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

Or carnies and hucksters. We cheat. We lie. And yes, we occasionally steal. Our gear sucks and our weapons are third-rate at best. There’s better out there to be had. But what makes us still dangerous… what shows we have a few teeth still left… is that we’re real good with what we got, and we pull dirty tricks on our enemies thanks to the freaks in Voodoo. There really isn’t any trick too low for us that we won’t try it to get the win. At least once.

Believe me, we’re not proud anymore. Pride died a long time before any one of us ever signed the company contract.

They, the freaks in Voodoo, are like a drug we can’t shake. One we need real bad at the same time as we hate ourselves and what we once were before them. I think the same goes for them too.

“You shoulda seen us back then, Orion. Forty thousand enemy KIA at Crow’s Hill on Cet Moon. Slaves and tribute taken to cease hostilities,” says the First Sergeant when the night watch is late and we sit having stale coffee, listening to the nothing on the comm late in the dark. Imagining history whispers in the ether.

Main Engineering for the Neptune Clipper was all matte-black rubberized floor and hulking drive reactor in the emergency damage control red-lit darkness. Gray panels and screaming systems were also all in the red. Panels were broadcasting system failures through the big ship’s navigational and drive systems. Huge holographic illuminations in nether-ghost green crossed the floor making sure everyone here was very aware fuel cells portside three through fourteen were compromised and that atmo flight was not possible at this time. A matronly female ship’s automated voice warned us the hull was compromised at several points and emergency damage control parties had not reported in with status checks at this time.

“Reported fires on decks sixteen through twenty,” she said cautiously, as though warning us not to go swimming so soon after eating a tuna sandwich by the side of the lake on a hot summer day that was the opposite of all this. “All personnel are authorized to evacuate this starship as soon as possible.”

It was clear she was concerned, though motherly. And then, almost brightly…

“The All Worlds Corporation, a subsidiary of Neuf-Badtmueller Stellar, apologizes for this inconvenience and thanks you for your continued compliance with emergency personnel.”

Chief Cook tilted his head toward the zip-tied enemy three-man engineering team and gave me a quizzical, almost angry look. Like, C’mon Orion, why aren’t they dead already. I was busy getting ready to take Reaper through the aft crew deck up to sixteen and crack the spinal transport, or just use the tube, to get into the main passenger decks that connected with the hard dock into green ring’s main terminal. Hauser was busy having his way with the onboard system map, making sure we had all bulkheads opened along our route through the starship. Everything along our flanks locked down.

“What’re you gonna do with them?” whispered Chief Cook as he eyed the prisoners. His tone the same as if he wanted to sell me a stolen trans-cycle with a severely illegal modified boost capacitor. The kind capable of 420KMP in less than six seconds. Pressure suit required to ride.

I indicated that Farts would stay and watch ’em.

“Nah…” Cook hissed. He took a small clamshell out and was shooting them up with something from a three-injector hypo a moment later. The first one watched in stunned disbelief and when the other two saw the first one’s eyes abruptly roll back in his skull as the man passed out, or died, who knew… they started to struggle for their lives.

Chief Cook muttered, “Come here… cowards,” like he was wrestling defenseless babies, and he grabbed hold of another one, a lock of hair falling across his sweaty forehead as he worked to shoot them up. He injected both and they were out seconds later. Or at least I hoped they were just out.

“They’re just out, right?” I asked.

“Sure,” Chief Cook said like the liar I knew him to be, wiping sweat from his forehead as the Little Girl watched us. Especially when we played Cheks, that’s when he really lied. “Sure,” he said again, as if to himself only. Trying to convince himself more than anyone, like he was sure he’d gotten the right injector. Straightening the tunic of his fatigues and making sure his pistol belt was aligned once more, he stowed his clamshell back on his pistol belt. There had been other injectors inside. Each color-coded differently. I was sure there were all different kinds of “fun.”

“What do you think I am?” whined Cook as he got himself ready. “Some kind of monster?”

Yeah. I did. But weren’t we all, these days? I used to tell myself lies that some of us, me mostly, weren’t all monsters. But I’d given that up in my time with the Strange Company. We were hired to fight monsters. And if you don’t have a knight in shining armor handy standing around to do just that, fight and kill monsters, then what you’re left with isn’t pretty. What you do is hire other monsters to go fight your monsters in order to get the job done. Because the job has got to get done. Monsters gotta die, and of course, someone’s gotta do it.

And that was where Strange Company came in.

The lie I kept telling myself that week was that some monsters weren’t as bad as other monsters. Right? The lie of good monsters I had been telling myself the week before, had died when I watched us use a flamethrower on an enemy convoy refueling point on the outskirts of the city while we were defending LZ Syro. Listen, it was just Reaper who did that. The First Sergeant said, “Here, Orion, you’ll need this,” as he handed me the old Sindo surplus Ultra Marine banned weapon Biggs had stowed away in the crawler,