Tales of B-Company: The Complete Collection

by Chris Pourteau

  Stug stepped forward as the floor’s friction brought the lieutenant to a squeaking stop. The man groaned and tried to get his hands under him. Stug aimed and fired. He hated dispatching even an enemy soldier so dispassionately, but the plan needed both the guards dead. Turning toward the door, he said, “You can come in now. The heavy lifting’s done.”

  Pusher came through first, while Hatch paused briefly to give a hand signal to the others on the flophouse roof. Three seconds later, the QB and Logan were leaping across to the armory while Bracer and Hawkeye maintained their overwatch position, protecting the red door and their means of escape.

  “Nice acting job,” said Hatch. “You were certainly convincing as a stinking, loveless drunk with no hope for your future.”

  “Real life is the crucible for good acting,” replied Stug.

  “Which way from here, sir?” Pusher asked impatiently. She wasn’t used to mid-crisis bantering.

  “Guns in the basement,” answered Hatch. “Logan says we should have ten minutes before Transport reinforcements arrive back here from the bomb sites.”

  From above, they heard a small, muffled explosion. That would be the QB, blowing the door on the roof in full view of Transport’s cameras. With two points of ingress now on the enemy’s collective mind, they’d theoretically be confused in their response—and since the camera observing the alleyway was destroyed, Transport would have no way of knowing how many of the enemy they faced from the ground. Hopefully, they’d focus on the two infiltrators they could see via their roof cameras, and the diversion would provide Hatch and his crew the time they needed to secure the weapons from the basement vault. According to Logan’s timetable, they now had nine minutes to get it done.

  Motioning Pusher to take point, Stug shed his poncho. Beyond a short entry corridor, branches went right and left. Logan’s intel had indicated the secured basement with Authority weapons would be to the right. The left would be the way the enemy would come at them.

  “Make sandbags,” Hatch ordered Pusher, indicating the two deceased porters. Stug had already begun dragging the young trooper’s corpse to lay across the left hallway. Pusher grabbed the dead lieutenant, and Stug helped her haul him on top of the other dead man. She went prone behind their stacked protection, watching the approach from the left.

  “Let’s go,” Hatch said to Stug, heading to the right.

  The QB and Logan got twenty feet inside the building, to the top of the stairwell, before the first laser fire shot toward them. Transport’s response had been nearly instantaneous. As soon as they’d blown the door, klaxons had blared around them, drowning out all other sound but weapons fire.

  They sheltered against the wall, both breathing hard. The captain quickly scouted the stairs leading down, saw at least one shadow also holding position from cover. But she and Logan couldn’t afford to hold here. They had to move into a better position to lock down more of Transport’s response teams and keep the heat off the others below.

  She glanced below again, saw the shadow-soldier start to move, and popped her rifle around the corner without aiming. With the alarms blaring against the walls of the stairwell, she had no idea if she’d gotten lucky and hit anything.

  Only one way to find out, her inner self said in a voice that sounded like Hatch’s. And that annoyed her enough to fire her up.

  She swept her rifle around the corner again, crack-crack-cracked the area below with laser fire, then thrust herself out of cover and knelt at the top of the stairs. She was exposed but able to see the entire stairwell below. Black marks from her blind fire pocked the wall as if Picasso had shot them. Her heart beat like a hammer in her chest, her blood pounding loud enough in her ears to drown out the klaxons momentarily.

  The slow motion of battle kicked in as she saw the tip of the porter’s rifle turn the corner. Though her profile presented the smallest target to the enemy, Mary felt like a wooden doppelgänger on the firing range just waiting to be split in two.

  Arms came into view, bringing the laser rifle to bear.

  The QB took careful aim.

  She could see the enemy’s upper torso now, his eye sighting along his rifle. She could feel his finger tensing on the trigger.

  She exhaled.

  Both fired, but the QB had been a hair’s breadth faster. The porter’s shot went wild as he jerked backward against the wall, already dead but still in motion. The QB took half a breath to realize she was unhurt, then grabbed one of three sonic grenades she carried, popped its clip, and tossed it at the body.

