by Nick Cole
There’s only one guy stupid enough to stay in Reaper full-time. Supervise the whack ops and run the miscreants and lost orphans. And that guy would be me. Reaper is my platoon. I’m the guy stupid enough to stick around.
Hey, someone’s gotta do it.
“Slick to Orion…” The leader of Ghost Platoon comes at me over the comms. “Phase Delta. All quiet. Assault teams clear to move on House Party.”
Reaper’s cue to get the hustle on and move into place for the assault against our objective has been given. Tonight’s Strange Company op is a game we like to play called Breaking and Entering.
Breaking and Entering is really just a surprise attack on a fixed position. Surprise being the operative word. If you were in any kind of formal human military unit you learned this there. Whether you learned it in the Saturn Nine Foreign Legions that support the Ultra Marines on occasion, or out in one of the local militaries like the Astralonian Armored Heavy Cav that’s supposed to be fighting this war for the Rebel High Command instead of the dozen merc companies who’ve been hired to defend their sovereignty. The heavy cav and their other famous units are getting held back for the important, and hopefully glorious, work of actually winning the war.
A certainty that seems to change not just day to day, but hour to hour sometimes.
Reaper and Dog are on assault duty tonight. We do the entering. Ghost and Voodoo do the breaking. This is how we do war. This is how we do B and E.
Like I said it’s raining and dark and gray where it isn’t midnight. Everyone is running some sort of night vision, but target lasers and illuminators won’t go live until the captain signals the attack. The Old Man is with Dog Platoon. Dog is straight line infantry and they run it just like they came straight out of the ever-loving true believers of the Monarchs’ Ultra Marines. All hooo-ahhh and dress right dress. Lifetaker and heartbreaker tats underneath combat armor that just isn’t available to the rest of us. Everyone over in Dog carries the same rifle and gear like they’re auditioning for a supporting role in the Monarchs’ guard dog cult.
The Ultra Marines.
We just call ’em Ultras like it’s a dirty word you wouldn’t actually use in their presence. Which is easy. Because if you happen to be in their presence, they’ve most likely come to kill you. And you are most assuredly going to die.
It’s best to be honest with yourself even if you’re lying to the rest of the galaxy. No one fights the Ultras. There’s tough, sure. And then there’s Ultras. They’re just plain homicidally insane. And very well-trained along with fanatical levels of discipline. Best to just run.
Rumor is that the Old Man, Strange Company’s current commander, captain is his official rank, was once Ultra Marine in some long-lost life not this one. But that’s just a rumor of course because everyone knows no one leaves the Ultra Marines alive. They have that tattooed on their bodies first day of Ultra Basic. No One Gets Out Alive. And that’s true. I know that for a fact. The only way you get out of that warped little death cult is on your shield on some world you got sent in to annihilate. So, it’s probably just a rumor. About the captain having once been in. But one the Old Man neither cares to discourage, nor encourage.
He’s an enigma. The Old Man.
But the captain runs Dog, his favorite platoon, like they’re natural-born killers. Because they are. Reaper secures the old lev station, or what remains of it, from which we’ll be attacking across open ground, and I give the signal to Hannibal, Dog Platoon’s sergeant and my personal chief villain in this waking life, to come up along the ruins of the old maglev rail and get in position for the attack. Reaper on the left flank. Dogs on the right.
Jingo, a scout from Ghost, directs our positioning. Crouching in the dark, made into some evil hunchback by the rain-slick poncho that covers his ruck. We move past the scout and fan out into our combat wedges.
“Party time, Orion,” Jingo whispers as I pass close by. I ignore him and knife-hand my men to their positions muttering Strange’s standard SOP response to greetings. “Get it on.”
Dog comes in like pros. Sweeping to the right and moving swiftly to get where they need to be for the attack. Heads on a swivel. Assaulters and weapons teams taking a knee or going prone in the dark mud and broken concrete along the trashed remains of the station. Moving like they’re Ultra Marine Scout Recon come to do everyone in sight.
