Strange Company by Nick Cole (best way to read ebooks TXT) 📗

Even the bewilderment. But her voice, when she spoke, was gentle, and I found myself letting go of a breath I’d been holding for longer than I could remember. Longer than I’d admit to.

“We called them squirters when I worked with the executioner teams. We would set up these chokepoints along identified escape arteries to catch high-value targets for interrogation and intel development. There’s most likely an executioner Inquisitor operating in the garage with a mobile cyber-rack. So we know, when we catch the senior and mid-level military officers who are out in front of the escaping units and trying to save their skins by being first off-world, we know a variety of information ranging from underground networks, doomsday plans, off-world bank accounts they’ve skimmed from war funds, and even actual valuable intel regarding the troops they’ve abandoned. It may seem like slaughter, and it is, but the ones this far in front of the general exodus, they aren’t the angels their stacked bodies might paint them to be.”

She stepped back.

The big problem facing us was crossing that bridge undetected. And that didn’t look possible. Not with an Ultra sniper in an elevated position watching the approach along the bridge. Coming in by land vehicle, there was absolutely no chance of surprise attack. Even a drop might have trouble if we wanted to come in, fast-rope all over the settlement, and shoot it out with an Ultra executioner team. Which we didn’t. Ultras were known to have excellent man-portable anti-air cap.

And then there was the problem of shooting it out in the settlement itself. There was a main street and a few buildings. Not a lot of cover and most likely all of it was set up to their advantage. We didn’t have the numbers for a direct assault. I studied the layout. Probably a bar and a general store of some type for desert traders. A couple of living spaces, a garage and refueling station. The refill would be great for the Mule if we had the time. But to stick around and make that happen under fire from a high-speed team of some of the best the Ultra war machine could put together was gonna get real lethal, real fast, for Reaper.

To be honest, blasting our way through at high speed and trying to bypass the fight was gonna shorten our longevity too. Mines. Traversing fire. It’d be about ten seconds at eighty miles an hour of what hell looks like.

So we couldn’t get close without getting bloody.

Couldn’t take it over.

Couldn’t shoot our way through.

I scratched my head because I was outta tricks. Did I mention my helmet had been blown off back in the terminal? If I didn’t it was because it had really rung my bell for a few minutes during the worst of it. When I looked over and saw it had cracked in half, I knew I had just spent one of my lives in the arcade of death. Right down the center. Which was stunning. That thing was rated for the highest calibers. So whoever hit me had been using something along the lines of an Awlrhino gun. It was a wonder my neck hadn’t snapped on impact.

But war is strange. Who can know it? I ain’t the one to ask. Like I tell everyone… I just work here.

Still, I had no clue how to get us past the Ultra executioner team ambush chokepoint.

Time for some Voodoo, I thought, and looked over to see Stinkeye hurling his guts out on all fours in the dust.

“Hey, buddy…”

He waved me away, moaning about death, falling face-down into his own puke which smelled of gutter liquor and bad meat on the street. I’d smelled it before because I’d known this man for as long as I’d been in the company. I needed him to get it together and pull some of that legendary dark Voodoo operator stuff everyone in Voodoo Platoon is known for.

Nether could probably open up a hole in reality and suck some of the executioner team right into a void or something as we commenced our attack. Even create a tornado by suddenly forming an extreme low-pressure area that could ruin that settlement as we hit it at high speed. Some of us might not die. Chief Cook… well, psyops could do crazy things to their heads. I’d seen him do stuff that wasn’t real, and I would’ve sworn was. The truth was his plaything. He bent it and manufactured what he wanted you to see so we could kill you a lot easier. I wasn’t sure exactly what he could do here, but I was sure he could create something convincing enough to at least let us get close enough to shoot without the sniper ruining us at extreme ranges. And then there was the Little Girl. And her Wild Thing. Unpredictable, yes. But I was pretty sure that dark and psychotic warrior from another dimension she could briefly call into existence could buy us enough time to hit the southern trails and disappear before the Ultras could call in air support to light us up.

As usual, I had none of these Voodoo assets. None of the things I needed to work with right here and right now. Nothing that would make my difficult life a whole lot easier. They were all with the other elements.

All I had was one drunken Psyonix user who was iffy at the best of times and who now seemed to be having some kind of stroke, or bender to end all benders. He might even be dying.

I bent down, never minding the ripe smell of puke.

I would never say this aloud but might as well since this is a written record that will most likely never make it back into the Bright Worlds of galactic human expansion and if it does will end up in Monarch hands where it will be redacted into oblivion. So I’ll say it for the record. However impermanent that record may