Strange Company

by Nick Cole

  Then he told me, “The Monarchs don’t do this for anything but the mem, buddy. It’s all about the mem, as the kids say. Never kid yourself about that, Sergeant Orion. If you’re gonna believe in anything, and I highly advise against believing in anything, believe that it’s all about the mem. You’ll be less unhappy that way. Emphasis on less.”

  Yeah, I think to myself as we drive down the refueling line, five clicks long now, passing vehicles filled with frightened eyes just staring out at us while other vehicles are being looted at gunpoint. Yeah, they’re just now figuring out they’re all losers on this one. Even us. Even the company. The Ultras have arrived to give us all a school lesson on who the real winners are.

  Spoiler. It ain’t us.

  “Establish our perimeter at the junction,” I say over the comm as we pass the not-so-brightly lit cargo refueling station that’s been left open by someone in this last and latest of most desperate of hours.

  Explosions rip through the sky to the west. Huge mega-tonnage explosions light up the low cloud ceiling and reveal leviathan mechs like monsters walking in the night out there on the horizon. High-intensity targeting lasers sweep for ground targets. It’s the stuff of nightmares. It’s the end of a world if there ever was one. It’s right now whether anyone likes it or not.

  And for the umpteenth time I try to do the chain of events that has me here and now.

  “We’re too close,” says Nox as I direct him toward the center of the three-road intersection we’re to hold for overwatch while Dog and the crawler come in to top off at the refuel point. Nox swears about how close we are as we watch those night monster mechs closing on their objectives out there. Missiles streak away and devastate a building half a mile to the west.

  “Someone musta been putting up a fight,” he mutters, leaning over the wheel, his face hard and mean in the bare light from the instruments. He’s not even thirty, and he looks like a mean and bitter old man already. Give him five years and he’ll have a ruck hump and be chewing light painkillers with every meal. But if he’s still alive he’ll be known as a mercenary everywhere he goes and there’s a certain kind of cool in that. For whatever that’s worth.

  I’m beginning to wonder that it might not be as much as I used to think it was.

  I turn around and stare at the Monarch behind me. Prompting her to illuminate us regarding Nox’s observation that someone is still fighting.

  “They have an attack profile matrix,” she says coolly in the waiting dark. “Much of this phase, initial planetary assault entry, is nothing more than an advanced full-spectrum terror campaign. There’s not a sane unit commander alive who thinks he, or she, stands a chance against the Monarchs’ executioners at this moment in the assault. There are a lot of lies told in the universe but the Ultras are not one of them.”

  “Then what are they doing,” I mutter as Reapers Two and Three, and the other Mules, move into position as we arrive at the position we’re supposed to hold. We’ll support each other from here and be ready to react to anything trying a fast attack on the company from any of the three road directions. Also, we hold the route out of Dodgeistan. We aren’t taking MSR Lifeline. We’re heading east into the Wastes. We’re departing from the known. Even the most desperate of refugees would avoid the Crash Wastes. It’s sort of a Vanished Triangle in the Ho Nebula meets Desert of Despair kinda place from those spectacuthriller movies about the ring and the boy wizard who becomes a sparkly vampire and kills a werewolf.

  Not a very nice place. I’m pretty sure there’s no beautiful actor boys and unreal actor girls. It’s just all forsaken lands and cracked earth that occasionally spews forth lava and burning salt. I’ve heard it even rains rocks out there and there’s supposed to be some local predator that’s pretty nasty. Hunts in large packs.

  A real no-go zone no one really wants to go to in the first place.

  “Then what’re they doing lighting everything up? Hasn’t everyone pretty much surrendered?” I ask her.

  “Clearing a space for the Battle Spire to set down, is my guess,” she says. The Monarch. The Seeker. “Even though the a-grav fields will crush the city flat, they don’t want any detonations underneath. No one wants six kilometers of starship suddenly toppling over once they set down to start the uplink with the bank ship.”

  So Chief Cook was right. I’ll have to tell him to get a prize out of the prize drawer. They’re gonna suck the planet dry of all the war-accumulated mem.

  “Has that ever happened before? A Battle Spire going over on its side?” To my knowledge it never has. But remember, ninety percent of the knowledge database in the galaxy is nothing but complete and pure Monarch propaganda.

  “Once,” she says as she watches Dog’s vehicles surrounding the crawler as they come into the refuel point at high speed. Hostile takeover of the pumps going down. There’s shooting, of course, because it’s Amarcus’s show. The rapid bark of the shorties Amarcus’s men run. It’s harsh and cruel. But…

  “Them’s the times,” I mutter tiredly as I watch Strange Company swarm the area and take control. The crawler heaves in and the lines are disconnected for both fuel and charge. It should take ten minutes just to get that massive thing topped off alone.

  The night feels sweaty and hot. Like it’s gonna rain more. But it hasn’t yet.

  Thirty minutes later, two gang fights have killed several people and the captain had to come in with the quick reaction force just to shut that down.

  I have no real idea what’s going on over there by the main refueling point other than the chatter coming over the comm and the sudden unstable bursts of frantic and frenetic gunfire mixed with bare single-shot pops that feel wanting and pathetic.