Gone, inside the skeleton of the lev-rail station, with its fantastic curving metallic loops and bright sweeping angles long-dead societal architects must’ve once thought the very future of Crash would look like as it became a major sector capital in the Stretch. Breaking away from the Monarchs. Taking the reins of a minor stellar empire. A hundred years ago before all their plans went up in apocalyptic D-beam strikes.
Apparently, things didn’t work out so well for these people, I think as I stare at the ruin and devastation that remains here.
The night mist has stopped and the place looks like a forgotten cemetery. Quiet and dead.
Now it’s just a dark and creepy disremembered place and even Strange Company, whose bad luck in recent contracts has forced us to make do with less so that we’ve become really good at getting things done by surprise, illusion, and outright stealth, some call it cheating but that’s ridiculous—there’s no cheating in war—but even us doing our best creep can’t avoid the crunch of dirty broken glass that is everywhere in the once-fantastic station made of such materials. Shattered glass and twisted steel. The scarecrow remains of the roof and those fantastic loops that composed the dreamed-of future the long-ago dead had wanted instead of the one they’d get. The metal is twisted and the glass is crushed, broken, and fused into weird shapes no doubt courtesy of the D-beam strike a few weeks back.
They call that strange little feature of the D-beam strike, blackened fused glass twisted into almost malevolent shapes and scattered across the ruin, Apocalypse Glass.
“Don’t cack this one up, Sar’nt Orion,” mutters Sergeant Hannibal as we interface on Phase Delta. He’s a looming hulk of muscle and simmering rage in the darkness. A brute of a soldier. A thug of a warrior. Nightmare in human form. In the darkness can be used in conjunction with him at all times. Even brightest noon. Reaper rarely messes anything up by the way. But that never stops Sergeant Hannibal, the only guy who uses what may be his real name in the company, from blaming us for everything he can think of.
Yeah, we fight with each other in Strange Company, but we all know we’re brothers. We’re all we’ve got in the universe. You end up here, you ended up here for a bad reason. We’re brothers. That’s the rule. We got each other’s ruck. Hannibal… of course he’s the exception to the rule.
I say nothing for a second and watch my guys get ready.
But because both of us are headed straight at each other, I have to hit Sergeant Hannibal back with something. Those are the rules. Even though they aren’t written down anywhere. Those are the rules of soldiers since forever.
“Yeah. Try and keep the war crimes down on this one, Amarcus. Company ain’t been paid yet.”
Sergeant Amarcus Hannibal. I used his first name to hit harder. The war crimes part is just a love tap. He’s just some good old boy, built like a bull who learned to soldier somewhere violent and ended up in the Strange Company for reasons no one knows. Rumors abound of course. But that’s standard for everyone. Rumors abounding. Only I ever get to know the real stories eventually. And then sometimes not even. Only if they want it known. Only if they think they’re about to die.
’Cause that’s the only headstone you get in Strange. It, whatever it is you did that caused you to end up here, who you really are, your story as it were, it goes down in the company log. And I keep the log. Another of the whack jobs for Reaper.
A minor whack job in a sea of many whack jobs for the platoon sergeant of Reaper. But I like it even though I tell people I don’t mind it. I like history. I like stories. The
stars are filled with ’em. And… histories are weird since they aren’t official. Monarchs like it that way. They don’t like competition. Especially for the narrative of history.
So, history is like my little act of rebellion against the galaxy.
I’ve seen people strung up in colony squares for trying to do history. Especially if it’s not the right history.
Sergeant Hannibal spits a stream of dip and snorts like he’s trying to show how little I’ve hurt him with my feeble jabs. In the dark and the gray and the rain, some distant searchlights scan the eastern front and sweep close enough to the dirty rain-covered ruined lev-rail station for me to see him glaring pure murder in the dark between the rain droplets that separate us. I like that. The murder glare means I scored a hit. That’s all that matters to me. I’m dumb enough to play for the small mean victories. His skin has that always sunburnt appearance even though he’s tanned. He tans red. I also see the wicked white scar that runs from ear to ear where someone tried to slit his throat. And the one where he took a round in the mouth and it ruined his teeth and perpetual sneer, turning it into a weird sort of half grin that has given him a knowing leer. Like he knows all the secrets of the outer dark along the galaxy’s rim.
