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

for our route exit, then I duck-walked through the stacks to reach the still-dancing strobes of the yellow damage control hazards.

Jacks and his ASL, Ro-Ro, were standing over the mangled bodies of the enemy combat engineers.

“Looks like they were planting RDX-type charges,” Jacks told me as I came in. “It’s safe in here with the fire control systems attempting to save this deck until last. Then they’d just pop the nitrogen bottles in the fire-suppression overheads and flood the compartment as the RDX ignited. Big explosion chains to the mains and the whole ship would’ve gone firecracker right in our faces even if we’d taken the terminal and everyone was staging on us for the breach. Waste from the reactor and no one with any brains would have wanted to use the crater or what remained of the terminal for anything for the next hundred years. Denial-of-service dead switch if you ask me, Sar’nt.”

Jacks had been a combat engineer somewhere else once. He ran the company’s demo when we needed to get it done. We didn’t have a big call for it, but when we did, he could get really artistic about blowing people, and things, up in exciting new ways.

“Can we disarm?”

Jacks shook his head.

“Complex multi-code encryption on the dets. They won’t activate though. We can make that happen. But I wouldn’t leave them lying around here. This ship burns up—and unless the spaceport firefighters are particularly dedicated that’s gonna happen—that nitrogen is gonna release, the chemicals will bond, and we’ll still get the big kahuna-boom. I’ll stay and take care of it, Sar’nt.”

I ordered Ro-Ro to take Second and made sure Jacks was cool alone.

“Yeah. It’s easier to make sure you’re safe when you’re the only one working with things that have a tendency to go boom,” said Jacks. “Two increases the factor of error significantly. Same applies when married. Know what I mean?”

I left Jacks and tried to call in a sitrep to the First Sergeant. Nothing. Transmissions were being locally jammed. Organized, we left the subdeck, popped out of a floor hatch they’d already opened near the aft transport terminal, and started a movement to contact up-spine to our final objective inside the burning starship. The hard dock with the terminal.

Chapter Thirteen

We hit the boarding lock hard connect with the terminal from the Neptune Clipper’s main entry hatch and turned it into a slaughter even though several of us were already experiencing severe perception problems from the retro-agent. Chief Cook was cackling about it “really coming on now! This is the big trip and it’s gonna get real hairy, boys and girls. Hang on to it, reality’s gonna suspend operations for a bit. Our normal broadcast will resume shortly.”

Dip Weasel, one of the Second Squad riflemen on the breaching team assigned to hit the hard dock once we sent the flashbangs in, went wild as the flashbangs popped and concussed the shooters we were facing. Instead of flooding in with the rest of Second, he just advanced straight into the shot-to-hell executive boarding lounge and started shooting down the enemy where he could find them. Mostly they were hiding behind glowing information pylons they had mistakenly thought would provide them cover. A .308 round like the kind Dip Weasel was firing from his M14X tactical clearing rifle can go through a repulsor block and kill a charging war pig. The info pylons just shattered in every direction as he sent hot fire from his blazing rifle, streaming dip straight from the side of his mouth every third shot like it was a bodily function. There’s a reason you tag in the company. And Dip Weasel wore his with pride whether he was aware of it or not.

Meanwhile with everyone trying to shrug off the effects of the retro-agent and still do their jobs, sectors were cleared, and guns were up even as one of our own just advanced out into the main terminal concourse and engaged the enemy. Shooting anyone he could acquire and walking straight at an enemy machine-gun team that had been trying to set up to cover the defense the enemy was reacting to our incursion with.

To be fair, unironically, they were wasted on psycho gas and struggling with some very basic tasks. I doubt they ever got two belts linked before the gunfight started in earnest. But that’s on them. And it sucks to lose unfairly because the other side is cheating. But it’s worse to get killed whether anyone’s cheating or not.

So better them than us that had to pay the price, cheating or no cheating.

I was already following in behind Third as Hauser and company rushed to take up position in an adjacent security screening lounge farther along the concourse next to our entry point. Sergeant Jacks was yelling at Dip Weasel to halt. “Get back to your squad, Dip!” But the wasted rifleman just walked casually onto the main concourse, through the drifting gas, a strange smile on his face, and started firing at some of the marksmen on the second and third level of the once-beautiful structure done up all in marble, chrome, and frosted glass.

Return fire was badly aimed and unfocused. Some here, some there. Chief Cook’s voodoo gas had done its thing. They didn’t know it, but they were going to die in here today. It couldn’t be any other way if we were going to go on living.

Someone fired at Dip Weasel and he took a solid hit in the front plate. You could hear it ricochet from where I was covering with Third. Dip took the shot dead center, but it just knocked him back about two steps, and then he turned and fired at whoever shot him as though he hadn’t been hit at all.

“He’s possibly reacting a little more than he should have. Ahem. To the gas,” whispered Chief Cook suddenly next to me as Third waited for the next orders. “It’s not one hundred percent, Orion. Did he take his tab?