  “Somebody gettin’ done in the head?” asks Nox, who’s more interested in what’s going on over there than what’s not going down in the dark streets we’re oriented toward.

  “Targets acquired,” says Hauser over the comm and just above my head. He’s on the fifty in our Mule.

  “Who?” croaks Nox.

  “Where?” croak I, the sergeant in charge, at the same time.

  “Building at two o’clock. Fifth story, Sergeant,” says Hauser automatically. “Two. Sniper and observer. Deep in the room. I can engage with one burst and am calculating a ninety-eight point six for initially fatal hits in first strike. One hundred percent achieved with successive use of at most ten more rounds.”

  Hauser’s targeting system is state-of-the-art.

  I’m almost on the verge of saying, “Light ’em up, Hause,” when she stops me with a gentle yet surprisingly cold hand on my shoulder. The fingers are long, and the grip is firm. And it’s not unpleasant.

  “I wouldn’t do that yet. That’s a scout sniper team, Sergeant. Standard Ultra hunting group is three teams and a rifle assault team staged nearby for cleanup. Death squad configuration. Ask your cyborg to scan at seven and eleven. I’m checking also on visual…”

  “This is bad,” mutters Nox. “What if they’re just gonna call in an airstrike on the whole place? Do everyone! This whole block will be one giant fireball, man!”

  Yeah. All that. It’s going to hell in a handbasket and suddenly I’ve got decisions to make. Let Hauser loose and trigger the ambush. Identify as many tangos as I can and wait to figure everything out. Walk away and take my chances all by myself out there in the dark and rain. Maybe smoke a few cigarettes and run up the score against the Ultras themselves. There’s a certain dark attraction in the anonymity of such a doomed, off-the-rails last run. Maybe one last chance to really feel alive before death or the re-education rings.

  I decide to at least call the First Sergeant and let him know the Ultras are in the AO and ready to party.

  “Don’t,” she says as I tap for the First Sergeant. Like she can see the comm data projected in my combat lens on the surface of my eye. “Ultras have every channel hacked. Even yours. Have for mont
hs. They never hit a world without being in total control. Sometimes they are even in your units serving as grunts. You call this in, and they’ll know they’re blown. Their commander will have two options at that point. Release the death squad they’ve probably got stacked nearby, or just do the whole objective with the gunship on station.” She points into the night. Up there in a cloud front. “See?” she says. “Wraith on standby orbit. Their commander gets the word and they’ll unload everything they’ve got right down on top of us. Endgame.”

  Oh boys. This is way above my pay grade.

  I push back in my seat, tighten every muscle, count to five, and then release. It’s a technique I picked up a long time ago. It’s also a stall to see if someone will figure out something for this poor dumb sergeant to shoot at instead of forcing me to pick a target.

  Honestly, I’m happiest, if it has to be combat, with just good ol’ movement to contact and bounding overwatch. That’s just a dance and there are rules to play it by. If you follow ’em you might live. And I like that. The simplicity. The steps. The math. The promise. I can do those things.

  “So what do we do?” I ask.

  “Sniper team acquired at ten o’clock,” says Hauser. “Rooftop. Sniper setting up. Spotter scanning for targets.”

  When Hauser’s report is finished, she adds, “Team three at seven. Right where I thought they’d be. That’s the trap, Sergeant. This whole place is about to become a shooting gallery.”

  “And?” I ask, not a little pissed off.

  She’s quiet.

  “You’re aware time is probably not on our side,” I prompt her. “I need to let the rest of Strange know they’re about to get hit…”

  She holds up a hand. Stopping me of course because she’s a Monarch and I’m just me.

  Two Avengers streak right over the top of us and I think, Welp. This is it. And wait for a cluster bomb to ignite the whole station in a ball of fiery death. Or maybe they’ll just sew a cluster minefield and we’ll all see which one of us can get everyone else killed first.

  Nothing happens. We don’t die in the roar of their passing wake. They were headed for someone else to kill. Plus, there’s that heavy gunship in the clouds just waiting to rain steel. I barely see its lights way up there. Sometimes I don’t. If I remember my weapon platforms right, the Wraith carries three twenty-millimeter cannons among its other weapons with which to rain down death upon all of us for several grid squares. It’s even got a heavy artillery piece.

  I know for a fact that that ship has some kind of motto stenciled on the side about running but not being able to hide. Or just dying tired.

  Fun, huh?

  “Listen, Sergeant,” she begins. “That death squad is going to come down one of these three streets once the snipers start working. They don’t want to use the gunship because they’ll lose the refuel point and right now, until the Battle Spire sets down, they need easy resources to keep expanding their control sphere as they start combat operations. You have to hit those teams and be ready to react to the Ultra death squad that will come in to clean up. I don’t know your unit’s capabilities, but that’s how it will go down in the next few minutes. Ten at most. I’m estimating five. So make your response in the next two.”

  “And how do you know this?”

  Silence.

  Then, “I commanded an Ultra division during the Sindo. Narak Desert Campaign.”

  Uh… is what I don’t say. That was two hundred years ago. I also don’t say that because that would make crazy sound even crazier. But that’s not important right now. What’s important is dealing with this developing turkey shoot.