  “Cover your ears!” she shouted at Logan above the sirens.

  There was no sound as the grenade went off, since the explosion was at a frequency beyond human hearing. But it attacked the inner ear of anyone in range, causing acute vertigo and excruciating pain. The QB counted it out, then launched herself to her feet, pulled Logan to his, and swung down the stairs, her rifle targeted at center-mass height. As they rounded the corner, they encountered two Authority soldiers lying in the stairwell, hands covering their ears, faces contorted. Two quick pulls of Mary’s trigger dispatched them both.

  “You’ve done this before,” said Logan.

  The klaxons still sounded, but their ears had begun to adjust to the constant noise.

  “A few times,” she replied, “but it’s been a while.”

  “Couldn’t tell.”

  He bent down to the dead soldiers and rifled through their equipment. Handing one of their laser rifles over for her to sling on her back, Logan stashed the other two inside a netting bag. Three more prizes from their raid, assuming they made it out again.

  Waste not, want not, said Hatch in her head. Having Hatch on BICE was bad enough sometimes. For her inner self to adopt his voice for its own made her more uncomfortable than staring down the sights of a Transport laser rifle ever could.

  The QB noticed that the weapon Logan chose to wield was a .45-caliber automatic pistol he’d taken off one of the dead soldiers. He stuck a second one in his belt. Then she remembered how long ago it was that he’d done covert ops for TRACE … long before even Transport had commonly carried laser weapons.

  Kickin’ it old school, her inner voice said in Hatch’s I know-something-you-don’t, sexy tone.

  Okay, stop that, Mary pleaded.

  They took up opposite positions on either side of the closed door leading onto the second floor. The QB stared at Logan, then flicked her eyes meaningfully at the nearest soldier’s dead body.

  “Oh,” said the ex-spy, snapping to her unspoken command. “Been a while for me, too.”

  He knelt, grabbed the corpse under the armpits, and leaned the soldier against the wall next to the door. In one hand, Logan held his .45-caliber. In the other, he held the dead man’s hand poised over the door’s swipe pad. The captain nodded, knelt, and pulled the pin on a second sonic grenade.

  Logan passed the still-useful palm over the pad, and they heard the snick of the door’s release. He grabbed its handle and pulled it three inches open. The QB tossed the grenade in, and Logan slammed the door shut, nearly taking her fingers off.

  “Sorry. Rusty.”

  “Uh-huh.”

  She counted it off, then nodded, and he swiped the corpse’s hand over the pad again. The QB quickly pushed the corpse out of their way as Logan opened the door.

  Laser fire blasted from their right. The sonic grenade must’ve missed at least one of its targets. Any movement into the corridor would face heavy, unceasing fire from the right. There was more than one porter pinning them down.

  The captain assessed their situation. Theirs was a tactical diversion, not the primary mission. As long as they kept Transport tied up on the upper floor, they’d achieved that objective. But two people stuck in one doorway halved their ability to do that.

  She flitted her eyes across the hallway. That door was closed and locked by a swipe pad, exactly like the one they’d just come through. But they needed to establish a second firing arc if they had any chance of hol
ding Transport’s attention here.

  “Do we need to go any further?” asked Logan, knowing their tactical situation as well as she did. “Haven’t we done our job?”

  “Almost. You still got that Bowie knife?”

  “We should’ve brought more grunts,” said Stug, loading an okcillium battery into a twelfth laser rifle. “More grunts, more boxes.”

  “More grunts, more casualties. In small, out fast.”

  Stug paused.

  “Don’t even go there,” said Hatch.

  “Bah, you’re no fun,” said the sergeant, putting another rifle, battery installed, into the autonomous airbox.

