Strange Company by Nick Cole (best ebook reader for ubuntu txt) 📕

when bucketloads of mems could be made by the fistful if you were willing to haul anything labeled “essential cargo” out here to the boomtown worlds so they could get going and uplink with the big river of mem that feeds Earth day and night.

That’s all history now. No one in either of the two merc companies about to shoot it out tonight for some meaningless target reference point on the map cares for the back when or even the why.

We deal in body counts.

To a private military contractor, the past is not prologue. The past is someone else’s problem. Oftentimes you’re just the solution to that problem. Kill who you get paid to kill and collect your mems. Blow the world on the next ride outta there and let someone else figure it all out for the official histories. The details tend to bother a little too much if you take the time to think about them.

The human rucksack is only so big. Take care what you stuff in it, because you’ll carry all of it all the way to your grave.

But of course I don’t do this. The stories are my jam. Officially I’m the company log keeper. Details, pay, supply, deaths, actions, intel. I got the job because the Old Man found out I collect forbidden histories whenever I can find them. He also knows that everyone doesn’t have much of a problem telling me their darkest and innermost secrets. I guess I’m just a good listener.

Like I said, none of that matters now as the skies turn dark and gray with night rain and Strange Company gets ready to make her attack against an old cyclopean chunk of industrial living progress that still stands out here in the No One’s Land. None of that matters to us. The eastern front of the war on Crash isn’t the sexy front. To be sure. If it was, we wouldn’t be here. It’s nothing but occasional sociopathic ground battles with arcane objectives and more often savage raids against rando enemy positions as everything shapes up for the real big show we’ve been promised next week, or maybe in two.

The starport that serves Crash City is the big show. It’s practically running movie trailers on our brains when we close our eyes for a few hours’ sleep.

No one’s calling in strike fighters or air cav for us tonight. Only the Strange Company has been dropped off and sent in on foot to dislodge Grau Skull from their mighty FOB inside No One’s Land. High Command back in Tolois, a strange little town thirty kilometers behind the line, won’t be watching the outcome tonight. They’ll get the details in the morning brief as the hungover generals drink coffee from small delicate porcelain cups and murmur over reports from the night before. Rumor is the generals redirected one of the cyborg circuses into the MDA, the main deployment area, and they’re getting first crack at the honeys before the line units.

Rank has its privileges. Mercs not so much.

So tonight, both Strange and Grau Skull are going to fight it out with automatic weapons, high-ex, and whatever else they can bring to the dogfight. Fighting over one of the last remaining block-living structures in that sector of ruin on the final approach to the starport. If we’re successful, High Command for the rebels, which just happens to be the legitimate government of Crash, will be able to oversee the battle for the port of entry to the west. That is if we win and don’t die on the objective. If not… they’ll throw another down-and-out company against Grau to make it happen. They’ll burn troops until it gets done, never mind the pay. Dead mercenaries have a way of not needing to get paid. Everyone knows that. It’s win-win for the generals if we buy it. Then the Big Contest in maybe two weeks’ time.

Tonight’s target is Objective House Party. House Party is a block-living edifice that once housed thousands of workers during the boom. Again, it will be very important in about a week, or two. Maybe. Unless plans change to attack the starport.

But not tonight.

Tonight, it’s just a junkyard dog fight between two down-and-out companies that have seen much better days. Hell, Strange and Grau Skull fought together on the same side in other messes not this one.

But not tonight. Tonight, it’s just business we tell ourselves as we sneak toward the kill in a long, winding patrol column with Ghost Platoon out front and scouting. One of us, Strange or Grau, needs to see dawn and be in control of the last remaining structures at the far edge of the ever-shifting No One’s Land. Most everything in No One’s Land west of our position got wiped out in a heavy D-beam strike from orbit three months ago. Both sides have just been fighting over the mess that’s been left behind. Fast attack force raids in and out to hit, destabilize, and ruin further the enemy’s position along the approach to the starport. Nothing personal, just business. The business of war. Next week we do the main port of entry for Crash.

The big show we all can’t stop imagining.

I keep saying that. I know. It’s on my mind. I have a bad feeling about that one. Guys have been telling me their stories. That’s a bad sign too. It means they can feel it. They can feel the Grim Reaper Astronaut sharpening his scythe for that one. There will be casualties.

Soft rain begins just after twilight. It’s miserable, wet, and dirty by the time we advance on the objective. We caught some rain hanging off the dropships while coming in. I was riding on the portside cargo deck. Open to the night and the wind. Mist and sudden squalls washing over the patched and well-used drops, relics from some other conflict, as we all sat there in the darkness, blocking out the engines and constant chatter from the flight crews. It