You’d think that’d make him a freak. But not in Strange. Everyone is ruined in Strange to some extent. Puckered bullet wounds. Jagged scars. Rope burns. Jingo’s got scars from where he was whipped by someone somewhere sometime before the company. I don’t know the story yet. He ain’t been close enough to death to feel like it needs to be told to the company log keeper. That’s how I know this op against Grau Skull ain’t got anyone worried. No one got the premonition and came to me to download their tale of awful and woe. Tell me their real name instead of the tag they’ve lived with since the day they signed on with the Strange Company.
Tonight, it’s just business as usual.
I have no idea where Sergeant Hannibal got the Capellan Necktie. The white, livid, jagged cut that encircles his neck. Rumor is somewhere with the Saturnian Regiments. Rumors abound in Strange Company as I have said because everyone has some kind of past they never talk about. Unless they feel death stalking. Still, stellar warrants and bounty hunters trying to collect on those pasts abound in plenty, just as the rumors do. But a Capellan Necktie doesn’t make one a freak in the Strange Company. And bounty hunters, or jealous husbands, who come looking, get everyone in Strange Company’s attention with all the ammo we can provide. Debt settlers get settled. That’s the reason we become brothers. It’s us against the universe. Regardless of whether we’re getting paid.
Even the freaks in Voodoo need that protection. And in fact, they probably need it the most if you believe the conspiracies about the Dark Labs. Freaks spend their lives looking over their shoulders. Watching for hunters sent by the Labs.
We’ve got those. The real freaks are in Voodoo Platoon. Measure twice, cut once, as I warned the Kid. And every “Kid” before him.
But the enemy round that gave Sergeant Hannibal the grin-sneer and reveals him to be the true monster I know him to be for all to see, he got that one on our last gig.
I still count it one of the best days of my life.
For about twelve hours as he got medevacked back to the rear, I was sure Sergeant Hannibal was a dead man and that my life was much improved. Even Chief Cutter confessed he didn’t have high hopes for anything other than a traumatic brain injury for my enemy. Our company physician was busy throwing up before morning sick call when I went to ask him if my luck was gonna hold. He waved me away and continued hurling up last night’s bottles of rum. Five days later Amarcus shows up like a monster that can’t be killed so easily, takes his platoon back out into the bush, and wipes out that village he got wounded near, from off the face of that world.
Burned it to the ground and didn’t leave anyone inside alive. Company got docked fifty thousand mem by the War Crimes Tribunal. Client had to pay it out for us. Then they got shy about the rest of our pay. We convinced them otherwise eventually. Voodoo gave their CEO nightmares and gray hair. In the end we got half of what was owed us.
That was on Mira. Mira was a living nightmare. A. Real. Living. Nightmare. Burning down a village of “officially” neutrals was the least of all the wrong that went down on that particular nightmare of a smoldering little genocide.
It was told to me that Sergeant Hannibal was rumored to have muttered, “’Sides,” to Cheater, one of his toady squad leaders, “ain’t no neutrals in war.” He said that as he watched the whole village that no longer was burn down and bloom like an oil refinery on sudden fire. The just-dead still lying in the long dry keffgrass with their throats cut.
Tonight, between two sergeants who’d murder each other if we could, in the dark near us, the captain, wearing nothing but his standard worn brown leather trench coat with old surplus fatigues underneath, and some carrying harness I’ve never gotten a good look at, comes onto the lev-rail platform. His worn boots dark and muddy. He keeps low and studies our positions for the attack. He’s got his ’nocs out and he’s scanning the whole of the objective and checking to make sure all Strange elements are in place.