  The AAB was a supply drone with the capacity to carry a score of laser rifles. It operated much like an airbus, only on a much smaller scale. By programming the AABs with specific GIS coordinates, Authority Command could quick-flight supplies of weapons, munitions, or whatever else its soldiers needed in the field, even while combat raged around them. That capability provided a huge tactical advantage over TRACE. But in this situation, that kind of programming was less than helpful. If Alpha Squad input coordinates into the AAB, it would carry its payload along the most direct route to reach its objective. Great for getting supplies to soldiers as soon as possible with friendly combat drones clearing a flight path; terrible for keeping covert operations like this one under the radar.

  “I still hate the idea of having this damned thing follow me like a puppy,” said Stug, his signature nasality creeping into his voice. “I don’t trust technology to know what it’s doing.”

  “Quit complaining and get those batteries installed.” Pusher was upstairs, Hatch knew, buying them time. They’d heard intermittent fire from the first floor, but the fact that it continued told them she was still in action. Small consolation when your escape route depended on one trained sergeant keeping her head down at the right time.

  There it was again, the sound of friendly fire quickly answered by the enemy. The age-old dance of opposing soldiers, mere feet apart, engaging in corridor warfare: a look around a corner, quick snap fire, and ducking back into cover. Each hoping for the other to poke their head up at precisely the wrong moment. Pusher was good and she was brave, but the law of averages wasn’t in her favor. Eventually she’d make a mistake.

  “I’m going up there,” Hatch said. “Get the batteries installed and tote the AAB upstairs. Whistle to let me know when you’re ready to move.”

  “We promised two crates, forty laser rifles,” said Stug.

  “They’ll have to settle for half,” breathed Hatch. “It’s too hot in here. Double-time it.”

  Stug nodded. If Hatch was feeling the itch to bug out, the time for joking was over. Now the mathematics of battle became a simple matter of subtraction on both sides of the equation—of killing the other guy before he killed you. Honor and medals and tales for grandchildren came later. If you lived.

  Hatch mounted the stairs from the basement and knelt at the doorway to the first floor. He quick-glanced, saw Pusher still prostrate, her laser rifle wedged between the bodies of the Transport soldiers. Even from behind the door, he could see that the blasted, charred bodies she used for sandbags were riddled with holes from heavy enemy fire. After five agonizingly slow minutes of combat, Pusher was much more exposed than she’d been when he’d first left her to defend their escape route.

  “Sergeant!” he demanded over the mayhem. “Report!”

  “Two porters down,” she said, half turning her mouth to aim her words his way. “Two more still wanting to play.”

  Hatch smiled at her poise. Ellis’s coolness was the product of a soldier’s training, an expectation of performance under fire. He had no doubt she was actually scared to death.

  “Pusher! Ears!”

  Hatch spat the warning at her as a sonic grenade thrown by a porter landed behind her, bumping to a stop against the corridor’s wall halfway between them. He threw himself toward the basement and clamped his hands hard over his ears. Hatch counted the grenade’s timer, then gave it five extra seconds.

  Up top he could hear the chaos of stomping boots, shouting, and blasting lasers. He pulled himself back up the stairs, threw himself prone, and laid his rifle horizontal over the lip of the landing. He almost fired without thinking. The corpses of the Transport soldiers had come back to life and were standing over Pusher, their weapons aimed at her head.

  No, wait. The corpses were still on the floor. These were fresh Authority troops poised to execute Pusher. Her position had been overrun.

  “Our orders are to stay here,” insisted Bracer. “We’re the gatekeepers.”

  “I know that,” Hawkeye said, eyes glued to his omni-lens. Unlike his partner, he could see the heat sigs inside the building: their positions, their movements, and when they fired their okcillium-powered weapons. “But I think they’re in big trouble on the first floor.”

  He shifted his gaze up by thirty degrees. The building was old and its walls hadn’t been reinforced with glass. Glass in the walls would’ve bent the infrared spectrum just enough to prevent him from seeing the heat-producing sources inside. With nothing but simple stone and concrete between Hawkeye and his targets, finding heat signatures was easy enough. But his device couldn’t differentiate between Transport and TRACE soldiers. Perhaps he should rename it.

  Higher up, he thought he saw the QB and Logan holed up on the second floor, occupying an increasing number of Authority troopers. But just as many were on the ground floor, and that threatened their main mission. He stared intently at Pusher’s position, then saw what must’ve been Transport soldiers charging it.

