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

Standard Ultra hunting group is three teams and a rifle assault team staged nearby for cleanup. Death squad configuration. Ask your cyborg to scan at seven and eleven. I’m checking also on visual…”

“This is bad,” mutters Nox. “What if they’re just gonna call in an airstrike on the whole place? Do everyone! This whole block will be one giant fireball, man!”

Yeah. All that. It’s going to hell in a handbasket and suddenly I’ve got decisions to make. Let Hauser loose and trigger the ambush. Identify as many tangos as I can and wait to figure everything out. Walk away and take my chances all by myself out there in the dark and rain. Maybe smoke a few cigarettes and run up the score against the Ultras themselves. There’s a certain dark attraction in the anonymity of such a doomed, off-the-rails last run. Maybe one last chance to really feel alive before death or the re-education rings.

I decide to at least call the First Sergeant and let him know the Ultras are in the AO and ready to party.

“Don’t,” she says as I tap for the First Sergeant. Like she can see the comm data projected in my combat lens on the surface of my eye. “Ultras have every channel hacked. Even yours. Have for months. They never hit a world without being in total control. Sometimes they are even in your units serving as grunts. You call this in, and they’ll know they’re blown. Their commander will have two options at that point. Release the death squad they’ve probably got stacked nearby, or just do the whole objective with the gunship on station.” She points into the night. Up there in a cloud front. “See?” she says. “Wraith on standby orbit. Their commander gets the word and they’ll unload everything they’ve got right down on top of us. Endgame.”

Oh boys. This is way above my pay grade.

I push back in my seat, tighten every muscle, count to five, and then release. It’s a technique I picked up a long time ago. It’s also a stall to see if someone will figure out something for this poor dumb sergeant to shoot at instead of forcing me to pick a target.

Honestly, I’m happiest, if it has to be combat, with just good ol’ movement to contact and bounding overwatch. That’s just a dance and there are rules to play it by. If you follow ’em you might live. And I like that. The simplicity. The steps. The math. The promise. I can do those things.

“So what do we do?” I ask.

“Sniper team acquired at ten o’clock,” says Hauser. “Rooftop. Sniper setting up. Spotter scanning for targets.”

When Hauser’s report is finished, she adds, “Team three at seven. Right where I thought they’d be. That’s the trap, Sergeant. This whole place is about to become a shooting gallery.”

“And?” I ask, not a little pissed off.

She’s quiet.

“You’re aware time is probably not on our side,” I prompt her. “I need to let the rest of Strange know they’re about to get hit…”

She holds up a hand. Stopping me of course because she’s a Monarch and I’m just me.

Two Avengers streak right over the top of us and I think, Welp. This is it. And wait for a cluster bomb to ignite the whole station in a ball of fiery death. Or maybe they’ll just sew a cluster minefield and we’ll all see which one of us can get everyone else killed first.

Nothing happens. We don’t die in the roar of their passing wake. They were headed for someone else to kill. Plus, there’s that heavy gunship in the clouds just waiting to rain steel. I barely see its lights way up there. Sometimes I don’t. If I remember my weapon platforms right, the Wraith carries three twenty-millimeter cannons among its other weapons with which to rain down death upon all of us for several grid squares. It’s even got a heavy artillery piece.

I know for a fact that that ship has some kind of motto stenciled on the side about running but not being able to hide. Or just dying tired.

Fun, huh?

“Listen, Sergeant,” she begins. “That death squad is going to come down one of these three streets once the snipers start working. They don’t want to use the gunship because they’ll lose the refuel point and right now, until the Battle Spire sets down, they need easy resources to keep expanding their control sphere as they start combat operations. You have to hit those teams and be ready to react to the Ultra death squad that will come in to clean up. I don’t know your unit’s capabilities, but that’s how it will go down in the next few minutes. Ten at most. I’m estimating five. So make your response in the next two.”

“And how do you know this?”

Silence.

Then, “I commanded an Ultra division during the Sindo. Narak Desert Campaign.”

Uh… is what I don’t say. That was two hundred years ago. I also don’t say that because that would make crazy sound even crazier. But that’s not important right now. What’s important is dealing with this developing turkey shoot.

“Hauser, dismount and take out the team at ten position using urban guerilla warfare protocols.”

This means he’ll try to do it by stealth and surprise. One man against ten Ultra Marines. Odds no one would take. A definite death sentence. But he’s not a man. He’s a combat cyborg optimized for such missions.

This is his actual wheelhouse.

“Affirmative, Sergeant,” says the killing machine I call my friend.

“Need it done in less than two, buddy.”

Hauser retrieves his secondary weapon. A Bastard with a high-cycle drum magazine for max output of subsonic ammunition. The huge suppressor makes the weapon even longer. He uses this weapon system exclusively for surprise attacks as the Pig is usually too loud and much too obnoxious.

He nods and trots off into the darkness.

That’s one team I’m hoping is mostly handled.

I tap for Nether. Ten seconds later his disembodied voice is in my ear. Though