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

My mind remembers it. I just can’t recall it now.

The universe is a dark, and very weird place. Stuff happens.

As Stinkeye likes to say when anyone, me, mentions something strange and unexplainable, “Ya ain’t ken half of it, Little King.” And then he hits his iconic totem flask by which most of the company weighs their fate and sighs, “Not by half. They some crazy out there in the big dark you no never wanna meet.”

The terminal all around us shakes violently as we reach the top of the escalator and race for the bar. Choker waves to us frantically. He’s holding here. As we run, he disappears, weaving into the blackness behind the once shiny and polished corporate drinking lounge.

He ain’t waiting. He’s smart. Not smart enough to get out of Reaper, but smart enough to know when everything’s gone to hell in a handbasket.

The Wild Thing detonated some kind of weapon down and behind us that blew out one of the walls down there. Like the lower levels suddenly got hit by a bunker buster dropped from a destroyer in orbit. Hearing protection struggles to contain and eliminate the strident decibels that suddenly shriek and crash, and the Little Girl falls ahead of us, cutting herself on broken glass along the marble floor.

I can hear more automatic gunfire behind us.

They’re pushing despite the carnage.

The brrrrrrt goes long and strong again. Grenades are used.

I scoop her up and run as the terminal groans, threatening to come down even if the drops are coming in to pull us out. Gas lines explode deep within the belly of the place.

“He’ll be okay?” she screams at me.

It’s a question. Or was it a statement? I enter it in this record as a question. That somehow makes her more human. And less prophetic. If she’s a prophet with access to wherever that thing comes from, I don’t want to know anything about that religion. But maybe, as I think back, she says it like a statement, even though her big dark eyes still tell me it’s a question.

I run, carrying her. Hauser dumps more ammo as we make the bar. I don’t see the targets, but I trust his aim. Still, more rounds race around us from other directions, convincing me they were storming our positions with advance tac teams.

They knew we’d be tough to dislodge. They hit us from a lotta sides.

The Little Girl wipes the cut on her face and smears blood there.

“Come on!” I yell at myself as I reach the stairs leading up. Screaming at myself that I’m not tired, strung out, and frightened to death by the real and the surreal. I ain’t got time to die today, I try to tell myself, as I dig down and see if I’ve got any more left. Enough to get us up to the roof and the LZ. And onto the drops.

We make daylight and see the drops coming in. Chief Cook is holding out two popped purple smoke grenades. Marking the LZ as the hovering warships come in close to pull us off. The smoke undulates and blossoms and I think it’s the most beautiful thing I’ve ever seen. Regal and free and the opposite of all the darkness and death we’ve just left down there to the Wild Thing.

But maybe that’s the last of the drugs shrieking like a mad homeless holy man in what’s left of my mind.

Strange Company Reapers, those that survived, are hustling forward to load the first drop down on the rooftop LZ. A squad from Dog who came in aboard moves to secure the wounded and the dead. Establishing the temporary perimeter as the first drop, laden with criticals, heaves off the roof and howls away into the last of the yellow afternoon. Door gunners chattering death to anyone who dares oppose their exit stage left.

I put the girl down and signal Choker to get her on the next drop.

The captain is crossing from the Dog squad sergeant who came in with the drops. Punch is tapping the helmet on his comm at the same time he’s shouting out the orders he received from the Old Man.

The captain. Iron-gray hair. Wicked scar running down his face from eye to chin. Half-burnt cigarette in his mouth. Old brown leather trench coat flapping in the blast from the drop’s hover engines.

He’s got one of his forty-fives out. He keeps two. One in each coat pocket.

“Sergeant Orion,” he shouts as we get close. “We clear down there?”

He wants to know if we’re waiting on any more of Reaper still down there.

I indicate we are not. The dead were dragged out. Punch updated our roster as he secured the LZ. I watch as the next drop roars hover engines and comes in, shrieking like a banshee. Beyond this the HK circles, lobbing missiles and targeted auto-cannon fire at anyone trying to push our LZ from around the terminal.

This won’t last long. That HK goes bingo on ammo and this mercenary squadron will pull out.

“Tell ’em not to leave us, sir.” I swear and use a slur regarding mercenary aircrews who are notorious for going to full throttle when it gets too hot.

“Negative, Sergeant. They’re in it to win it. At least until we’re all aboard.” He casts one washed-out sun-faded blue eye over his shoulder, glancing at the pilot in the drop that has just come in and put down. A woman. But even with her flight helmet on she’s beautiful. You can tell. Otherworldly beautiful.

I didn’t know it then yet, but that was the first time I saw the Monarch known as the Seeker.

And there have been times since where I wish I never had.

They loaded So-So’s body aboard as the armored OD-green drop idled her powerful squat engines and the crew watched us from behind the shark-nosed canopy of the flight deck. Punch and Boom Boom worked fast to get him on. So-So. I saw his dead face for a second,