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

He might wanna take another. That could even things out. Maybe. Two negatives making a positive and all. Dr. Goodbuzz would definitely prescribe that course of action, Sergeant.”

I had no idea who Dr. Goodbuzz was. I doubted there was one and had a feeling Chief Cook had some kind of alter ego who justified the weirder contingency plans. Again I had no evidence. Just hunches.

I also had no idea if he had taken the tab. I gave the order. But who knew if they did. This was nuts. I was supposed to be assessing the situation, identifying enemy concentrations, and then organizing assaults to wipe them out. Not making sure they took their meds.

Jacks, Second’s squad leader, ran out into the concourse and tackled Dip Weasel just as the enemy machine-gun team opened up from the coffee bar across the way. An animated projection of a giant cartoon cat pouring coffee was tripping me out as I tried to focus on the rapidly disintegrating situation. The cat was speaking in Pan and going on about “Hot Time Lucky Brew.” Apparently its AI processes were targeting Pan travelers who must have recently passed through the terminal. Or there was some kind of malfunction in the station’s processing hubs. Or Loyalist troopers were opportunistically stripping out the mem where they could get away with that. The enemy probably was too. That made me wonder if things were as bad on the pay front for them as they were for us.

Deep and meaningless wonderings in the middle of an assault. That’s why they pick me for the tough jobs.

I had no idea in those first seconds if either the squad leader or Dip Weasel had been hit by any rounds in the high-cycle automatic gunfire that suddenly brrrrttttted through the terminal, devastating everything it caressed. Must’ve been a 20mm squad suppressive cannon.

Second and Third opened up on the machine-gun team within seconds and instantly the firefight was everywhere across this section of the immense terminal. Everyone was shooting everyone else in a desperate bid to kill as many people as quickly as possible. And all of us were on drugs.

Bats swarmed my vision, and anxiety welled up within me. I was certain I was going to get killed because I knew how stoned I was. Every muscle tightened and I felt like I had some kind of maniacal rictus grin death smile pasted on my face. This was not how I imagined my heroic death. The one the Falmorian party girl would never hear about. Or anyone else I ever once knew long ago in another life not this one. I’d always imagined her estrangier giving a good account of himself in his last seconds. Not that it would matter. I just liked to think it might go like that for me.

For two seconds I was frozen as I struggled to get out of the black cone of immobility and do something to generally help out.

“Get it on!” I screamed wildly and burned a mag on full auto against the covering SSC team. It was all I could think of. If you can’t do something, then one, get everyone who can to start to do anything. And two, try to look like you’re helping with the attack, even if you’re just expending brass. At least look good doing it. Who knows, one of the New Guys might get inspired enough to do something incredible and earn a tag before they got killed.

Obviously, the Loyalist troopers were under the effects of the psychotropic gas. There was no organization among them, and their shooting was random and wild, at best. Within the first minute of the firefight it was pretty clear they were hallucinating wildly too. The machine-gun team across the way, even though they had good cover, burned through a belt and then just sat there staring at us as though they were still firing on full auto from some kind of magically endless belt of myth and lore. The kind in action-hero slashers you go see because you’re on leave, you’re hung over, and you want to hide from your squad because your liver can’t take another epic all-night drinking binge at some bar your mother would disown you for even passing by.

I irised in with my combat lens and tried to ascertain if we were getting a break from the suddenly silent machine-gun team working the squad suppressive cannon, and if we should just rush them as they swapped belts. Murdering them with automatic fire before they could turn up the ammo burn on us. But all I could see over there behind their tripod gun with matte-black twin barrels spinning madly and smoking, was wide eyes and gas-giant-sized pupils, jaws dropped open as they stared in amazement at something unseen and amazing. They were doped to the gills and seeing other realities.

“Tracers are messing with ’em, Orion,” hissed our warrant and then laughed like he had rock miner’s cough. Wheezing and gasping. Like he’d just found some vein inside a spinning cold rock that would make him as rich as a Monarch forever. I looked over at him, and he had an even more crazed look on his face than usual. Which was saying something for him. He was sweating buckets and grinding his teeth as murder and mayhem abounded across the terminal.

Then Chief Cook stood. “Hand me a grenade, Private,” he barked heroically at a nearby New Guy. My soldier did as he was ordered, and with almost no pretense at cover the chief pulled the pin, popped the spoon theatrically, and over-armed the grenade right into the coffee bar across the terminal like he was throwing out the first ball on opening day back at Yankee Ball Park, the Bright Worlds’ best stadium.

A second later the grenade hit the back wall of the coffee bar and bounced, and I lost track of it for a weirdly uncomfortable moment. Live and loose fragmentary devices have a tendency to do that