others and sprinted for the second warehouse. Stug was flat-backed against it now, under the window and preparing a sonic grenade. Some brave porter had kicked the door open and was tracking the QB’s steps with his laser rifle. Hatch took aim on the run and put him down as the captain reached Stug.

  The sergeant pulled her down and away from the window, and Hatch dived for their position as the sonic grenade detonated. There was no sound, none at all. The grenade blasted its area of effect with sound attuned to a spectrum beyond human hearing. The frequency of the silent sonic boom temporarily overwhelmed the inner ear of any target within range, spiraling them into vertigo and knocking them off their feet.

  Hatch squat-ran to the door now blocked by the porter he’d shot, who still breathed but could do little else. Bracer ceased fire for a moment while Hawkeye called down through their broken window, “Drones! Go, go, go!”

  He could feel Stug moving behind him, but there was no time to let the sergeant by. Stepping over the moaning soldier, Hatch elbowed the door open, bringing his weapon to bear and moving through. He could see three soldiers to his left, obviously stationed at the window prior to Stug’s pineapple toss, clutching their heads, weapons dropped. Lasers blasted the wall behind him, and he dived and rolled forward to kneel behind a shipping crate. He popped his rifle around the right side of the crate and sent an otherwise useless barrage of bullets at his attackers, hoping to make them duck and cover.

  Stug was in now and, instantly assessing the situation, moved to cover behind a crate just inside and to the right of the door. The QB was on his tail, briefly trying to decide whose crate to hide behind.

  “Get the hell down!” shouted Hatch. In his mind, he did his best imitation of Stug’s whine, bemoaning how little time it took being off the front lines for an officer’s instincts to atrophy.

  She ducked and dived for Stug’s crate in time to avoid a laser blast that took out the door they’d just passed through.

  Outside, they could hear Bracer’s fire resuming, marking the wide walls of the warehouse they were in. Then the first of the drones came through the door.

  Hatch turned his weapon around, keenly aware that the porters—knowing the TRACE fighters were being attacked from behind—could simply charge their position. Hopefully Stug would think of that too and keep the human enemy pinned while Hatch dispatched the mechanical threat.

  “Stop!” yelled the QB. “Don’t fire!”

  The lieutenant’s index finger twitched over the trigger as a second drone whooshed through the open doorway.

  “They’re ours!”

  As if aiming to prove her right, the two drones—with scorched hulls and nattering servos—flew over their heads and straight at the porters’ position.

  Hatch gawped while Stug whooped, “I knew it! My whole life is a B-grade vid plot!”

  Suddenly a blast came from the left, its heat scorching the plastic container and melting Hatch’s sleeve to the crate in the process; apparently one of the soldiers felled by the sonic grenade was back in action. Hatch rolled left first, ripping the sleeve now slagged to the crate, then back right, and leveled his weapon. First the upright threat went down permanently, then the two still on the ground died.

  One drone screamed mechanical death as laser fire enveloped it from two sides. Its partner passed its position, twisted in midair, and targeted the porters, immolating one and injuring another before it, too, was destroyed. But Stug was up and whooping again, charging straight for the two remaining porters. Having turned to meet the threat from the drones, they were now out of position, away from the cover of their makeshift pillbox of crates. By the time they turned to meet the terrifying sound of Stug’s roar, he was already on top of them. He cracked one on the chin with his rifle butt and ducked when the second fired wildly over his head.

  “Okay, now I’m mad!” Stug screamed at the young Transport soldier, whose shocked expression seemed to likewise freeze the rest of his body. The sergeant knocked away the porter’s laser with a backhanded swipe of his own weapon, then pulled his right fist back and buried it in the center of the man’s face with a satisfying, bone-smashing crunch.

  “Finally!” the big man exulted. He returned his attention to the first porter and dealt him a similar blow. “Two-fer!” he gloated.

  Both porters hit the ground with a pleasingly solid thud.

  Except for the wheezing pop of their downed drones, all was suddenly quiet inside Objective Two. Stug looked around, slinging his weapon into its ready-fire position. Smoke drifted from the drones. One of the men he’d just flattened moaned quietly, out of it.

  Glancing upward, the sergeant surveyed the second and third floors of the warehouse but found none of the enemy. “Well that was refreshing, if short-lived. We really should draw these fun times out more.”

  Hatch stood up and whistled as the captain moved to his side. She, too, was captivated by what she saw, her rifle hanging loosely at her side. Crate after crate filled the warehouse, ready for shipping. Crate after crate of okcillium.

  Delta Squad had lost two men: their heavy-weapons expert and their spotter, who were often positioned close together. The drones that had initially attacked from the right had indeed been Transport. TRACE’s own drones—the five that were left from the recon mission launched the night before—had returned in time to combine arms with Delta and send the Transport drones limping off, three shy of their original six attack force. By the end of the engagement, TRACE had lost all five of its remaining drones, two of them protecting Alpha Squad inside Objective Two.

  The QB left Bravo and Echo squads in their
original position at the town’s perimeter to watch for enemy intervention, then pulled the rest of her squads in to secure the second warehouse. Stug continued to grouse about how easy the whole thing had been, and no one was disagreeing. Still, they had okcillium to move. More okcillium than they’d ever hoped to see in one lifetime.

  Colonel Neville arrived within half an hour of B-Company’s securing the objectives. After very publicly admonishing the captain, he oversaw preparation of the landing site for the converted airbuses that would ferry away as much okcillium as possible before Transport counterattacked and retook the town. Once loading began, Neville’s principal contribution was to stand around and look imperious.

  After taking the big warehouse, they’d found Transport’s BICE jammer on one of the upper floors. Rather than destroy it, they’d pulled its okcillium battery and turned over the equipment to Neville’s communications specialists for later disassembly and examination. Having the use of their BICEs back had made coordinating the loading of their prize that much easier, but still, moving that much okcillium onto the cargo ships took the better part of the afternoon.

  As the loading continued, Hatch approached the QB. “You did good here today,” he said, smiling and brandishing a laser rifle retrieved from a fallen porter. “This haul might push the war home for us.”

  The captain tilted her head noncommittally. She’d always had trouble taking praise graciously. In a way, she preferred the kind of reprimand Neville had given her several hours before. She kindled the end of a cigar she’d commandeered from Stug, who always smoked one after surviving a firefight. Gave him good luck for the next one, he claimed.

  “Once Pook and the others make the weapons and okcy batteries, I’ll relax a little,” she replied. Pook Rayburn, proprietor of Merrill’s Grocery Supply in the City, and his cohorts in the resistance could manufacture new laser weapons using 3-D printers. And now that they had the critical component—okcillium—they could also make power sources for them. “I’m with Stug, though,” she continued. “Too easy.”