by Nick Cole
I checked in on the Kid who’d been sticking nearby. Unofficially he’d become my assistant.
“Ya good?” I asked as Farts struggled up the ladder with his shot leg. The painkillers were starting to wear off.
The Kid looked at me and tapped his tactical rig, then gave me a thumbs-up. That was Company sign for the universal Good to Go of all soldiers.
Farts told me he was doing fine but his leg hurt. I told him to shut up and keep moving.
Six minutes later I had two dead and three wounded.
Farts was the first to die.
Chapter Twelve
The firefight broke out in the dark of the Neptune Clipper’s subdeck for navigational redundancy processors. We got no indication before it went down that it was an ambush we’d just walked into. Somehow someone on the other side had read the ship’s schematics and damage control board and figured we’d try the subdeck to get forward. It was clear as the first few rounds whipped past my head and smashed into hard plastic and state-of-the-art compressed diamond drives that the enemy knew we were trying to use the Clipper to cover our breach into the main terminal.
It was a horrible, and brief, firefight. That’s generally how it goes. Short means brutal. Lotsa ruined corpses.
Just before the shooting started I’d sent Third forward to secure the route into the deck above us that was at the end of the processing sectors. Second was on rear. Fourth on the right. First made its way with Punch leading and me trying to keep it together as Chief Cook’s tab started to come on strong.
It was at that point that I was getting comm from the First Sergeant back running ops for the main element. The main attack wasn’t going so well. The enemy had put together some adequate hunter-killer anti-tank teams and nailed the Resistance spearhead to our west, stopping them cold along the green terminal ring at Space Traffic Control, a huge looming needle-point tower that ran all traffic assigned to the outer 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. And I couldn’t tell if I should be concerned about that, or just relieved.
More enemy contact came in from Hauser. Third engaged what we would later find out to be rear security holding the exit we needed to take to get out of the subdeck processors. A brief exchange of high-cycle automatic gunfire from Hauser and company, and enemy rear security was ruined. Fourth on the right picked up another sapper team and nailed them unawares. Or creeping to flank to continue planting charges. Suddenly First was at the center of all kinds of incoming and outgoing from both sides.
Expended brass dribbled across the mirror-smooth floor of the high-load processing deck for flight and navigation operations. A state-of-th
e-art starship was getting ruined from the inside out. Big time. There had been a time, once and long ago, when I was very interested in the Free Trader and Scout Service. I’d looked at putting together a ship, and time after time it was this deck, the one we were fighting our way through, that cost the most. Even on the lowliest of jump-skiffs or star-schooners. The kind most explorers preferred for max equipment, minimum luxury to find a habitable world to claim and get rich quick by.
But the cost of these systems had always been skyrocketingly prohibitive. Yeah, sure, there were used compressor frames that could keep up with bare-bones navigational charts of a constantly evolving stellar frontier, but out-of-date data or a bad crunch on a necessary jump and you were about to see what the inside of a supernova looked like up close.
For at least three seconds of what would be the end of your life.
And then no one would ever hear from you again. Which was the part of Scout Service that had most appealed to me back then. Getting good and lost from the collective insanity of the Bright Worlds. But the company found me instead, and I’m probably going to stay here until they get tired of me. Or until I die on some whacked LZ we never should’ve been on in the first place.
So it goes. Buy the ticket. Take the ride.
The initial exchange of surprise gunfire still echoing in my comms, I organized Reaper to get it on, Company-style. I first reoriented the battle toward enemy currently engaging on the left flank. Mainly, the ones shooting the hell out of Reaper First Squad. Besides those two dead and three wounded, everyone was getting hit in the armor. I got a ricochet off my combat helmet. Not the first time. It was a glancing shot that had probably already hit something else and my bell was already good and rung from the retro-agent drug, so it bothered me later. A bad headache and my jaw hurt, that was all. Not then. Under the influence of the drug it felt like a love tap. Starbursts expanded out from my huge dry eyes and I watched them wallow away and turn to fireflies, or butterflies, of electricity with blue streamers. Both, actually. Cool, huh? Lots of pretty colors.
“Forward is now left flank. Hauser, take Third and sweep the exit we need. Make sure it’s secure. We may need to boogie fast.”
“Affirmative, Sergeant,” responded the cyborg.
“Jacks,” I said. “Need you to get on their right and set up a base of fire on those yellow strobes ASAP.”
I got a “copy” from the Second Squad leader just before one of the sappers tossed a flashbang at us. I saw it come in, and so did Punch from behind the big black ominous compressor stack we were hiding behind. A thing that would have cost several million mem, and which was currently acting as a high-priced and very ineffective bullet-catcher for incoming targeted at us. Later I’d see that my rear plate also got a love tap from someone’s round. But again, it just exploded into frag and spall and maybe my ribs were bruised. Which might explain why I was having difficulty breathing until I bummed a mild relaxer off Choker later.
I was gonna be black and blue for sure.
Punch, wounded hand and missing a finger, let go of his Bastard, reached with his unwounded and firing hand, grabbed the incoming explosive we hoped was a flashbang, and side-armed it right back at the enemy as he flopped over on the deck, exposing himself to fire. Guy could’ve been a relief pitcher with a mean slider like that.
It exploded off in the darkness, but its effects were greatly mitigated by a lot of the natural EMP fields and Faraday cages that ran through the processor racks. I think that was the moment that stopped the attack from the left flank for at least a second. Next I got Fourth to come in and support First as we developed a sustained base of fire. Medics pulled out the wounded if they could.
Remember, at this point in the firefight I had no idea what was going on other than what I could see right around me. Two dead. Punch wounded. And the Kid and Chief Cook getting out of the funnel of death we were sitting in.
I saw someone and dumped three bursts of full auto. I had no idea if I’d hit anyone, but it felt good. I swapped in a new mag and flipped the Bastard’s selector switch to semi. Promising myself I would never commit the sin of full auto ever again.
Never ever.
Of course, the lies we tell ourselves.
Second swept from left of us through the multi-core data cylinders that interfaced with the ship’s navigational stacks and began shooting, moving, and communicating like a good squad is supposed to. Then they began wiping out the enemy.
“Cease fire, One and Four,” I said over the comm. I didn’t want us shooting into Second as they tried to overrun the enemy ahead of us.
Two minutes later the sound of gunfire was gone and I was getting a sitrep from Jacks. The sappers were all dead. I ordered everyone to move 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 tacti
cal 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.