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

More enemy contact came in from Hauser. Third engaged what we would later find out to be rear security holding the exit we needed to take to get out of the subdeck processors. A brief exchange of high-cycle automatic gunfire from Hauser and company, and enemy rear security was ruined. Fourth on the right picked up another sapper team and nailed them unawares. Or creeping to flank to continue planting charges. Suddenly First was at the center of all kinds of incoming and outgoing from both sides.

Expended brass dribbled across the mirror-smooth floor of the high-load processing deck for flight and navigation operations. A state-of-the-art starship was getting ruined from the inside out. Big time. There had been a time, once and long ago, when I was very interested in the Free Trader and Scout Service. I’d looked at putting together a ship, and time after time it was this deck, the one we were fighting our way through, that cost the most. Even on the lowliest of jump-skiffs or star-schooners. The kind most explorers preferred for max equipment, minimum luxury to find a habitable world to claim and get rich quick by.

But the cost of these systems had always been skyrocketingly prohibitive. Yeah, sure, there were used compressor frames that could keep up with bare-bones navigational charts of a constantly evolving stellar frontier, but out-of-date data or a bad crunch on a necessary jump and you were about to see what the inside of a supernova looked like up close.

For at least three seconds of what would be the end of your life.

And then no one would ever hear from you again. Which was the part of Scout Service that had most appealed to me back then. Getting good and lost from the collective insanity of the Bright Worlds. But the company found me instead, and I’m probably going to stay here until they get tired of me. Or until I die on some whacked LZ we never should’ve been on in the first place.

So it goes. Buy the ticket. Take the ride.

The initial exchange of surprise gunfire still echoing in my comms, I organized Reaper to get it on, Company-style. I first reoriented the battle toward enemy currently engaging on the left flank. Mainly, the ones shooting the hell out of Reaper First Squad. Besides those two dead and three wounded, everyone was getting hit in the armor. I got a ricochet off my combat helmet. Not the first time. It was a glancing shot that had probably already hit something else and my bell was already good and rung from the retro-agent drug, so it bothered me later. A bad headache and my jaw hurt, that was all. Not then. Under the influence of the drug it felt like a love tap. Starbursts expanded out from my huge dry eyes and I watched them wallow away and turn to fireflies, or butterflies, of electricity with blue streamers. Both, actually. Cool, huh? Lots of pretty colors.

“Forward is now left flank. Hauser, take Third and sweep the exit we need. Make sure it’s secure. We may need to boogie fast.”

“Affirmative, Sergeant,” responded the cyborg.

“Jacks,” I said. “Need you to get on their right and set up a base of fire on those yellow strobes ASAP.”

I got a “copy” from the Second Squad leader just before one of the sappers tossed a flashbang at us. I saw it come in, and so did Punch from behind the big black ominous compressor stack we were hiding behind. A thing that would have cost several million mem, and which was currently acting as a high-priced and very ineffective bullet-catcher for incoming targeted at us. Later I’d see that my rear plate also got a love tap from someone’s round. But again, it just exploded into frag and spall and maybe my ribs were bruised. Which might explain why I was having difficulty breathing until I bummed a mild relaxer off Choker later.

I was gonna be black and blue for sure.

Punch, wounded hand and missing a finger, let go of his Bastard, reached with his unwounded and firing hand, grabbed the incoming explosive we hoped was a flashbang, and side-armed it right back at the enemy as he flopped over on the deck, exposing himself to fire. Guy could’ve been a relief pitcher with a mean slider like that.

It exploded off in the darkness, but its effects were greatly mitigated by a lot of the natural EMP fields and Faraday cages that ran through the processor racks. I think that was the moment that stopped the attack from the left flank for at least a second. Next I got Fourth to come in and support First as we developed a sustained base of fire. Medics pulled out the wounded if they could.

Remember, at this point in the firefight I had no idea what was going on other than what I could see right around me. Two dead. Punch wounded. And the Kid and Chief Cook getting out of the funnel of death we were sitting in.

I saw someone and dumped three bursts of full auto. I had no idea if I’d hit anyone, but it felt good. I swapped in a new mag and flipped the Bastard’s selector switch to semi. Promising myself I would never commit the sin of full auto ever again.

Never ever.

Of course, the lies we tell ourselves.

Second swept from left of us through the multi-core data cylinders that interfaced with the ship’s navigational stacks and began shooting, moving, and communicating like a good squad is supposed to. Then they began wiping out the enemy.

“Cease fire, One and Four,” I said over the comm. I didn’t want us shooting into Second as they tried to overrun the enemy ahead of us.

Two minutes later the sound of gunfire was gone and I was getting a sitrep from Jacks. The sappers were all dead. I ordered everyone to move