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

a minor stellar empire. A hundred years ago before all their plans went up in apocalyptic D-beam strikes.

Apparently, things didn’t work out so well for these people, I think as I stare at the ruin and devastation that remains here.

The night mist has stopped and the place looks like a forgotten cemetery. Quiet and dead.

Now it’s just a dark and creepy disremembered place and even Strange Company, whose bad luck in recent contracts has forced us to make do with less so that we’ve become really good at getting things done by surprise, illusion, and outright stealth, some call it cheating but that’s ridiculous—there’s no cheating in war—but even us doing our best creep can’t avoid the crunch of dirty broken glass that is everywhere in the once-fantastic station made of such materials. Shattered glass and twisted steel. The scarecrow remains of the roof and those fantastic loops that composed the dreamed-of future the long-ago dead had wanted instead of the one they’d get. The metal is twisted and the glass is crushed, broken, and fused into weird shapes no doubt courtesy of the D-beam strike a few weeks back.

They call that strange little feature of the D-beam strike, blackened fused glass twisted into almost malevolent shapes and scattered across the ruin, Apocalypse Glass.

“Don’t cack this one up, Sar’nt Orion,” mutters Sergeant Hannibal as we interface on Phase Delta. He’s a looming hulk of muscle and simmering rage in the darkness. A brute of a soldier. A thug of a warrior. Nightmare in human form. In the darkness can be used in conjunction with him at all times. Even brightest noon. Reaper rarely messes anything up by the way. But that never stops Sergeant Hannibal, the only guy who uses what may be his real name in the company, from blaming us for everything he can think of.

Yeah, we fight with each other in Strange Company, but we all know we’re brothers. We’re all we’ve got in the universe. You end up here, you ended up here for a bad reason. We’re brothers. That’s the rule. We got each other’s ruck. Hannibal… of course he’s the exception to the rule.

I say nothing for a second and watch my guys get ready.

But because both of us are headed straight at each other, I have to hit Sergeant Hannibal back with something. Those are the rules. Even though they aren’t written down anywhere. Those are the rules of soldiers since forever.

“Yeah. Try and keep the war crimes down on this one, Amarcus. Company ain’t been paid yet.”

Sergeant Amarcus Hannibal. I used his first name to hit harder. The war crimes part is just a love tap. He’s just some good old boy, built like a bull who learned to soldier somewhere violent and ended up in the Strange Company for reasons no one knows. Rumors abound of course. But that’s standard for everyone. Rumors abounding. Only I ever get to know the real stories eventually. And then sometimes not even. Only if they want it known. Only if they think they’re about to die.

’Cause that’s the only headstone you get in Strange. It, whatever it is you did that caused you to end up here, who you really are, your story as it were, it goes down in the company log. And I keep the log. Another of the whack jobs for Reaper.

A minor whack job in a sea of many whack jobs for the platoon sergeant of Reaper. But I like it even though I tell people I don’t mind it. I like history. I like stories. The stars are filled with ’em. And… histories are weird since they aren’t official. Monarchs like it that way. They don’t like competition. Especially for the narrative of history.

So, history is like my little act of rebellion against the galaxy.

I’ve seen people strung up in colony squares for trying to do history. Especially if it’s not the right history.

Sergeant Hannibal spits a stream of dip and snorts like he’s trying to show how little I’ve hurt him with my feeble jabs. In the dark and the gray and the rain, some distant searchlights scan the eastern front and sweep close enough to the dirty rain-covered ruined lev-rail station for me to see him glaring pure murder in the dark between the rain droplets that separate us. I like that. The murder glare means I scored a hit. That’s all that matters to me. I’m dumb enough to play for the small mean victories. His skin has that always sunburnt appearance even though he’s tanned. He tans red. I also see the wicked white scar that runs from ear to ear where someone tried to slit his throat. And the one where he took a round in the mouth and it ruined his teeth and perpetual sneer, turning it into a weird sort of half grin that has given him a knowing leer. Like he knows all the secrets of the outer dark along the galaxy’s rim.

You’d think that’d make him a freak. But not in Strange. Everyone is ruined in Strange to some extent. Puckered bullet wounds. Jagged scars. Rope burns. Jingo’s got scars from where he was whipped by someone somewhere sometime before the company. I don’t know the story yet. He ain’t been close enough to death to feel like it needs to be told to the company log keeper. That’s how I know this op against Grau Skull ain’t got anyone worried. No one got the premonition and came to me to download their tale of awful and woe. Tell me their real name instead of the tag they’ve lived with since the day they signed on with the Strange Company.

Tonight, it’s just business as usual.

I have no idea where Sergeant Hannibal got the Capellan Necktie. The white, livid, jagged cut that encircles his neck. Rumor is somewhere with the Saturnian Regiments. Rumors abound in Strange Company as I have said because everyone has some kind of past they never talk