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

As I thought about all this, I gave a dark little chuckle at the impending irony of Boom Boom’s tag. No one bothered to ask me what I was amused at. Everyone was pretty much pins and needles to watch what was gonna happen next.

We do love our explosions. Almost as much as our dirty tricks. And, as an NCO, I thought this was good for us. Always look on the bright side, Sergeant Orion. For once we were pulling a scam, a staple of Strange Company that had often given us an advantage where supplies, equipment, numbers, and weapons didn’t. Those things were often on the wanting end for us when facing an enemy. But Voodoo Platoon game-changed that. Unfortunately, we didn’t have a lot of Voodoo right now to play games. But games we still had.

Someone actually sniggered. I could tell we were pretty pleased with ourselves. As their NCO, I was cool with that. We’d been taking a beating for a bit too long now. It was time for an “Eat This!” to the galaxy.

Meanwhile Boom Boom was closing and we were hoping they’d go ahead and let him into their midst now that he’d been spotted and didn’t seem like an attacking force or a threat of any kind. If the sniper did engage, that was no big loss. Boom Boom was already dead. If they blew his head off and the vehicle just kept closing, then they’d have a heads-up. But the vehicle was a guided missile now. Shredding our “driver” wasn’t gonna stop the pain coming their way.

Ultras have a lot of magic tricks. Like I said, they have the latest and best equipment the Monarchs can produce. Our Monarch, the Seeker, assured me that yes there are things an executioner team might have to defend themselves against what we were about to do to them, but more than likely only a few would survive our surprise.

“Uh… last time I checked,” noted Hoser, Reaper’s very large gunner carrying the second Pig, Hustle the AG always nearby and humping belts of ammunition to feed the beast, “an Ultra Marine was worth ten-to-one. Executioners are high-speed low-drag special forces, Sar’nt. Not that I mind all that noise and all, I was lab-grown to kill, but I’m guessing that number goes up with men of their expertise. So…”

He made a show of counting how many we had.

Ten. There were ten of us.

“So unless we get all but one of ’em, we’re gonna have some real problems going through the choke.”

“We might get all of ’em,” said Punch optimistically. Like some lone voice in the wilderness, a prophet no one believed in anymore telling everyone the religion of Luck was still in play despite ours having been nothing but bad since long before this mess. Repent and believe, for the hour of their annihilation might be at hand… maybe, if the dice say, so be it. Sorta.

Still, “Gotta have faith, guys,” I reminded what was left of my once forty-man platoon. “Maybe about to change.”

“Says who,” muttered someone from the cheap seats. I ignored the remark as NCOs know when and when not to do.

We held our breath for the sound of sonic booms that would indicate the executioner sniper had fired his very powerful rifle. He could take out the Mule, yes, but he’d need some pretty good hits. That thing was rated to stand up to a tank round. Conceivably. The people inside the Mule when the tank round hit… ummmm, not so much. But hey, nothing’s perfect. And in any case we didn’t have any people in the Mule that was now cruising casually three thousand meters across the Crack of Doom. Just Boom Boom with his perma-smile and mirrored spacer shades.

How was Boom Boom driving, you might ask? If he was dead and all? Hauser had hacked the Mule’s onboard systems and was controlling the vehicle remotely. All Boom Boom had to do was sit back and enjoy the ride. And then live up to his tag.

My plan, which now seemed like something a Neolithic caveman would come up with to do the other tribe out of their more comely females, had been to take my good friend’s body and turn him into a suicide bomber by loading all our high-ex, grenades, and any other explosives anyone had, into the Mule and detting it on the sniper in the checkpoint tower. More than likely that would destabilize enough of the ambush for us to take no more than sixty percent casualties going through at high speed. I was warned by Hauser there was a thirty-six-point-something percent chance the bridge in that section might collapse from usage of all our available high-ex. Fourteen percent chance it would collapse entirely. Leaving us trapped on this side of the Crack of Doom.

“I’m cool with that,” I said as I made ready to shove my remaining shape charges into the passenger’s seat so they’d det on impact.

High-Ex was our one true religion of explosives until the Monarch stepped in. We were gathered around our dead friend like hobgoblins improvising some new giggling wickedness to get their necks out of yet another noose. Soldiers are little more than ever that. You have to be honest about these things. Especially when you’re gambling on body-tossing your enemies off an objective after a firefight where it looked like you were all gonna die.

“I think I have something that can help,” she said. The Seeker. The Monarch. An otherworldly beauty that had no business among our unclean kind about our wickedness. Her voice clear and strong in the desert silence along the ridge like a song about trains that reminds you it’s long past time to be getting to a home you never shoulda left.

Clock wasn’t just burning. It was on fire. We needed to make that rally. We needed to cross the desert and link up. The rest of Strange,