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

just attached herself to us and there wasn’t a damn thing we could do about it. And if we did? What were the consequences? There was a lotta dark speculation and superstition on that point.

At least those were the whispers late at night between us when Strange Company wondered just how weird the galaxy could get when it wanted to.

“He’s coming…” she said so softly I almost couldn’t hear her over the developing battle that was becoming the enemy’s next push. And our last chance.

Below, the first flashbangs were thrown. Sprayed automatic gunfire, distant and harsh, echoing down through the dark maintenance levels below the main terminal, resounded. They were coming for us now. Our line was collapsing and in full retreat, probably now five clicks to our rear. Any army on the move and exploiting a breakout would now be sending in reserves, specially designated troops, to wipe out pockets of overrun resistance.

That’s what we were now.

A pocket of resistance that needed to be dealt with now that the lines had changed. The battle lost. Wiped out. Cleaned up. Someone’s planning indicated our fate.

KIA. Killed in action.

“What?” I asked her, knowing full well what she’d said. Electronic hearing protection augmented voice and softened anything above thirty decibels. Like gunfire.

She bit her lip and looked at me like she felt sorry for an idiot. It wasn’t critical. It was more like pity. Pity for what was about to happen to me. To us. Reaper.

“He’s coming now, Sergeant,” she said again.

My skin began to crawl because I knew. I knew who she meant. But I was tired. Coming down off the retroviral drugs and the lingering effect of the psychotropic agent. And scared to death. It’s best to be honest about these things. And fighting for my life of course. All our lives.

“Who?” I muttered.

“Wild Thing,” she murmured. “He’s coming now, Sergeant.”

Chapter Twenty-One

Nether, the sanest Voodoo operator and by far the weirdest, physically speaking, thinks it’s a quantum entanglement of some kind. The thing she, the Little Girl, calls Wild Thing. Yeah, we discussed that one time during one of those late-night conversations when Reaper drew the night watch and the officer on duty was the Voodoo specialist Nether. The sergeants can handle the watch, but some old military habit prevents us from not having an officer to take the blame for whatever happens.

The military, every military, has its religious observance of ancient duties and traditions of how things get done. And it’s the same religion they all abide by the traditions of. Ironic that we do these things so we can wipe each other out. Even though we serve the same concept.

Still… we fight.

So, if So-So had come in drunk, escorted by a couple of local law enforcement types, with cuts and bruises and promises that he gave more than he got, then a duty officer to handle the problem and take the blame was a good thing. For all sides concerned. Company and slighted locals.

So-So. He liked to drink. Never told me his story. He just liked to have a good time. So maybe that was his story. Some stories are shorter than others. Not all stories are tragedies. I have to remind myself of that sometimes.

But yeah, it was Nether and me in the TOC one night when things were real quiet. If I think back, we’d had the Wild Thing on our minds that week. We’d gotten into a pretty bad ambush in some no-name village that felt like all the villages of that type the galaxy could produce. Mud huts and starship salvage converted long ago to permanence. Tribes and elders. People who only knew of Earth as the entertainment capital of the universe, and not where they, their ancestors, had ever come from. Doe-eyed village girls who’d sell themselves for a ticket out of there, some rations, or just the dream that maybe you were something different than what they’d ever have.

And of course, young local men with murder in their eyes.

Old local men with murder in their hearts also.

We rolled into that village and dismounted to sweep for weapons. Whoever it was we were working for on that one wanted it cleared for no reason I can remember as of the writing of this, whatever it is that I’m doing within these logs.

I remember the village was full and swollen and doing market day business when we came in just after noon local. Nomads coming in from the ice. Yeah, there’d been ice on that world. Vast stretches of it. Big mines that reached way down into the crust to get something valuable I could never quite pronounce or spell. I just knew it was important to the Monarchs’ economy.

I remember all that being important. But that doesn’t mean it’s important to private military contractors.

I remember being on the dismount just before it went down and suddenly noticing that the entire village, which had been swarming with traders ten minutes before, was now pretty lonely. The last of them scurrying off down alleyways made of old hull plating that had probably come from one of the big lifters straight from a place called Chi-Nah back on Earth. I had no idea as the wind from off the ice began to pick up and blow. Whistling as it came through the tin and metal structures. Spraying us with ice. Cutting us with its cold. I remember the old markings on the remains of these ships looked a lot like Pan Scrawl. I remember suddenly noticing the absence of indig life and getting that sick feeling in my stomach like today was not going to be easy.

That it wasn’t just going to be bad, but real bad. I get that a lot. I’d like to learn to ignore it. But it’s saved me on more than one occasion. So I’ve learned to listen to it when it starts talking.

I remember Hoser hefting his Pig and muttering in the sudden silence and absence of local village life,