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

What did someone once say “freedom” was?

Anyway, they go for it. The corporations are all pushing for it because everyone knows they’re playing both sides, and of course for their own.

That’s Phase Three. Or rather DeathCon Three. War. Let’s do it, guys!

That’s when we mercenaries generally start showing up because we smell easy mem. Companies directed by their lawyers, like ours, back on Bright and Central, made worlds, sign the digital and we redirect from wherever it is we are. The only question is Who are we fighting for on this one? Sometimes we’re working for the Monarchs. Sometimes we were working for the losers.

See what I did there?

But just because you’re working for the losers don’t mean there ain’t profit in it. There is. And if you play it right, time it right, and do it right, working for the losers is actually where the real big money can be found.

See, the losers are often willing to throw an entire planet’s economy at you for the win. They have no other choice. If they lose, believe me, they really lose. The Monarchs don’t look kindly on failed upstarts, and for the civilian populace, a two-hundred-year light hauler sleep to a reeducation ring and who knows what after that, is convincing enough to fight hard and throw everything you have at the mercs you hired to win you some “freedom.”

So we fight, take all the dangerous money, and hopefully get off-world before the Battle Spires show up in Phase Five. Or rather DeathCon Five.

What’s DeathCon Four, you ask?

Honestly that’s the worst phase for a mercenary company. It means the Ultras, the Ultra Marines, show up with all their deadly toys. Toys courtesy of Monarch super-science. On one hand Ultras are good for the locals. Ultra Marines, if you survive their first pass over the battlefield, are more than likely to send you to the rear to seek adjudication and payment for your sins via the Adjudicators’ Guild. Survive that and maybe you just lost your life savings and you get to start over somewhere else. The lucky ones get to move off-world and try again. The unlucky get to stay here and hope Phase Five doesn’t go down between both sides.

The Ultras pull a ruin while the Battle Spires fly in over atmo and start targeting solutions for their G-beams.

That’s DeathCon Five. Or… the end of the world. Skeletal cities, irradiated water puddles, warlords of the wasteland. Living death.

But for us mercs… the Ultras are pure death sentence. Anyone bearing arms on a world where the Ultras show up is fair game to them. Best to make for the ships and get off-world.

That is not just merc thinking. That is mercenary holy writ. You don’t want to be around when the Ultras show up.

So, this account is a slice from the main log and I have to get down an important point right here in it to show how we ended up in league with a rogue Monarch known as the Seeker.

Our ship, the Spider, can no longer make planetary landings and her jump drive is down until major overhaul and replacement of the quantum compressor array. Right now, she’s down to sub-light flight only. I’ve been in planning sessions with the command team of Strange Company—that means the platoon sergeants, the First Sergeant, the wizards of Voodoo, Chief Cutter, the XO, and the Old Man. We know that no jump drive overhaul is possible here, and that has us prepping for the big sleep and a twenty-five-year trek to the nearest world, Blackrock, where we might, emphasis on might, get one.

Blackrock. Sounds like a fun place don’t it? Well we’ll find out in twenty-five years after we get off this dog of a world.

But, there is a Class Delta starport on Blackrock and maybe we can get our jump drive repaired if we have the mem from this job.

Currently, we do not have the mem from this job.

So, the contract. Crash, or Astralon, decided they could become a stellar empire all on their own like some of the farthest-out rim worlds and the myth of Mars that never really did. They hired mercenaries to supplement their military forces and here we have been. Supplementing. Which means doing all the dirty work that needs to be done regardless of politics.

At first the war went extremely well for the Resistance. We were fighting Loyalist units that appeared out of the populace. Guys and gals who saw the winds of change coming, even though that breeze came from the Monarchs themselves and from their lofty blue jewel once known as Earth to us all. But the kids never seem to care where the winds of change are really coming from. And the Monarchs… well, that dissent and unrest, and grand ideas, fomenting on Crash, didn’t seem to bother them much.

Until it does.

It’s always that way. The Monarchs never seem interested until they’re very interested. Then you got problems.

So at first Crash, or Astralon, was easy. Once we were off the Spider and planetside, we started operating. We took two weeks to get acclimatized and get as much gear and ammunition as we could from the locals.

Cook in Voodoo, our intel and psyops specialist, developed the situation and briefed command nightly. The Resistance, which was what the legal government as duly elected by the people of Crash had called themselves, weren’t that many. And this too is almost always the same story on every world. Among the Resistance, or whatever they choose to call themselves on the world we happen to get hired to fight on, are usually people from the middle classes and definitely from the old early star pioneer stock. The ones who want freedom and the chance to either win bigly, or lose bigly. And gloriously.

They’re always on about gravitas and destiny. I’ve found those things, like dignity, too often are a needless luxury. Especially if you can’t afford them.

They just want to make all