If Amarcus and I were going to duke it out right now, and it always feels like a summer storm is about to light up right between us, then the captain’s presence shuts all that nonsense down immediately. It’s company business now. Company time. Even Amarcus Hannibal is afraid of the captain. Because he’s smart. Evil, but smart. It shows by how much he tries to pretend he respects the Old Man as a combat soldier. And hates him at the same time when he thinks the Old Man isn’t looking.
You can’t see that. But you can feel it.
Stinkeye confirmed it one time. “That one,” he said of Amarcus Hannibal. “He wouldn’t know the galaxy’s heart of darkness if he found it. Because it’d just feel like Tuesday to that chile. Know what I mean, Little King?”
He calls me Little King. Says that’s what the name Orion really means back on Earth. Says it’s something called Irish. And spelled different. But spellings changed once we left. And so maybe Stinkeye’s right even though he lies all the time.
Amarcus doesn’t respect anyone. He’s nothing more than a cold-blooded killer looking for his next vic. It’s just a good thing he found the profession of mercenary, because if not, I guarantee you he would’ve become a mob boss, serial killer, or crooked cop on some tiny world or station he’d made all his own. A place that would have been, for all intents and purposes, a kind of hell for those who lived there. And he would have been their King Satan.
Having said all that, all these terrible truths about my fellow Strange Company brother, Amarcus is actually an excellent soldier. And combat leader. He may run his platoon on a pure one-eighty-proof fear that he will kill them all and bury their bodies where no one will ever find them, but he won’t let any of his men get killed easily by anyone dumb enough to call him an enemy. So basically, they worship Sergeant Amarcus Hannibal in Dog Platoon. It’s a cult. A cult of fear. And that’s exactly the way Hannibal wants it.
Of course, half of them are probably wanted for murder themselves on some world somewhere. I ask myself why I’m dumb enough to make Amarcus Hannibal an enemy.
And there’s no answer I’ve ever found that explains it.
I just do.
Chapter Five
We’re sitting there in the mud and the rain of the ruined lev station, waiting for the captain to give the signal to attack tonight’s House Party. We always keep operational objective tags the same. We’re getting rigid in our old ways. What’s next, senility? This is not, repeat not, the bright age of the company’s history. You should’ve seen us back when we were really something. Now we’re getting old, tired, and maybe even a bit rusty. Or maybe just the last three months on the losing side of this conflict has me feeling that way about us. About me. About the universe in general.
It was getting hard to tell which.<
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I looked up and down the line of my platoon in the dark blue of the night and ruin. Drifting mist where once there had been rain. Squads and teams, grimly staring forward into the rainy darkness we will soon assault through. Watching the ruin of the No One’s Land we’d cross, a hundred meters of relatively open ground, to break and enter into the hulking monolith at the center. Grau Skull had cleared what they could to create this open ground. A kill zone to kill us within.
Chances were… some of us would die out there. Or at least get hit in the process. But like I said no one had come and confessed all their sins to me lately, so maybe it was just me and me alone that felt uneasy about the battlefield tonight. Maybe everyone else felt just the right amount of Strange Company get it on. Which, for the Strange Company, was just a little bit too much extreme violence. That was the best way to feel our unit greeting and reply. A little too much. Enough to feel just invincible. Too much, and you got crazy. Too little, and you felt weak and vulnerable against what the universe and others with guns were going to do to you. Like the dice were against you somehow.
Just enough and you had an advantage. Like you were just crazy enough to get up to some real trouble. Like… you were the living embodiment of the fact that the enemy had no idea what was coming for them. They were the fishing junk… and you were the typhoon. That’s the best way to put it.
I felt the funnel coming on. Dialing in on the ultra-violence I’d need in the next few minutes. Managing that and the ability to think, lead, shoot, move, and communicate through the next few.
Still we waited for the captain to give the signal to attack. He usually just whispered it in the ether of our comms. His dry and smoky voice always tired and a mix of irritation and impatience, go figure that. “Go. Go now.” That’s how he’d give the order to attack. That’s how he always gave the order to attack. As if saying, Go and take some lives now. That’s how he always gave it.