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

paymasters could use it as an excuse to cheat and/or extort us. Trust me, it’s heads-up ball all the time being a private military contractor company.

So, two things happen. One, we get that weasel Junkboy sober. Within the week he was off the junk and headed toward a really annoying sobriety that bothered all of us coffee-drinkers of late. Long story short… we just PT’d him to death until he was very clean, and very clear that we would not tolerate his habit any longer. Two-hour smoke sessions on the hour. Every hour. Or at least that’s how Strange Company corrective PT was supposed to feel. Spoiler: it felt worse. Every sergeant had to go through it to know how it felt, and how it worked. Fun, huh? And two, Junkboy got assigned to Ghost because even though he’d committed war crimes, he’d committed them really well. Sleeper acknowledged that Junkboy possessed a certain unrefined affinity for the sniper trade which could be brightened and honed to Sleeper’s standards.

Junkboy did most of this conflict on Astralon and did it well with Ghost as a scout-sniper. Not a hint of drug use. So much so that he was placed back into Reapers as an assistant squad leader so he could train the indocs to serve as squad-designated marksmen and select for talent in sniping.

Sleeper is too valuable in Ghost to be bothered with training indocs. And like I said he’s a bonified rock star. So why would he ever want to leave his little kingdom in the Ghost?

Only an idiot like me would want to stay in Reapers forever. But I have my reasons.

So, as I was saying, I was just about to turn the new kid over to Junkboy right there in the abandoned bank we’re operating out of inside the big apartment block we took away from the now-defunct Grau Skull and covering the approach to the starport, when Junkboy takes one right in the head. The enemy snipers had been crawling in close to take shots. Half his skull came away and painted the new kid and me in brains and bone matter as we talked. But I was already bloody and dirty from close to thirty-six hours of fighting for that section of the small city.

The enemy now knows we’re going for the starport. So of course, they’ve tried to counterattack for the last three days.

I told myself I’d take a good two-day coma once we got off this whack world. If we got off.

If Junkboy had been wearing his helmet, like he should have been, he might have lived. But hanging with Sleeper and the snipers had convinced him of the folly of such life-saving measures. So now he was dead. And dead was dead as far as the company was concerned.

Now the whole CP was under fire.

The bank was along the outer wall of the massive structure. A great place for snipers to shoot into and assault teams to try to take. So of course, Reaper got it.

The sound of distant artillery mechs moving through the streets three blocks west to the LZ was the only sound just seconds before the sudden cacophonic firefight broke out as once again the enemy tried to storm the bank.

I swore and tackled the Kid, dragging him to the ruined floor and pulling my weapon with me while Junkboy’s corpse just lay there and twitched. In the company you always know where your weapon is. You could find it blind in the dark at midnight. Why? Because you have to, otherwise you’re dead.

“Snipers!” someone shouts out lamely from the fighting positions along the northern ruin of the wall as an enemy heavy machine gun firing AP and mixed tracer opens up on what remains of the bank’s glassy facade. A moment later, the massive shattered windows that faced east and probably allowed the golden sunlight of this world in and onto the marble and bronze of this place, conveying a sense of wealth, propriety, and stability, come apart as suppressive fire rakes that side of the building.

I tap the comm and tell the Old Man we got incoming at Reaper.

“Acknowledged,” he says. The reply is characteristically terse in his tired smoke-stained voice. But it’s calm and not at all worked up about the situation. Which is exactly what you want in your leaders. Imagine asking for support from some guy who’s as freaked out as you are once you start getting pushed by the enemy. The captain’s orders always reassure me when the incoming starts incoming. I guess that’s why he’s in command of the company and why everyone just calls him the Old Man even though every company commander has had that title for hundreds of years of the history of our little outfit as near as I can find in the deep logs.

“Stay close to me,” I tell the Kid lying on the floor next to me. Tracer rounds are streaking through the building above our heads and I hear most of Reaper open up in reply. If we have wounded, the best way to treat them in the middle of a firefight is to return fire.

That’s good.

“Got movement in the streets!” It’s Punch. He’s my best squad leader and he generally works well with me to hold the platoon together. All the squad leaders have served in other platoons and they’ve either been identified as teachers who can help me get the indocs up to speed, or as problems no one wants in the other platoons. Punch is a teacher. He’s excellent at battle management and tactics. Combatives and shooting skills, too. One time he flanked an ambush back on Golus and pushed them off their axis of attack all by himself with just his rifle, a bandolier of grenades, and seriously bad intentions. He read the battle right that day and tonight he’s reading it and I hope it’s right.

“We’re pinned from the north by sniper fire coming from ruins across the street, Sar’nt Orion.