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

from six hundred years ago could come forward and give me a message is one of them mysteries I’ll never know. But it happened. And it’s here in the logs. Check the date and time stamp. That can’t be forged.

He called it all before it happened.

Before everything got crazy.

Real crazy.

Chapter Fifteen

We held the central terminal hall that ran boarding operations for the main executive lounges serving incoming and outgoing ships like the now almost fully engulfed in flames Neptune Clipper.

“That’s gonna be a problem, Sar’nt,” said Punch, staring out the bullet-shattered glass as we held a quick squad leader meeting and tried to organize our defenses. We were putting Third with both its light machine guns on overwatch on the inner ring of the terminal. First was with me to ORF down below in the maintenance levels and the main cargo entrance to defend there. Second and Fourth would hold the main terminal.

Raven drones were showing an armored convoy made up of Badger halftracks coming from the inner terminals. Breaking off from the main defense that had clearly stalled the Resistance attack we were supposed to be the preemptive tip-of-the-spear first strike for.

“Looks like we’re hangin’ in the wind,” said Jacks from Second. A few others agreed with him. I did too. But being the NCO in charge, I felt it better to lead than just go ahead and admit we were either going to die in place here, or surrender and end up POWs eventually turned over to the Monarchs. Then we could bargain for our lives or twenty on a re-education ring somewhere in a dead system with no hope of escape, ever.

Life was looking pretty good right about now. Not.

“Listen,” said Chief Cook, hoisting his pistol belt off his lanky hips and swaggering forward to the rude sketch I’d just marked out on the floor of a terminal I’d never have had the money to fly out of. Broken glass littered my map. Shell casings were enemy. We were marked in permanent.

If only just for the motivational effect.

“The way I see it,” he said with all the bravado in the universe, “we got the good side of this. Targets in every direction means it’s a target-rich environment. Hell, we can’t miss. We do this right and we get some medals and maybe even become real live heroes of Astralon. Maybe even get a statue or two out of the deal.”

He posed for a second. I kid you not.

Everyone was silent. No one cared about statues or medals. Mem. Hard mem was the best. Hard mem and lead was what we dealt in. But right now, I was betting survival was payment enough.

The Badgers, fast-attack armored vehicles that looked like armored high riders sporting mounted twin fifty-cals, came in fast, shooting up the terminal with great flair and enthusiasm, but little effect. They were using armor-piercing rounds, and much of the outer terminal wall got ventilated. The huge high glass windows that were the very essence of optimism and adventurous space travel long ago shattered as the first chattering passes were made.

“They’re here,” said Cook drolly, and went to take command of the main terminal. I took First and we staged to support Second and Fourth above in the main terminal. We’d hacked the terminal’s security systems and I had a feed I could make a gesture at and expand to show the attack going on beyond the terminal walls.

The Badgers came in fast, driver and TC low behind an armored cockpit. Gunner in the rear and raking the terminal wildly with outgoing fire. Shemagh flying in the wind, combat engagement goggles down like some actor on Desert Warriors of Red Five. A show that had been popular a few years before our last jump between worlds.

Shoots, the squad designated marksman in Second, managed to nail one gunner from an open hatch that ground personnel used to access the ramp. That guy flopped over, missing his arm, and the Badger peeled off for the rear, breaking off from the main attack.

“It’s a screen, Orion,” noted Punch as he watched the same feed I was studying. “See the troop transports moving in now?”

He was right—I saw it too now that he’d spotted it. Irregular technicals were now surging across the ramp to reach the wing of the terminal to our right. The building mainframe had that area as under remodel from before the war. It had a departure date nine months old still blinking in the sys admin. I brought up the schematics and moved Third into a greeting position for the troops that were about to try to breach there in the lower maintenance and cargo areas.

Six minutes later they came in, managed by pros from the special operations units that had been training up the Loyalists. Strip charges blew the outer doors, and troops came from stacks along the wall, organized and swiveling like they were running a shoot house for the sixth time that day.

That’s when Hauser and Third began to ruin them hard.

The sound of both Pigs in Third Squad opening up in sudden blurs of high-cycle fire was ominous even hidden deep in the terminal’s shadowy guts ready to react to any crisis situations along other ground floor entries.

So far there weren’t any, and I was feeling pretty good about that.

Two minutes later, one of the spec ops pros used a flamethrower and reminded me why feeling good about a battle when it got started was always the fast track to heartbreak.

When Hauser and what remained of Third pulled back from that terminal wing into baggage claim, the situation was rapidly changing. Disintegrating in fact. If we didn’t plug the breach, we’d be overrun from that flank pretty quickly.

“Let’s get it on, First. On the double for baggage six. Punch, pick up the rear and let Second and Fourth know we’re on the move now. Hold the main terminal at all costs.”

Chapter Sixteen

There was a growing feeling in my stomach that we were in