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

two weeks later, and now that irradiated nuclear wasteland of a world that was once called Blue because of its beauty is now just marked as off-limits on the stellar charts.

“They be bringin’ in a bank ship in the next few hours,” muttered Stinkeye as he hit his flask, didn’t work the shovel, and stared up at the giant Monarch ship, whispering curses like incantations under his hot breath.

“You don’t know nothin’ ’bout nothin’, Little King. No one does.”

Preacher was moving down the line. Kneeling over each body bag. Murmuring a few words. I watched his work. No one believed in anything. But they all needed to know he was doing this. I saw guys hauling out cans of 5.56 and belts of 7.62. Fifty, also. Crates of grenades. Like we were going for sabertoothed bears on Cylor instead of running for our lives on a world called Crash. Not Astralon. That game was over. Mark it so on the maps. As the men lugged, I watched them cast quick glances at Preacher. Watching his work no one believed in. Needing it all the same.

More freak squalls of hot rain coming down off the giant ship swept the yard, leaving everything wet and sticky. Strange gusts and breezes would come out of nowhere and wash over body bags, blowing Preacher’s white hair. Titanic noises and lights in the clouds above that made you feel small and desperate.

Preacher.

Yeah. He’s some kind of holy man. But he doesn’t shun weapons. I’ve seen him show up at the most convenient of times in the middle of a battle to start blazing away with his sidearm or carry the wounded out of harm’s way. Or jump on a gun whether it needs a gunner or an AG.

I asked him what his story was once, and he said he didn’t have one. How he’d come to the company. What he was running from. That last part was implied. But everyone knows it’s there. He told me he was forgiven of all his story. That he didn’t have one anymore.

I asked, “What do I put down in the logs when it’s your time to go?”

He just smiled and replied, “Oh, I don’t know. You’ll know, Orion. Maybe say something about how he preached what he believed every day without ever saying a word. I’d like that. I’d like to be worthy of that.”

And then he added, “And say the part that’s true, Orion. Put Strangers to the universe. Brothers to the end.”

I watched him going down the line, doing his work, telling the dead what they needed to hear.

Chapter Twenty-Eight

We rolled out two hours later. As usual, with an invading force closing the noose and breathing down our collective necks, the candle burning, the clock ticking, all the tense metaphors you can do, we sat in our new rides, waiting to be told which wire to cut. The green or the blue.

That too was a metaphor.

Apparently, we were still getting satellite drone data showing Ultra positions and the general state of play regarding the invading force. If things had looked bad as the game changed, once the picture came into focus, they were just downright awful. The entire Resistance line had been smashed from one end to the other. Now friendly units were either on the run and had lost all cohesive integrity, or they were surrendering en masse and hoping for some kind of mercy.

These were usually units that had no experience with the Monarchs, and especially the Ultras, and therefore didn’t understand that the term mercy was as foreign to them as the sun might be to a deep shark on the icy world of Graymist. We watched one unit get taken into custody and five minutes after they’d piled their weapons, they were lined up and shot. Also en masse.

Ultra Marines are ruthless killers. And they’re pretty efficient about it. I’m sure there’s a whole SOP for mass murder of every type somewhere in their training manuals. That and much worse.

The Old Man fed that live feed out to the squads so everyone could get a good look at what their fate would, not might, be if they did indeed decide to try that particular escape route from the unfolding endgame of this lost conflict. If just so Strange Company knew, and just so we didn’t have to recruit too much along the way or wherever we got our next chance. Remember, the company is always recruiting. We don’t stand on any kind of ceremony. Even while we waited in the lead vehicle, we watched a line of sappers, combat engineers from Astralon herself, guys that woke up this morning and thought they had a real live chance of being on the in-charge side by the end of the day, retreating. Really it was fleeing just as fast as they could hump. The First Sergeant who was pulled up alongside Reaper in the lead vehicles where we were waiting for the order to move out, shouted to the retreating sappers as they passed.

“Hey, kid! What unit you with?”

“Three-six-five,” says the guy tiredly.

First Sergeant back to me whispering, “We could always use more of them guys in case what’s-his-face gets blown up.”

“Jacks,” I clarified.

“Yeah, him. Good with the H-E but you never know. Explosives are fun but they’re real unforgiving if you know what I mean, Sergeant Orion.”

I did.

“Heard you guys got into it real bad a couple of hours back,” said the First Sergeant, turning back to the sappers on the move. “How’s that sergeant who ran supply for you boys? We traded him some rations a while back.”

“Prolly dead,” said the sapper, who’d paused to stand there and shift back and forth in his worn combat boots while answering Top’s questions. “Before the unit comm went down an Ultra hit team got the TOC hard and fast. Whole command section got wasted. Gotta hump, First Sergeant, sorry. Heard there was a drop that could take us to a bulk hauler up-orbit carrying