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

the known of everything I’d once been, for what I’d become in the Strange Company for the rest of the days that remained me.

Then I had a thought that had nothing to do with anything. I blame the drugs. And it wasn’t a thought. It was a realization. I’d left this bar because I was nothing. Never would be. Back there in the Bright Worlds. And I’d come to the company to lose myself and found a way to be something else. Someone else. If just a record in the company logs. If just an estrangier to a girl who’d never know what world I’d bought it on. There was something noble in that. Tragically noble. Something no one in the Bright Worlds would ever know, or even understand.

I had no idea of that when I first signed the contract. But later, when I became the official log keeper of our deeds, it was the reason I stayed.

You have to be honest with yourself. You can lie to the universe. But it’s best not to lie to yourself.

I went in and sat down at the bar.

She wasn’t in there. Not like she’d once been long ago. The reason for why I joined the company. But the ghost of John Strange was. And the bartender of course. I didn’t recognize him. He was new too.

By that time I realized it was just the drugs Chief Cook had given me mixing with whatever he’d pumped into the terminal that was making me think this way. Making me imagine I’d walked into a bar in the middle of firefight like some bad joke no one ever thought up. No one ever thought worth thinking up. A soldier walks into a bar in the middle of a firefight… I was only dimly aware that I was supposed to be in charge of an ongoing battle, and it was too late by then. I wasn’t in charge anymore. I was in the bar at the end of the universe now. And something important was about to happen.

And I was okay with that as I walked toward the seam. The crack. The thin place in reality.

Which is not a good frame of mind for a combat leader to be in during battle. Not ever.

So, I’m writing down what happened because this is an account of the Strange Company’s meeting and eventual association with a being called the Seeker. Who we would meet shortly. But this is important too. All these events leading up to that moment. Don’t ask me why. I just know they are important somehow. Whoever reads this… maybe you’ll figure out why. How we lost ourselves and became what we weren’t. How the universe got ruined.

How we met a being called the Seeker.

That’s an odd thing to say. Technically the Seeker, or just Seeker as it is called, is just as human as I’m supposed to be. But it’s a Monarch. So there’s that. And they are different from the rest of us. They are the best of us. Of course. And there’s really no disputing that. Especially if you’ve met one. Then you would know it. There would be no lies you could tell yourself to convince anyone otherwise. Or propaganda that stands up in the light of such knowledge. Some people are just better than you. As I’ve said, it’s best to be honest about these things.

Remember what I said. It’s best to be honest. Lie to the universe, just don’t lie to yourself. Why? Because you might believe it. Might believe the lie. And then where will you be…? Well, let me tell you. Then… you’ll be totally lost.

At first John Strange, the founder of our little murderous family, or mercenary outfit called Strange Company if you prefer, private military contractors, PMCs, wasn’t there in that strange little dream I was having. Or trip. Or vivid hallucination. The seam that opened up in the firefight. That thin place in the universe I’d just walked into. Call it what you will. Call it whatever you want. I won’t judge you.

Just don’t judge me.

“What it’ll be,” asked the bartender at the bar beyond the sign that said Cocktails in neon red script. A middle-aged man with iron-gray hair. Dressed in a neat red barman’s jacket. He said this as he flipped a thick cocktail napkin, white and embossed with a logo, down onto the dark wood-grain bar between us. A wood-grain bar that seemed to shift and twirl like milk in dark coffee if you stared at it long enough.

I looked around in disbelief, muttering so.

I didn’t feel like I was under the effects of any drugs now. I felt clear and relaxed even though things were weird. Inside, things were settling down. I looked at myself in the mirror behind the bar, past all those colorful and pretty bottles of hot liquor in strange colors lined up dress-right-dress like soldiers on parade.

I was still wearing my battle rattle in the dark gold-flecked mirror back there. Shadows moved all around me in the mirror universe. But when I turned to see them they were gone. I wondered for a moment if I’d been killed. Back in the firefight. If this was death. Had I taken a stray round from one of the hallucinating enemy troopers firing wildly and blindly and everywhere as we stormed the terminal from the boarding lounge? Tossing flashbangs and grenades. Trying to turn our job into cleanup before it became an assault on a series of fixed positions.

Had I taken a rando stray round and this was just shock before death?

Had I let go of all the endless duties that were all mine as I bled out? Call in a sitrep to the First Sergeant and tell him the terminal was clear and that the rest of the line could come up now. They’d need to do the rest without me.

That had been our job. Clear the terminal.

I didn’t care anymore here in the bar inside the