  “Hauser, dismount and take out the team at ten position using urban guerilla warfare protocols.”

  This means he’ll try to do it by stealth and surprise. One man against ten Ultra Marines. Odds no one would take. A definite death sentence. But he’s not a man. He’s a combat cyborg optimized for such missions.

  This is his actual wheelhouse.

  “Affirmative, Sergeant,” says the killing machine I call my friend.

  “Need it done in less than two, buddy.”

  Hauser retrieves his secondary weapon. A Bastard with a high-cycle drum magazine for max output of subsonic ammunition. The huge suppressor makes the weapon even longer. He uses this weapon system exclusively for surprise attacks as the Pig is usually too loud and much too obnoxious.

  He nods and trots off into the darkness.

  That’s one team I’m hoping is mostly handled.

  I tap for Nether. Ten seconds later his disembodied voice is in my ear. Though I have no idea where he is.

  “Where are you?” I say in Pan-Numerican. I speak a little. Nether speaks a lot. We usually talk in it just so no one listens in on what we’re saying. Nether likes his privacy. I try to learn things just to pass the time.

  “Abeam the refueling of the crawler,” he replies in our preferred language. I’m betting the Ultras monitoring this channel, at least local, don’t speak Pan-Numerican. It’s considered a dirty language by the Monarchs. Anyone at Ultra Strategic Intel, probably running a station inside the Battle Spire, is going to have to run a translation program, assess, and then interact with unit commanders. That might buy us a couple of minutes. “Thirty meters out in the dark. Watching the street to the south,” finishes Nether.

  That’s our back trail. I spot his location, see nothing, and realize why he’s not aware of the snipers. They’re right above him.

  “We got probs. Big ones. Ultras are in the AO and setting up to start knocking us down. In…” I twist my wrist and check my cheap watch synchronized with Hauser’s hit. “A minute thirty-seven, Hauser’s hitting one of their elements. I need you to do your thing and make them go away in the building you’re shadowing in. They’re five stories right above your head. Northwest corner. Can do?”

  Long pause in which it sounds like I’m listening to the emptiness of the universe.

  I turn back to the Monarch.

  “You ever work a fifty?”

  She nods without giving me some stupid CV about how hardcore she is. Yeah, I’m in lust with her. But that little bit makes me respect her a lot more. Every spectacuthriller I’ve ever watched, the infinitely talented female ninja killer has to give you some ridiculous history of how badass she is. It’s tiresome and standard for all Monarch propaganda. But this Monarch babe just nods, and as I flash my eyes upward toward the gun, I hear my own breathing start to get rapid because get it on time with the Monarchs’ elite fighting unit is about to begin. I can feel it in the air.

  I’ve done a lot of things as a soldier with the company. But I’ve never fought Ultra Marines. Few people living have.

  Because few people who do so live.

  One minute.

  I don’t see Hauser.

  I’m hearing a dull buzz that’s starting off where Nether is. I scan the darkness in the streets beyond the junction, trying to figure out where the Ultra Marine death squad will come from. That would be nice to know.

  The buzz has turned into an ominous hum. I’ve heard it before. Bad things happened.

  “Can do,” whispers Nether and then is gone from the comm.

  I tap for our chief Voodoo troublemaker. Stinkeye doesn’t speak any other languages except Stinkeye pidge. So I gotta chance it.

  “Go…” he mutters darkly.

  “We’re about to get hit.”

  “Yeah. Felt it, Little King. Know where’s from?”

  “Our twelve at the junction. Plus we got snipers. But I need you here to deal with their assaulters coming from our twelve.”

  A powerful boom erupts from the tower above Nether’s position. One of the special high-powered rifles the Ultra snipers are rumored to use has begun to speak. Suddenly there’s screaming around the pumps. The mob that had been pressing on Dog trying to top off goes wild and sc
atters in every direction.

  “On da move,” hisses Stinkeye as general comm goes nuts.

  “Player’s hit!” comes over the comm. Someone in Dog is calling man down. Automatic gunfire erupts.

  “Engage the team at two o’clock,” I yell at the Monarch in my gunner’s position. Without hesitation she opens up and the fifty-cal begins to thud thud thud thunder as she sends rounds and tracer fire into that position.

  I check my watch as I switch to on and scan the darkness ahead of us. If their assaulters are coming, they’ll come now.

  “Stand by to repel forward, Reaper!” I shout at the rest of my bunch. Then I remember I’ve got a minigun in the driver’s seat. I lay my rifle aside, slide in, and swivel the deadly little chunk of a weapon out and forward, checking the feed and racking the first round.

  “Hause…”

  Nothing. On the rooftop where he should be, I see and hear nothing. That’s probably good. And as I watch the first Ultras I’ve ever seen in my life sweep out of the darkness ahead, in two teams, and moving like ghosts out looking for souls to steal, I aim the weapon at them.

  I open fire with the minigun firing 7.62 from all six barrels. It blurs outbound lead and I need to adjust range as it does so. At this distance the Ultras’ death squad, a specific unit type that handles specific functions and tasks, is little more than shadows of larger than human size.