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

First Squad was the top of the wedge. Second and Third to my right. Fourth Squad to my left. We moved into the battlespace, ready to do as much harm as we could, and stay alive while doing it.

Mercenaries don’t die for causes. Other people do. True believers. We kill people for money. That’s what we do.

The black smoke really kicked up from the fire at the loading docks and the burning starship and for a moment we couldn’t see anything ahead of us. Not even each other. It was like darkness had fallen over the world in judgment and we’d never ever see again. Or like someone had opened a portal into some hell that specialized in burn pits and we’d just blindly gone on in, doomed to wander for all eternity for sins we had a pretty good idea we’d committed.

You could smell bodies burning on the hot morning wind and that made the moment feel darker than it already did. The defenders at the cargo admin were roasting. I reminded myself to eat a power bar so I could throw up. I hadn’t. And I forgot to as one of my boots landed on the concrete apron of the starport’s LZ. We were in their kill zone now, even though they couldn’t see us through the hot black smoke boiling up into the schmazy day.

My combat lens had been tracking the route and suddenly both eyes updated the data feed and corrected for our location. They’d been doing that lately. Either because of the efforts of enemy jamming assets, or because my gear was whack. I didn’t know.

This war had been hard on personal gear, among other things. Some were like that. Others not so much. Every conflict was its own personal thing with an identity you could almost talk about like it was a real person. The problems came when it started talking back. But that’s another story.

The black smoke cleared for a second and I could see the rest of Reaper from my position at the tip of the spear. We emerged from the dark drifting banks of black smoke like killers in the business of making trouble for others. I felt just a moment of pride as I studied my platoon on the move. Observed them. Watched their homicidal swagger and predator’s caution. First was led by Punch as the squad leader. Choker in the medic slot. Hoser in the gunner position. Hustle as the AG. Boom Boom in the squad designated marksman position. Then Firsty, then New Guys One, Two, and Three, and finally the Kid.

The “New Guy” designation for the three in Reaper First Squad was the first step after getting called “Kid.” You got “New Guy” and a number, especially in Reaper because we always had two or three floating around. New Guy Two was about to get tagged as Farts for obvious reasons. Apparently, a lot of our chow disagreed with him. Badly. He didn’t mind and he was known to hang tough in a firefight. The other two New Guys were indistinguishable so far. The Kid was still the Kid and it was best not to get attached to him until he proved he wasn’t gonna get waxed right off the bat.

So far he had not. But you never knew. Today seemed like one of those days where someone was gonna buy it. So why not him?

And as I always told myself, And why not you, Orion. Sergeants get killed too.

It’s best to be honest about these things. Trust me. Don’t lie to yourself about the bad things you’re facing in life. It could happen to you. And a lotta the times they, the dead, don’t just go away.

“All right Reaper,” I said over the platoon comm. “Get it on.”

What I saw before me was a good three hundred meters of open hot concrete apron where we should have been completely murdered by enemy marksmen if it weren’t for Chief Cook making sure the docked starship in front of us was billowing burning starship fuel from her portside tanks and obscuring our approach to the objective. Flames were spreading across the tarmac, igniting support vehicles and engulfing offloaded cargo around the ship. If it were a normal day of starport operations, this would be a real mess complete with evacuation and screaming sirens and even emergency assistance vehicles. For us it was just today’s mission.

For Strange Company it was just another day on the job.

And like I said, I was glad for that burning starship, otherwise all the enemy defenders currently holding the main terminal up there in the green ring would have started shooting at us down here on the runway.

We were nothing but out in the open and vulnerable to traversing fire.

As if on cue, artillery strikes crossing over our heads, indirect shells screaming through the smoky atmosphere above, fell and savaged the ornate roof of the terminal. If there had been enemy snipers up there they would be dead now. Blown to shreds in every direction.

I checked the rest of Reaper as we came out of the smoke, making sure both ends of the wedge were clear. Some were ducking. Incoming artillery could make you feel like it. Even if it was yours. It wasn’t like dumb shells fired using physics discriminated about who they landed on. But mainly my guys were moving forward through drifting black smoke and falling shrap. And that was good. Shrapnel had a tendency to get your mind working about the thousand ways to die. And that made you harder to kill. Not impossible. But at least harder. This war had turned Reaper into killers. The New Guys and problem children had had their major malfunctions corrected and were starting to soldier the Strange Company way. Realizing that their brothers in the Strange needed them to do their jobs if everyone was going to make it through this one and get paid. That had made better fighters out of most of