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

hornets, that was his business. Mine was to get the platoon fighting. It was Reaper’s job to breach and clear the access points into the main terminal as the show kicked off up and down the line for the main body of the attack. Already, out there across the northeastern edge of the starport, Resistance infantry units were underway, sweeping out in wedges in front of the low and menacing Raider tanks and Javelin light-walker mechs. The Raiders had been doing really well with their menacing 140mm recoilless main guns and not so much with their AA pods. The medium armored tanks were brought out because we currently had air superiority and could take the chance to gain some ground as long as the enemy didn’t go for some early close air support.

As if to make Resistance Tac Plan a liar, two Warbird fighters, Loyalist versions of the vaunted F-705 the Monarchs once armed their ring carriers with, small forward wings swept back for control along the sleek rocket-shaped needle fuselage and aft wings fanned out for max lift at slow flight, rolled in out of the milky morning sun and shot up a Raider tank in the vast sprawl of dead grass just before the terminal apron. Both of the streaking fighters unloaded thousands of rounds of depleted uranium ball and tracer against one of the incoming Raiders there to support our attack. The low ominous BRRRRRRRTTTT of their attack resounded across the early moments of the main attack.

Enemy close air support had been pulling this kind of attack lately. Coming in slow and low, raking the tanks from above. Raiders were lightly armored along the top of their angular hulls, and the AA pods were hasty installs that had yet to do anything other than badly attempt to acquire targeting data, throw up a cone of fire, and miss as both fighters went to full thrusters after the kill and roared off into the clearing morning mists, leaving a burning tank on the ground. You could tell both streaking fighters had reset their control surfaces for supersonic flight an instant later as sudden twin booms tore through the sky above the rattle of gunfire and the thump and whump of distant arty coming to play.

I made for the rear maintenance ramp that led up into the wounded Clipper’s engineering decks. It lay below the silent thruster nozzles, giant and looming, massive and circular at the back of the ship. They would probably never fire up again. This state-of-the-art Clipper, part of the lifeblood of humanity’s continuing outward expansion through the stars, was probably destined for scrap now. As much of this world would be once we were finished with deciding who got to own what was left of the pile of rubble on the other side of this conflict.

I linked up with Punch, who told me Third was inside and securing Main Engineering. Engineers had been sent in by the enemy to make sure the ship’s reactor was offline and cooling. No one wanted an exploding starship to get in the way of anyone’s plans to kill everyone else. They’d had a security detail courtesy of the enemy along for the shutdown. Detail was dead and engineers were in zip ties, thanks to Third Herd.

Later I’d wonder if the engineers had been sent in to either det the starbird or melt its core, in case the Loyalists started losing. Yet one more time I would figure out how the enemy had had a chance to kill me that I hadn’t known at the time. It was a fun game I couldn’t help playing in the few quiet hours between midnight and dawn I seldom got to myself. Why sleep peacefully when you can think up a thousand new ways to die behind your closed eyelids?

Since Farts was walkie-talkie, up and moving, I detailed him to watch the prisoners until we secured the ship. Chief Cook came in, towing the Little Girl that’d freaked me out. She was the something he’d “forgotten” back at the chem hauler the enemy was busy shooting at. And he’d gone back for her.

I had to force myself to remember that was what you were supposed to do for little orphan girls in wars. Keep them safe. Especially in combat zones. Technically she was one. And yes. This was a war for all intents and purposes. But what she was doing here would hurt your morals if you thought too hard, or too much, about it.

So I didn’t.

Plus, she was very dangerous. And not just to the enemy. Technically she counted as a company secret weapon. An ace in the hole. But friendlies had died just as easily as enemies when she did her trick. And so it was not a decision made lightly to use her when things got dicey.

You read the old logs of the Strange Company, and you’ll see we fought some straight-up no-holds-barred battles on all kinds of worlds in all kinds of environments. We had what at the time were considered great weapons and solid gear. The best. There was a time when the Strange Company was equivalent to saying “the galactic boogieman.” But that was way before my time. Back during the early days of outward expansion along the old frontiers and established shipping routes to the outer worlds. We were the something you threatened people with so they’d behave. Little children were told to eat their hyper-peas and carrotini, or “Strange Company’ll get ya.” First Sergeant said to me one time, “Shoulda seen us back then, Orion. We were mean motor scooters if you believe all the old books. Killers every one of ’em. Lifetakers. Heartbreakers. You know…”

Now we do tricks. Aces in holes. We cavort with the unclean of the galaxy for mere survival just to get to the next gig. The freaks. We need ’em in lieu of state-of-the-art weapons and bad reputation. What thousands of years ago some would have called sorcerers or wizards.