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

of knowing the indirect was about to fall directly all over our heads. We were supposed to find adequate cover and hold on to our butts.

Work the problem, some old NCO screamed from the crypts of my shattered mind. Curse Chief Cook and his chemicals. I felt shaky and weak. Reality felt that way too. But the old NCO who screamed at me to just do the job I was sent in to do reminded me my brothers in the Strange up there had things in hand. They were doing their job. Covering us with violent gunfire in high doses. I just had to do mine now. And… if we all did all our jobs together, then some of us just might get to live to see the next contract.

That was the promise Strange Company made to one another. We may not like each other, but we’ll get it done together. And then hopefully get paid.

Simple and to the point.

Now our job, my job, was to get the speedball into our possession, deploy whatever weapon system was inside of it, and take out that inbound Savage mechanized walker firing staccato thunder at distant targets. Because light infantry ground troops and fast attack vehicles we could handle. But a heavy ground terminator walker carrying old-school GAU-88s was going to peel back the cover Reaper had inside the terminal via high doses of 20mm ball ammunition. And then riddle us with gunfire.

As if on cue, the two “arms” of the walker opened up and thundered out probably close to three thousand rounds from the onboard cannons. Heat sinks gassed steam and bled heat. Spent shells littered the tarmac. Its legs thunderstruck the hot ground. Behind the terminal, a dropship coming in for close air support exploded in every direction. Aircrew and reinforcements absolutely dead. No doubt.

I hoped that wasn’t the relief drop carrying in Strange elements as I tried to figure our next move.

But it coulda been. It sure could’ve.

The Kid looked at me as he swapped in a new mag for his smoking Bastard. His look was pure fear and wild bewilderment. Punch calls that the “in it now” look. I’m sure there was the same on my face looking right back at him as he gave me the “what are we gonna do about that” look. In it now. But not bewilderment. That wasn’t on my face. I knew what had to be done. But that didn’t mean I’d like it.

I’ve made too many mistakes not to know what was coming next.

“Punch,” I said, tapping for comm-direct to all squads. “Covering fire. Moving on…” The air was hot and my voice didn’t want to work right as I gave the orders. And by right, I mean hero-right, or at least even some kind of confident and capable leader. I’d settle for capable. Last thing anyone needed to hear was their sergeant freaking the hell out in the middle of it all. “… speedball,” I croaked at last as my vocal cords found some moisture and moved enough for me to make some sounds. Yeah, a movie star I’d never be. I couldn’t even get my lines out.

“Copy that, Sarge!”

Punch loves war. Loves it because it’s really just fighting. He’s easy-going and generally highly motivated, and easily the scrappiest dude I’ve ever met. In the moments after he lost his finger inside the data stacks aboard the Clipper he just swore, muttered promises about what he was gonna do to the next bunch he found, and tapped off the stump. Choker gave him a handful of pills and he chewed them angrily, swallowed some water, and hissed “Get it on” to show me he was good to go.

So, he’s having fun. At least someone is.

I didn’t wait for everything we had left to open up and dump all we had for covering fire for us to move on the speedball. I just shouted, “Follow me!” like every dead infantry commander since time started keeping track of grunts, and pushed off from our sweet cover, running for everything I was worth to reach that special delivery package before the Savage mech overran the terminal.

The concrete, hot and burning through my boots, shook as the massive thirty-three-ton behemoth took its next step and unloaded with a fusillade of whooshing micro-missiles that salvo’d on the terminal. The deadly GAU-88s began to spool up to hot, sending streaking fire, smoking the outsides of the terminal tower, turning the elegant neo-universal structure to swiss cheese in seconds.

We reached the speedball in the looming shadow of the death machine, knelt, and got it open. It was literally little more than an aerodynamic clamshell with ablative heat shielding that had burned away and distributed reentry heat. Then an a-grav braking thruster one-shot slowed the delivery down to terminal speed and allowed a hard landing as the thing came bouncing and skidding across the AO. That rough landing might make this all for nothing. Speedballs were only for danger close and desperate situations. Safety parameters got disabled to get it done on time. Hopefully the package was still intact.

Hopefully. Because if it wasn’t, well, then I was out of tricks. And for the record I’ve never told my story. But maybe that’s for the best. In a big universe I’m nobody. So who cares anymore. The important thing was I did my best until it was time to check out. Then my shift was over and all the problems got handed off to the new Sarge.

Inside we found cans and drums of ammo. Not good against a heavily armored walker. But enough for the platoon to resupply some. I pulled a few of the cans out and found a long slender missile-launcher crate along the bottom of the speedball. Conveniently packed so as to be the last thing I could get my hands on when it was exactly the first thing I needed right about now if we were gonna live to see the next two minutes.

I swore and