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

zone for the rest of humanity. As is our very public celebrity front and secret inner sanctum you all suspect we live in. Which we do. If I told you that, would it make sense why I’ve signed on with the company? That I’m recruiting you to fight for my faction against another Monarch faction. Taking you to a higher level of war. Recruiting my own chess pieces for some petty power struggle between the gods. Then it would all make sense, Sergeant? Orion. Just another war. Another op. More dead. More recruited. And maybe your company hits that mythical jackpot that moves you guys back into the long-lost glory days of John Strange, mercenary adventurer who conquered worlds and was a king here or there at times. Or maybe you get some cushy gig on a world and get lazy enough to stop fighting. That would make sense. That fits the usual narrative. At least for the movies… spectacuthrillers. We used to call those movies. Do people like you still do that? Call them movies?”

People like me. Little people. Chess pieces.

“Some,” I mutter, and take another slug of the coffee. It’s getting light now. Some strange desert bird native to this world begins to hoot low and mournfully in the dark as light creeps across the features of this shattered world.

“Well,” says the Monarch, folding her arms across her chest and watching all the beauty come to golden life. Another world where she’ll place her boot and call it her own. She looks the conqueror like John Strange only ever dreamed of.

“But that’s not how it is,” she whispers. “The Monarchs, they’re all on the same team, Orion. Every one of them. There are no sides. No teams. They are all working together. Even the teams out here, they don’t realize there’s only one team, or that they’re working for it too. And this is the part that’ll shock you. They, Monarchs like me, couldn’t even be on another team if they knew it existed. They are slaves too. It’s just that they like the cage because it’s a pretty great cage. Stardom. Celebrity. Youth. Beauty. Your very own world. A modern pharaoh like none of those gods ever were. Do you know what a pharaoh is, Orion?”

The way she said my name… I kinda liked it, even though listening to her I wasn’t so crazy about her. Or what she was saying. It’s like knowing you’re being conned, like at a casino, but you go anyway. For the fun. Then when someone explains how you can’t win, ever, it’s not so much fun anymore.

Also, I had no idea what a pharaoh was. I told her so.

“They were living gods back in the early days of Earth’s history. Men, and women, who walked the ancient sands of a place called Egypt like gods among men. Huge structures were built for them. Palaces to live in. Temples to them as deities. Pyramids to be buried in. Everything, the entire society, was for them. Their followers built them fantastic tombs and then walled themselves up inside when the living god finally died. For a long time, after the pharaohs were gone, no human among the masses of humanity, the great conquerors, the wise leaders, the tech overlords, they never attained that level of absolute power over their fellow humans. None of its rulers. Not the best and brightest. But… with the coming of the Monarchs back in the twenty-first century, rising out of the tech overlords, before we changed the calendar, the pharaohs returned once more to be revered, protected, built for, and worshipped. And we, Orion, we are them. The Monarchs are the pharaohs now. And there are no power struggles. No teams. No your side and my side. It’s all just one great big side. The Monarchs. And it’s all lies.”

“Great story,” I interrupted. “But I gotta get everyone who’s left alive up and moving before we get spotted by Ultra tac air and turned to red mist. We got problems to overcome today, lady, and it’s best to get it on as we like to say in the company.”

But that wasn’t good enough for her. Remember, she’d explained to me who she was. Who was I to get busy living when she was telling what it was really like? Like it is. And so shall it ever be.

“I asked you if you believe in anything, Orion. A religion. Some cause? I don’t know. But do you?”

I finished the coffee and stowed my smart canteen that was once more smart, and about which I was unreasonably happy. Not that you could tell by my face. I’ve been in charge of too many motivated dumb young men to ever let happiness cross my face again.

Still… hot coffee! Yay!

“No,” I told her, and gave a low whistle to Hauser. The combat cyborg turned and gave me a thumbs-up. Mechanically and almost human. Which made me love my friend even more. The night watch was done.

Why couldn’t humanity be more like the cyborg? I was sure later, when there was some kind of break, if there was a break, he would tell me that while he watched over us all night, sensors sweeping, combat shotgun ready to shred any predator that got near us and alert us all at the same time, he would tell me he’d seen something in the night. Something beautiful in nature. Some desert fox or other small animal indigenous to this world. That he’d watched them come out at night, a family of hunters, and that he’d studied them while being ever-vigilant. Sometimes he would ask me questions about the human structure of families. General questions. How long do you stay together, Sergeant Orion? Not as long as we should have, Hause. But you don’t realize that until later when it’s all gone and everyone you loved is dead. Who is in charge of the family, Sergeant Orion? Depends. On what, Orion? So many things, Hause. Death.