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

It bled. Yes. But it didn’t stop its attack. It squeezed itself into the tiny room that would be our tomb for sure, a mass of other apes howling and gibbering to get past it. These were big too. Not as big. But things you wouldn’t want to meet ever.

The captain fired six concussive booms, adding shotgun slugs to the damage, blowing out one huge malevolent eye in the giant ape’s immense skull. The thing roared, dragged a bloody claw at its devastated eye, and heaved another paw across our line. The captain and Hauser went flying as the tree trunk arm batted them into the wall of the science station.

I stood, dumped a mag, ejected, and got tackled by a flying monkey. The spider-quick thing was arms, claws, and fangs all at once. It smelled bad and tried to rip through my chest rig as it fought to tear my face off. I let go of my rifle, pulled my karambit, and rammed the blade into its skull as it was the only chance I had with the second and a half left to me. I pulled the blade out and rammed it home five more times to get the thing to stop mindlessly flailing at me. The Monarch was blazing away above, standing over my body, spent brass hitting me in my blood-covered face as I struggled with the feral predator.

The Kid pulled the monkey off my body.

I was still holding the magazine I was going to insert when I got to my feet and watched as the team brought down the big ape with more fire. Hauser was back up and spent the last belt walking forward and spraying the goliath everywhere he could with a cone of lead death that washed over the beast. Portions and chunks of its flesh came away in great sprays as the hail of gunfire ruined its massive frame. Monkeys and apes moving past their dying god streaked in at the combat cyborg and tore away more of his own synthetic flesh.

The captain pulled them off with his bad hand and shot them with his good hand wielding the Hardballer.

More monkeys were flooding in. More by the second. We were going to get overrun now that our line had lost cohesion and integrity.

“We can do this!” shouted Punch over full-auto blare from his shorty. “Hold the line, Strange!”

He’d make a good platoon leader, I thought as I watched the battle from some distant part of my mind. If we survived. But there were so many of them coming through the security door now, over the dead giant and straight at us, that it seemed impossible the flood would ever end, or that we would survive more than another minute at best.

“Thirty seconds!” shouted the Monarch. “Once I have it, we can fall back through to the next security station. More guns there will buy us time to reach the transport lift to the science base. Hang in there, Reapers.”

I burned another mag on six of them, unsure if I’d killed any or just shot them a bunch. It was like a lunatic asylum had turned into a carnival shooting gallery. It was madness. Blood spray. And monkey guts. Hard to know what was true in the bloody darkness.

I’ve fought battles. But nothing like this. And I never wanted to again if any of them were ever going to be like this one. It wasn’t human. It wasn’t sane. And if these were somehow the Simia from a future with no humanity, forced back in time with a lost starship that couldn’t make its way back to when it was supposed to be, then I could see why humanity wasn’t the apex predator in the future. The Simia were relentless when enraged.

Last mag.

I called it.

“Black on magazines!”

It had been a long day. A very long day.

“Grenades, Sar’nt!”

“Negative,” I yelled at the Kid. The quarters were too tight for explosives. We’d kill ourselves.

“I know!” he shouted over the madness. “Cover me. I’m going to throw ’em out the door.”

I saw what the Kid was saying. If he could wade through and chuck them out into the main passage, maybe he could buy us some space. But it was a bad idea. A real bad idea. Ridiculous even. The kind a kid who joined up to become a mercenary and really needing to be a hero would think of. Trying to right some wrong no one would ever find out about. And… I didn’t have enough confidence in him to get those tossed grenades through the door under pressure.

I pulled my sidearm.

“Pull your sidearm!” I yelled at him. A monkey came flying in. The Monarch shot it, and blood splashed across our faces as the thing thrashed and died. “Follow me!”

I pulled my first fragmentary grenade. It would be easier to deploy while just working the sidearm. Easier to get the grenades in play. The Bastard dangled uselessly on its two-point sling as I waded out, blazing away at screaming monkeys, splashing skulls with rounds. Screaming for no reason I can remember.

“Captain!” I yelled as I surged stupidly forward into everyone’s field of fire. “Keep ’em off us now!”

I’ll take fun last words before fratricide for a thousand.

I had no idea if that was even possible. To keep them off of us with supporting fire. Gunfire was wild. Emotions and adrenaline high. Survival instinct kicking in above all else. It was here, at the intersection of these points that people got good and killed by their own actions and friends. And not just by the enemy.

But what other way did we have?

We needed time to reach the next science station and the protection of its guns. When in doubt, grenades out.

I shot one point-blank, blowing it back with the force of my weapon. It screamed and staggered away, its monkey claws still reaching to do harm. Another came in and I just pressed the muzzle of my sidearm to its skull and pulled