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

“I… uh…”

I laugh at myself. How am I gonna pay for this? I didn’t bring any mem cards into battle.

“It’s on the house, sir,” says the bartender softly as one of my favorite jazz songs begins to play on the purple haze jukebox no has made for sixty years.

The Very Thought of You.

I laugh again. Laugh at myself because if you gotta get hit, and die, then this is the way to do it. I’ve seen guys screaming in pain, crying for their mothers. Bleeding out in horror as they watch their guts spill out and you stand there helplessly because there’s so little an IFAK can do at that point for what everyone standing around will call a “gut shot.” You can’t tourniquet guts.

Hey, maybe that’s me. Maybe my number was really up. And maybe that wasn’t so bad.

I taste the scotch and again, I have no idea that John Strange, intergalactic rogue, wanted criminal, reckless adventurer, and mercenary captain, is about to walk in. He’s been dead for about six hundred years. So of course he was the last person I was expecting to see as I sat there hallucinating. I was just drinking expensive scotch and probably just dying.

Plus, I’ve never met him. He’s a historical figure. Ever met George Washington? William Yan, first man to break the light-speed barrier? Or serial killer Cruise Reynolds?

The slender man with combed and slicked-back hair, graying at the temples, and wearing a great well-cut suit, walked in and slid onto the barstool next to me.

He had a wolf’s grin. Big teeth.

There is one picture of John Strange in the company logs. Remember, he was a wanted criminal, which was really saying something back during the near-lawless days of early expansion of humanity out into the greater galactic community. Before we’d met the Krugga and the Sandies in their long ships crawling the midnight gulfs.

“G and T,” the ghost of John Strange said softly, and crisply, and held up two long fingers indicating he wanted it made as a double. Again, the patient and unsmilingly calm bartender bent to his work behind the bar. His craft. His art. His calling. The soft crunch of mineral-water ice. The burble of bored gin in a boldly translucently blue like the fogs of Azul Falls. The fizz of a softly energetic tonic. The fresh acid of a sliced lime and a carved twist scenting the air of the bar for just the waft of a moment.

Pro. This was a really great bar. If this is death, then I think I’ll stay for a while.

I stared at the logo and name on the crisp white napkin once more.

The Bar at the End of the Universe.

That’s what this place was called.

“Guess I got nailed,” I murmured to myself and the bar, watching as the dead man’s drink was set down on the napkin in front of him. “Finally,” I said with a sigh and drank.

The ghost of John Strange, founder of Strange Company, laughed, swiped up the drink, toasted me, and took a long, thirsty gulp. Ancient logs indicate he was a drinker. Several mention reckless and daring attacks against fortified habs during the Saturnian Conflict. Under the influence. The first armed conflict in space of any scale larger than a gunfight inside some rando station.

That’s where John Strange entered the histories. Supposedly a sergeant in the Colonial Marines. Promo’d to captain six months in and leading guerilla raids across the frozen tundras of Titan back before it became the economic powerhouse of early expansion. Once boasting a navy of a hundred dreadnaughts that went toe-to-toe against the Monarchs.

And of course, we all know how that went. And if you don’t, then spoiler… it went badly. Real badly. It always goes badly when the Monarchs are in town.

Back to the ghost of John Strange.

Side note, even though we call ourselves Strange Company, and that’s what the galaxy knows us by, pronounced just like you would when using the word strange to indicate something bizarre or weird, that’s not how the founder of our private military outfit pronounced his last name way back when.

Straang. I’ve listened to audio records in the ancient logs of him giving operations orders. Or speeches to conquered worlds. Or pronouncing death sentences and leading firing squads executing those judgments he had made. The sound files that weren’t corrupted by the nano-attacks during the Sindo and some other wars tell you what he sounded like. And how he pronounced his name for the official record.

He pronounced it Straang.

“John Straang. Captain. Strange Company, Commanding.”

But “Strange,” as everyone pronounces it, seemed to add more mystique to the company. And perhaps, as a wanted war criminal among other things, John “Straang” didn’t mind the confusion.

“You’re not dead, mate,” said the ghost of John Strange as he drained his glass and shook it at the bartender. It was tall and frosted. He wiped the gin from his lips with the back of a tanned and manicured hand. He looked the opposite of the hard-bitten, desperate, and wily mercenary captain the universe, and history, knew him to be.

He seemed at ease, but about business. Time was of the essence. But that was his manner. I was dead, what did I care.

“Not dead, mate. Not yet.”

Still, you couldn’t convince me I wasn’t dying on the floor of the main green ring terminal. So I sipped some more scotch because that’s what you do when you’re dead, right?

“Something big’s about to happen, Sergeant Orion. Real big. I’m here to deliver a message… tell you blokes you’d better be damn careful with my company. You’re getting involved with something dangerous whether you like it or not.”

The new gin and tonic was set down. John Strange picked it up and just stared into it. Contemplating it and the universe he found inside its bubbles, gin, and chipped ice.

He died on Caspo. Like I said. Six hundred years ago. Back when there was nothing but sub-light dumbthrust with forty- and fifty-year