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

using our company call signs. Doghouse was always the First Sergeant. That he was calling for our commander meant he had an orders update.

“Go for Reaper Actual,” I said, tapping the comm, scanning our rear and making sure I had a topped-off mag in my Bastard. The Kid was sweeping forward at the double, checking corners, and leading me in a rough direction back under the main terminal.

“We need a way up,” I hissed at him.

He nodded and redoubled his efforts to find one.

Chapter Seventeen

“Sorry, Sergeant Orion,” said the First Sergeant over the distorted crackle of the comm. Loyalist electronic warfare units were in the skies above, now that it was clear their side had air superiority.

So literally the news was getting better by the second. And by better… I mean worse. Much, much worse.

“Captain is arguing with High Command for a drop reallocation to get you boys out of there,” continued the First Sergeant. “Whole line’s pulling back. Big boys are sayin’ they’re done for the day.”

See what I mean? Worse and getting awful. Not better.

“But while the captain fights his battles, do not dismay, trooper,” the First Sergeant continued grandly. As was his way. I didn’t mind it, he’d earned the right. If anyone had been in the exact situation we were now in, surrounded, outgunned, and incoming from almost every direction, it was the Top. “Speedball inbound on your position. Arrival time three minutes. You got a heavy walker, HGT-306, coming straight at ya. This oughta ruin its day good and plenty. Location’ll be close, but that’s all I can give ya right now, son.”

I copied and said were standing by on the speedball. Hell, what else can you do when the whole thing is going pear-shaped?

Hauser and most of my squad were now fighting for the lifts and escalators up to the main terminal where the other squads were fighting to maintain some kind of perimeter.

“Situation critical,” said Hauser in his calm, machine-like way. The hint of ancient German crispness there in his program. No BS. No positive motivation. Just the facts. Sometimes that irritated me. But right now, the reality of our situation was serious. And the honest truth was… it was critical.

“We will make them pay, Sergeant,” said the cyborg war machine.

I checked my watch. Two minutes to the speedball. I didn’t know if it was the game-changer the First Sergeant said it would be, but I’d take just about anything right now. I alerted all elements we had a high-speed-delivery weapons resupply package on the way and to be on the lookout for it. They acknowledged, and I didn’t add that there was every possibility we were being hung out to dry today by our employers and that most likely death or a prison camp lay in our near future.

I try to be positive that way.

The Kid and I had found a cargo lift deep in the ground-level maintenance areas underneath the main terminal. It was dark and dimly lit down here, and smelled of oil and machinery. All around us, drones and utility vehicles, from hover-operational to tracked, dirty and grimy, waited in the humming darkness for the next starship that would never arrive on this war-torn battle zone of a world. Second and Fourth Squads above were racking up kill counts if only because the environment was so target-rich. Hauser had the main access point into the terminal above locked down under a brutal crossfire. But ammo there was critical. The only way we could identify for the enemy to flank them was through the cargo maintenance lift the Kid and I were guarding down here. We’d hold here until that speedball made it into the AO.

I didn’t exactly know what a mere two of us were going to do if they really pushed through this axis of attack. But I also knew we’d figure something out and convince them to go somewhere else, or die arguing with us.

Or we could die, surrounded by expended brass and on the losing side of the argument. It felt like one of those days, know what I mean?

But then again… it wouldn’t be my problem anymore. So, there was that. And of course, you have to be honest with yourself about the score and what inning of the game it is exactly.

“Gains…” whispered the Kid in the darkness as we waited to repel. He whispered it to me just above the hum and throb of the massive charging stations underneath the thick concrete floor that powered the utility vehicles waiting down here.

Yeah. Gains. The other Pig gunner in Third. If Butch, the AG, assistant gunner, was roasted and falling back, then Gains was dead. Gains. Yeah. Everyone liked Gains a lot. Good guy. And Gains liked everyone. Gains’s thing in life was PT. Physical training. But not hell PT like the NCOs led, which was basically punitive suffering regardless of any perceived or imaginary infractions. The First Sergeant insisted SOP PT be hard to punishment level and thus perfect for Strange Company standards.

We might have seemed easygoing and informal. But there were certain things we held rigid on. PT. Marksmanship. Job skills. And we hated digging as a rule.

“Digging’s for chumps,” Punch like to say every time we were forced to.

“If you ain’t throwin’ up, then it ain’t PT,” the First Sergeant would crow at the top of his lungs every morning as we did PT. Generally not during combat ops. But rest days meant PT days. And he’d swing by wherever you were and make sure, even during lulls in ops that he’d suggest to the NCO in charge, “Them boys need to get PT’d. Good for what ails ’em, Sergeant. And right now, Orion, all they got is the fear. A little heavy breathing and maybe even a good hurl’ll give ’em a new lease on life. Always does me. Once around the airfield. Watch out for snipers and don’t get hit by a truck or nothin’. I’ll watch your sector for