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

“Where are you?” I say in Pan-Numerican. I speak a little. Nether speaks a lot. We usually talk in it just so no one listens in on what we’re saying. Nether likes his privacy. I try to learn things just to pass the time.

“Abeam the refueling of the crawler,” he replies in our preferred language. I’m betting the Ultras monitoring this channel, at least local, don’t speak Pan-Numerican. It’s considered a dirty language by the Monarchs. Anyone at Ultra Strategic Intel, probably running a station inside the Battle Spire, is going to have to run a translation program, assess, and then interact with unit commanders. That might buy us a couple of minutes. “Thirty meters out in the dark. Watching the street to the south,” finishes Nether.

That’s our back trail. I spot his location, see nothing, and realize why he’s not aware of the snipers. They’re right above him.

“We got probs. Big ones. Ultras are in the AO and setting up to start knocking us down. In…” I twist my wrist and check my cheap watch synchronized with Hauser’s hit. “A minute thirty-seven, Hauser’s hitting one of their elements. I need you to do your thing and make them go away in the building you’re shadowing in. They’re five stories right above your head. Northwest corner. Can do?”

Long pause in which it sounds like I’m listening to the emptiness of the universe.

I turn back to the Monarch.

“You ever work a fifty?”

She nods without giving me some stupid CV about how hardcore she is. Yeah, I’m in lust with her. But that little bit makes me respect her a lot more. Every spectacuthriller I’ve ever watched, the infinitely talented female ninja killer has to give you some ridiculous history of how badass she is. It’s tiresome and standard for all Monarch propaganda. But this Monarch babe just nods, and as I flash my eyes upward toward the gun, I hear my own breathing start to get rapid because get it on time with the Monarchs’ elite fighting unit is about to begin. I can feel it in the air.

I’ve done a lot of things as a soldier with the company. But I’ve never fought Ultra Marines. Few people living have.

Because few people who do so live.

One minute.

I don’t see Hauser.

I’m hearing a dull buzz that’s starting off where Nether is. I scan the darkness in the streets beyond the junction, trying to figure out where the Ultra Marine death squad will come from. That would be nice to know.

The buzz has turned into an ominous hum. I’ve heard it before. Bad things happened.

“Can do,” whispers Nether and then is gone from the comm.

I tap for our chief Voodoo troublemaker. Stinkeye doesn’t speak any other languages except Stinkeye pidge. So I gotta chance it.

“Go…” he mutters darkly.

“We’re about to get hit.”

“Yeah. Felt it, Little King. Know where’s from?”

“Our twelve at the junction. Plus we got snipers. But I need you here to deal with their assaulters coming from our twelve.”

A powerful boom erupts from the tower above Nether’s position. One of the special high-powered rifles the Ultra snipers are rumored to use has begun to speak. Suddenly there’s screaming around the pumps. The mob that had been pressing on Dog trying to top off goes wild and scatters in every direction.

“On da move,” hisses Stinkeye as general comm goes nuts.

“Player’s hit!” comes over the comm. Someone in Dog is calling man down. Automatic gunfire erupts.

“Engage the team at two o’clock,” I yell at the Monarch in my gunner’s position. Without hesitation she opens up and the fifty-cal begins to thud thud thud thunder as she sends rounds and tracer fire into that position.

I check my watch as I switch to on and scan the darkness ahead of us. If their assaulters are coming, they’ll come now.

“Stand by to repel forward, Reaper!” I shout at the rest of my bunch. Then I remember I’ve got a minigun in the driver’s seat. I lay my rifle aside, slide in, and swivel the deadly little chunk of a weapon out and forward, checking the feed and racking the first round.

“Hause…”

Nothing. On the rooftop where he should be, I see and hear nothing. That’s probably good. And as I watch the first Ultras I’ve ever seen in my life sweep out of the darkness ahead, in two teams, and moving like ghosts out looking for souls to steal, I aim the weapon at them.

I open fire with the minigun firing 7.62 from all six barrels. It blurs outbound lead and I need to adjust range as it does so. At this distance the Ultras’ death squad, a specific unit type that handles specific functions and tasks, is little more than shadows of larger than human size.

Death squads are the Ultra basic rifle unit. They wear heavy armor plating over their arms, chests, legs, backs, and feet. They have helmets that look like modern versions of the ancient Spartan war helm. If you get close enough, or so I’ve heard, you can see a fiery burning eye scanning back and forth through the visor where the eyes should be.

Stinkeye once said, “Dey a cyclops, little King. Monstahs from another galaxy not this one. No man evah wanna be one o’ dem killers. But dey can make ’em. Dat’s what the Monarchs do. Make monsters. Just like dey made me.”

Chief Cook called him a liar. They were both drunk and looking to go at each other with knives. They’ve done it before. Both have scars given by the other. Cook’s got one on his belly. Stinkeye’s left arm doesn’t work like it really should because Cook caught him with the knife there one time and it cut real deep. They were both so drunk neither remembered it.

“It’s a tac sensor, you old fraud!” bellowed Cook that time we were talking about the Ultra bucket. I noticed he kept his hand in his pocket where he kept the flick knife he used. He