  “Damn it! I think they just overran Pusher!”

  Bracer considered moving down to flank the porters. Technically, he and Hawkeye both held the rank of corporal, but he’d been promoted before the spotter, and that meant the onus of making a command decision was his. It was at times like this that he wished for Stug’s quick-sure field experience … or the QB’s calm resolve.

  “Maybe we should—”

  “Wait!” Hawkeye motioned him to silence. A few moments passed.

  “Well?”

  The spotter turned to him and smiled. Then his face went white.

  Bracer grew eyes in the back of his head. He knew without seeing exactly what Hawkeye was staring at. His ears had picked up the low, metallic buzzing a moment before his brain recognized the sound. The hum of a hovering Transport drone.

  “Can I lend you a hand?”

  Lasers plastered the corridor wall, forcing them back into the alcove.

  “Funny,” said the QB, wrinkling her upper lip. “Stug’s been a bad influence, I see.” She took the corpse’s severed forearm from Logan. She wasn’t squeamish by nature, but handling the dead weight of another man’s limb made her queasier than humping it through the stink of the City’s sewers had. Her ally carefully wiped his knife on his trousers and stuck it back in his belt.

  “Cover me,” she said, gathering her legs beneath her.

  This was easier ten years ago, her inner self warned. Mercifully, not in Hatch’s voice.

  Shut up.

  The porters fired on their position again. Logan went flat on the ground, aiming around the door and whipping out a brace of bullets inches from the corridor floor. He snapped off three rounds, then waited without returning to cover for his dance partner on the other end of the hallway to pop up. Up he popped. Logan squeezed his trigger repeatedly, taking the porter in the chest.

  “Go now.”

  Knees popping, forehead furrowed, the QB launched herself across the corridor. Logan unloaded three more rounds down the hall to discourage enemy initiative. She slapped the dead soldier’s still-warm palm against the swipe pad and the door whooshed open. The captain reconnoitered the dim room, clearing it for enemy presence, then spun around and took up a standing position. Her body blocked the door, holding it open.

  “Hey, boys!” she shouted down the corridor. “Bury this, would you?” Winding up her underhanded
pitch once, twice, she lobbed the forearm at them. It smacked the floor halfway between them, leaving a bloody trail in its wake as it rolled to a stop. The hand opened upward as if begging its living comrades for help.

  Logan pulled back under cover as the captain watched for a reaction. She thought she saw half a face gape in shock at the mutilated flesh. She unloaded three blasts in its direction, and the half face withdrew.

  “Now what?” hissed Logan.

  Her BICE offline, Mary accessed her inner clock, the one that woke her in the morning for reveille thirty seconds before her implant’s alarm sounded.

  “Three more minutes. Then up and out.”

  Shouts and screams down the hall. She couldn’t tell if the enemy was enraged by the sight of their butchered comrade’s arm or if someone was having a disciplinary problem with his troops. Then the QB heard the heavy thunk of a metal ball hitting the floor, followed by the eerie echo of a loud, hollow roll in a suddenly silent hallway.

  It was the first one, then, noted her inner voice, unflappable as always.

  “Grenade!” shouted Logan.

  Hatch ducked hard away from the doorway. It was all he could do to get out of the way in time to avoid being flattened himself. He felt the speed of the AAB as it blurred past, shooting like a rocket at Pusher’s position. One porter barely had time to turn before it took him airborne and dragged him past the dead sandbags.

  Pusher fell backward as the AAB passed overhead, then swung her leg out and around. Her second would-be executioner lost his balance as she swept his legs out from under him. She was up and straddling him before he even realized he’d dropped his weapon. He had time for one fleeting look of knowing awareness before her rifle butt stove in his nose.

  “I hate when I can’t do that myself!” shouted Stug, racing into the doorway next to Hatch, who lay stunned on his side. “We rely on technology too much,” he groused. Then he winked at Hatch and whistled. “I’m ready to move.”