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

green ring. Snipers and observers in the tower, off-limits for anything but small units to breach and clear to control, had effectively directed the anti-tank killers into position to chew up the incoming raiders.

Heavy machine-gun teams in light attack assault buggies had ruined the supporting infantry with hit-and-run raids.

“As of this moment, Sergeant Orion,” continued the First Sergeant in his typical grandiose fashion, “you are indeed the farthest forward unit in this foolhardy plan of attack cooked up by our employers. But fear not, young infantry sergeant, Captain’s shifting Dog away from infantry support on the flank and has requested dropship support to take the roof of the terminal once you’re inside. Say again, we will not leave you forward and unsupported, Sergeant Orion.”

Was that to strengthen our position on the objective, or pull us off? I didn’t ask. But getting in just to get pulled out felt like it was all for nothing. And that was me still caring about who won.

“Copy, First Sergeant. Pushing into the terminal in the next twenty,” was all I could reply. The floor was shifting and swirling if I stared at it for too long. The bats were getting thick and I was doing my best not to look anyone, including them, in the eye.

I was sweating like a madman even though the processers down here in the dark and undulating yellow light washes were being kept cool on internal backup from the ship’s emergency reserves.

That was when we got hit on the side, and hard.

The burst from the Loyalist sapper team that had been sent into the ship to det it, with us inside, nailed Farts with a sudden eruption of automatic gunfire. He didn’t scream, he just went down. Experience has taught me that’s a bad sign when it comes to injuries. Not screaming when you get hit by a bullet moving at supersonic speeds. I don’t know how long it took him to die but he was dead by the time it was over. Firsty got hit right in the skull just below the bucket. His brains exploded all over the back of his helmet. He didn’t scream either.

The sappers were using small submachine guns they carried in three-point slings while they were busy setting up explosives. Punch took one in the plate, but it bounced and tore off a finger wrapped around the shorty version of the Bastard he used. He swore and immediately returned fire regardless, one-handed as he duck-walked forward for cover behind a swiss-cheesed processor. The enemy were off to our left, covered by powerful spinning yellow strobes along that section of the inner hull. To them we must have looked like jaundiced ghouls hunched and working our way through the ship’s tight spaces on some enigmatic night errand. To us they were just shadows behind strobes firing small automatic bursts that had bullets slamming into processors and fragmenting hard plastic in every direction.

Hoser opened up and doused the area incoming was originating from, pivoting in the hunch and shouting, “Get it on, Reapers!” After the fight, when I hunch-crawled over to make sure everyone on the enemy side of things was dead, I was pretty sure Hoser had ruined most of them at this moment. But they kept shooting nonetheless and the Kid took a round. Later we assessed the wound as just a deep graze along the side of his face, but right there in the darkness when I heard him take it, it looked bad. I’ll confess that right here and now.

I felt bad for him. But not too bad. At least he’d gotten it quick instead of much later.

I grabbed his hand and forced him to put pressure on the wound as blood seeped through his fingerless gloves. The kind Sergeant Biggs always issued the new guys. Right then I was pretty sure he’d been hit in the jug or something that was going to start pumping and not stop until the Kid was cold and dead.

He looked at me. Scared. Because who wouldn’t be. “Hang in there, Kid,” I told him, if just for something to say before he died. “Got your first. Now live long enough to let it become a scar. Remember…” I said, making him press even harder on the wound. Forcing his open hand down into it like it needed to become one with his throat. “Chicks dig scars,” I muttered over the gunfire at close quarters within the violent dark of the subdeck.

And then I saw something pass through his eyes and make the fear go away as we sat there taking fire from what seemed everywhere in the dark. Something I knew for myself crossed his brain and his eyes told me so. But of course, I had a lot going on at the moment and it was only later that I could figure out what it was. Or that it was a clue as to why he’d joined the company.

Chicks dig scars. That had meant something to him. Cut through the fear. And I was betting it was part of the story he’d tell me someday about how he ended up in the Strange Company.

The bats were getting thick and again I cursed Chief Cook, who appeared just then out of the dark, grabbed the Kid’s drag handle, and pulled him away from the firefight, blazing at unseen enemies I was pretty sure weren’t in any direction he was firing into.

“I got ya,” he growled heroically through clenched teeth. His eyes wild and way too intense. Then he shouted, “Medic!” as he turned and blazed away at no one with his forty-five.

Still, Cook looked good doing it despite the fact he was suppressing no one in particular. And of course, no sociopath would ever do what he’d just done. Go in and rescue a new kid who’d gotten tagged in what was probably his first experience on the wrong side of an ambush.

I had no idea where the Little Girl he’d brought along was.