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

fancy-worthless armor he’d been issued and shown, in what was in essence a propaganda film, how to use and how effective it was supposed to be against the enemies of Law and Order. The enemies of the Monarchs.

It wasn’t.

Six-point-five ruined that guy all day long.

Now I had them pinned down in Central Supply Conduit 06 in crew stores deep in the belly of the dying-burning Neptune Clipper. Whoever was in charge tried to get their reaction force to lead the others into the battle. Let’s call them troopers loyal to the Monarchs, who were stacked and supporting their heavy gun that was pinning down Second. They got ruined as First opened up, our Pig throwing a hot hail of deadly AP right through their commander who was trying to get everyone to react to the new threat on their flank.

Their heavy went silent and I knew their team was reorienting to deal with this new attack. Us. I keyed Hauser’s attack as Second shifted, or stopped, and Third and then Fourth, moving through stores that hadn’t been offloaded, looming like the eternal blocks of ancient lost monuments skinned in shipping graphite, slipped through and into the enemy positions.

A couple of the enemy troopers tried to re-establish a second line at the exit to aft stores, fighting from either side of a security bulkhead that would not close. Hauser had seen to that, ruining those with his Pig, red targeting laser revealed in the smoke and burnt cordite of all the gunfire in the tight passages. The cyborg advanced like a real live relentless Cyberstein monster from the Age of Technohorror. Even his fake mechanical eyes glowed demonically in the shadows as the powerful targeting laser at the front of the ruthless Pig cut them all down as he advanced through outgoing fire.

We didn’t even use flashbangs or grenades in the end. They were doing the pop and spray, feeling very action-hero-last-stand as they alternated from cover and dumped fire on us.

Over the squad comm I heard Boom Boom’s smoky whisper telling me the squad designated marksman was ready to play ball. “Got this, Sarge.”

He fired once and turned the first guy into a corpse with nothing but red mist expanding away on a heat draft for a head, standing there for a moment perfectly silhouetted by the access bulkhead’s open and well-lit space. The next section of the ship was guest-accessed and therefore had the pleasant gold-and-white lighting of some of the finer starships. Stellar Spa, I’d once heard the theme called.

Incredible. Even with the dead guy with no head falling over into a clump, Chungo Number Two thought it was time to hold at all costs. My hearing protection, augmented to detect sounds below thirty decibels, even heard the guy bellow, “Let’s give ’em something to think about, boys!”

Boom Boom landed one of his giant rounds right in that guy’s upper chest. I got the tag as my combat lens recorded the hit.

“Nice shooting, Boom,” I whispered as all four of my squads basically watched the clown show of untrained troopers thinking they were making a difference for the galaxy.

Boom Boom shot down four more and then we heard them pull back. Which is a nice way of saying they ran away.

We were sweeping the deck where they’d made their brave stand, making sure everyone was good and dead, when all the colors, and there weren’t a lot, suddenly popped for me in ways I’d never noticed, and I knew something was up. My brain was suddenly getting syrupy and my eyes were feeling like they’d just learned to open two sizes too big. Everything, and yeah even the dead on the floor, made me want to laugh and giggle like a committed lunatic.

I stared at the dead for a long second, wondering if I was having some kind of stroke or brain aneurysm, when Punch came up and gave me a report I hadn’t asked for and then remembered I actually had a few seconds earlier.

No wounded.

Crusher in Third Herd had taken a round to the chest armor. Spall had cut him an inch away from his jugular. “But he’s good to go, Sar’nt. You all right, Orion?”

I looked at my assistant platoon leader and saw that his face was melting right before my eyes. I could see his eyes and the worlds inside of them. There was a whole universe in there, man. I blinked my own a couple of times and my vision was normal again. But starting to get murky at the edges.

“Good to go, Punch. Let’s move up. You take First.”

I’d taken the chief’s tab a bit earlier than everyone else. I had a bad feeling in my stomach that things were about to get very weird.

Chief Cook was at my side.

“Don’t worry, Orion,” he muttered confidentially. “It’s a little rocky at first but hang on and ride it. Then it… straightens out. Hang in there, and if you see any bats they’re probably not real. Unless they are. Whatever you do, don’t talk to ’em. Don’t make eye contact either. You’ll get lost in there.”

He took off to follow the rest of the platoon into the main sections of the lower decks of the starship.

The Little Girl passed me in the press of hustling infantry, watching me with those dark silent ever-appraising eyes. Judging me on behalf of the universe. I thought she might have said something like “Buy the ticket and take the ride, Sergeant Orion” as she followed them off into the damage control’s sirens and the dark of the burning starship.

But she didn’t.

That part was all in my head.

Chapter Eleven

The next firefight for Reaper went down inside the Clipper’s flight controls processing deck. We’d shifted our route into the detour that took us through this section because the flames were moving fast now up from the starboard fuel cells and crawling across the atmospheric thrust engines there. It was clear the Clipper’s maintenance while on layover planetside had been underway