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

“They’re just animals!” shouted Jacks. “How are animals gonna disable complex systems?”

I had no idea.

“Pull back now!” ordered the captain.

None of us needed to be told twice. We’d made it fifty meters down the electronics-filled maintenance passage when the hatch came open and a tidal wave of killer monkeys flooded in and came screeching and gnashing for us. Swarming along every surface. Deck. Walls. Ceiling.

There’s no way we’re getting out of this, that background app in my mind kept screaming as I told it to shut up and get moving. Sometimes you just keep fighting even when it looks like you’re gonna lose.

That’s what conflict is.

Everyone wants a fight to go the way they first plan it all out in their fantasies. In the spectacuthriller the mind sees them being the hero of. But those are just fantasies. Plan meets reality on crack is usually how these things turn out.

Sometimes you’re not even sure you know you won. You just keep swinging even though you’re tired enough to stop and take whatever beating is getting handed out. Not sure if you’re gonna win and pretty sure you’ve lost. You just keep doing it. Keep swinging. Keep fighting. Stabbing even if you’ve been done fatally.

The captain’s shotgun boomed, echoing across the passage and comm. Then again. Again. And again. He was holding the line.

All of this competing with short staccato bursts from the Pig as we fell back, burned brass, and gave ground as little as we could afford. I knew Hauser would do whatever it took. Everyone wanted him to lay down his life, except they didn’t think of it like that. Just spend all the runtime he had on our behalf. And he’d do it. He considered us the only friends and family a combat cyborg could have.

How’d he put it? His life was stopped at one second to end of runtime. If he chose, he could activate that internal clock and det on our behalf. A small and very dirty nuclear yield. He’d buy what time he could for his friends.

He even thought he was lucky to have someone like me, someone who knew what he could do in a pinch to save my butt, as a friend.

I felt like the opposite of a friend as the thought crossed my survival mind. I swapped mags and turned and burned a couple of targets, like that would do something against the sea of madness swarming our rear. This was what hopeless looked like.

“Jacks!” I shouted because I had no time to do anything else. “Heads up! Left flank!”

We’d reached a four-way. Down-ship, a second element of murder monkeys was coming straight up a wide passage that looked like some kind of ancient comm and stellargraphy section. Huge map-glass installations and ruined plot tables pulled from their foundations and tossed over carelessly. The monkeys came through this on every side of the passage. Including the ceiling. They were cutting us off.

We were about to get crushed from two sides.

“Heads down!” shouted Jacks as he pulled his ruck off his back and deployed it out in front of us.

I knew this play. I’d seen it before. Things had reached Desperate before. I dove on the Kid who hadn’t and was standing there, rifle up and ready to engage even though everything looked absolutely hopeless.

He hadn’t been around long enough to realize how bad things had gotten. The luxury of youth.

I tackled the Kid as my squad leader wirelessly detted anti-personnel mines all over the passage the new monkey attack was trying. The blast was deafening even with hearing protection. Tungsten-steel balls scattered, exploding violently in every direction. According to specs, the claymores were smart explosives with signature recognition. They were supposed to detonate away from friendlies.

Supposed to is the operative phrase.

Plus, we’d gotten the smart mines from a weapons bazaar and I was pretty sure Chungo, our Voodoo indirect specialist, had picked them up. He’d let us cross a lot of broken glass for a cheap arms deal. But even that is Company SOP. So, you never knew.

I felt the wind get knocked out of me from multiple blasts and hoped I was gonna get to my feet without a serious wound. Or even a minor one.

Just wasn’t room. Sorry, reality, my hands are currently real full. I’d like to pass, pay a small fine, or just ask the dealer for mercy on this one. I seriously can’t afford to be hit if I’m gonna get everyone out of here.

I pushed off the Kid and dragged him up as the smoke cleared. I didn’t feel hit.

But mines do strange things.

“Injured, sound off!” I bellowed in the smoky confusion. Ship’s emergency red lighting had suddenly switched on to react to the damage. Probably on some kind of backup battery still hardwired into the old systems. I got everyone. The captain had taken a metal ball straight through his hand but there wasn’t a lot of blood loss. We had about thirty seconds to assess and move. The anti-personnel explosions had ruined the second monkey element, but we still had the originals flooding up our back trail. Hauser had stayed upright, returning fire through the explosion. More synthetic flesh ripped away from the almost human side of his body. He taken shrap from the blast and gone on relentlessly killing.

“Time to move!” I roared. If only just for motivation.

On the run, we picked up Team One’s back trail and raced up the last corridor for the Node that was our target. Ahead, our feet pounding down the slotted walk where piping and wiring ran beneath, I saw shield barriers and modern auto-gun sentries that had been installed recently. Lighting rigs faced outward.

The science team’s defenses.

I was guessing their security forces had set these up to keep the apes and monkeys back from the areas of the ship they’d reclaimed.

The Kid was there, waving for us to hustle through. We made it as more of the