by Nick Cole
Couldn’t take it over.
Couldn’t shoot our way through.
I scratched my head because I was outta tricks. Did I mention my helmet had been blown off back in the terminal? If I didn’t it was because it had really rung my bell for a few minutes during the worst of it. When I looked over and saw it had cracked in half, I knew I had just spent one of my lives in the arcade of death. Right down the center. Which was stunning. That thing was rated for the highest calibers. So whoever hit me had been using something along the lines of an Awlrhino gun. It was a wonder my neck hadn’t snapped on impact.
But war is strange. Who can know it? I ain’t the one to ask. Like I tell everyone… I just work here.
Still, I had no clue how to get us past the Ultra executioner team ambush chokepoint.
Time for some Voodoo, I thought, and looked over to see Stinkeye hurling his guts out on all fours in the dust.
“Hey, buddy…”
He waved me away, moaning about death, falling face-down into his own puke which smelled of gutter liquor and bad meat on the street. I’d smelled it before because I’d known this man for as long as I’d been in the company. I needed him to get it together and pull some of that legendary dark Voodoo operator stuff everyone in Voodoo Platoon is known for.
Nether could probably open up a hole in reality and suck some of the executioner team right into a void or something as we commenced our attack. Even create a tornado by suddenly forming an extreme low-pressure area that could ruin that settlement as we hit it at high speed. Some of us might not die. Chief Cook… well, psyops could do crazy things to their heads. I’d seen him do stuff that wasn’t real, and I would’ve sworn was. The truth was his plaything. He bent it and manufactured what he wanted you to see so we could kill you a lot easier. I wasn’t sure exactly what he could do here, but I was sure he could create something convincing enough to at least let us get close enough to shoot without the sniper ruining us at extreme ranges. And then there was the Little Girl. And her Wild Thing. Unpredictable, yes. But I was pretty sure that dark and psychotic warrior from another dimension she could briefly call into existence could buy us enough time to hit the southern trails and disappear before the Ultras could call in air support to light us up.
As usual, I had none of these Voodoo assets. None of the things I needed to work with right here and right now. Nothing that would make my difficult life a whole lot easier. They were all with the other elements.
All I had was one drunken Psyonix user who was iffy at the best of times and who now seemed to be having some kind of stroke, or bender to end all benders. He might even be dying.
I bent down, never minding the ripe smell of puke.
I would never say this aloud but might as well since this is a written record that will most likely never make it back into the Bright Worlds of galactic human expansion and if it does will end up in Monarch hands where it will be redacted into oblivion. So I’ll say it for the record. However impermanent that record may be.
He is my friend. Stinkeye. I needed to use him. But he was also my friend. And he was also, clearly, incapable of being used at the moment.
What good are friends if you can’t use them. Amirite?
Stinkeye suddenly collapsed into unconsciousness and Choker had to get an IV pump started on him, as well as pull him from the pool of his own filth.
“There’s that…” I muttered to no one.
“There’s what?” asked Punch, coming to stand near me and receive the orders that would get us out of this one. Apparently, I was in charge.
I took a deep breath.
“Well, looks like we gotta do this the hard way.”
“And what way is that, boss?” asked Punch again.
I spat some desert dust off into the dull orange weeds that grew here and there out of the reddish-black volcanic rock of the ridge.
“The hard way, Punch, is where we gotta do it ourselves.”
Chapter Thirty-Five
What the Ultra executioner team guarding the chokepoint across the immense three-thousand-meter span that threw itself across the Crack of Doom spotted was a lone fast-attack Mule with one driver headed across the bridge at a sane and rational pace. Nothing threatening here, folks. Probably a little fast for civilians, but just under SOP for Strange Company. Like the dude driving the Mule was just some savvy rogue staff officer, or even a priority messenger with time on his hands and not looking to make anyone too nervous as they tried to get away mostly unnoticed with some valuable intel or even illegal booty. Just the kind of target an execution team’s Inquisitor would be looking for to put in some time on the cyber-rack. And what the sniper in the hexagonal wide-windowed watchtower would see was someone who looked a lot like Boom Boom, driving. Because it was Boom Boom at the wheel. But that didn’t matter because the executioner team sniper didn’t know Boom Boom, and more importantly he didn’t know Boom Boom, our sniper, was dead. Recently. Punch had blown a real pair of nice sunglasses he’d gotten from some refugee a few weeks ago in exchange for some collectible sidearms he’d picked up off dead Loyalists, to make sure it looked like our dead sniper was really just some shady but basically friendly officer guy out for a drive.
The refugee Punch had traded must’ve figured he was going to need to shoot his way out of stuff more than he was going to need to look cool going forward now that the jig of everything on this planet was up. He was probably right, but the shades did look cool. They were upper-slick mirrored spacer shades. The kind that cost a lot of micro-mem and were worn by people like high-speed frontier scouts and interdiction runners. The kind of people who’d never get caught dead doing Jump Six while barely outrunning blockade destroyers hurling every weapon they had for the kill shot once they’d smashed your shields.
The kind of people who wanted to look cool on their next date. Not go blind from flare flak trying to run a blockade on an interdicted world.
We used the shades to cover up Boom Boom’s dead eyes. Those were kind of a real giveaway since we were betting the Ultra special forces sniper had the best optics the Monarchs could buy. If he was running a targeting life-scan laser then that was gonna be a problem anyway, but we had to play the cards we were dealt. We just had to hope they didn’t have that particular card in their hand. The optics would have spotted the death in our friend’s eyes. So we used the shades and gambled that would be enough to deceive for effect.
The sniper, who would be the first to acquire the incoming Mule, would see Boom Boom, smile on his face… Oh yeah. About that. Choker used medical staples to create that effect, a perma-smiling Boom Boom, wearing his shades and just out for a drive. The position of the sun, now falling into the west, might help some since we stapled his cheeks wide so his white teeth showed.
“He always had nice teeth,” Hustle noted as we stood back to study the work we’d done on Boom Boom’s corpse. “I always admired him for that. He spent money on those teeth. That’s thinking. Like he was gonna have a future.”
“He looks happy,” said Choker as he inspected his work with the medical stapler, device still in hand and ready for a touch-up if he wasn’t completely satisfied. That’s the thing about having a medic who’s probably somewhere on the sociopath scale. Nothing’s off-limits to him. “That’s how I’ll always remember him,” he said.
Everyone gave Choker the look everyone always gives Choker. A look that says our medic has something deeply wrong with him. Something that bothers even mercenaries on a level they’re not completely comfortable with admitting. Especially if this is the guy that’s gonna save your life by pulling off a leech that’s a little too close to an area that men tend to value. And other valuable medical stuff.
“What?” he asked everyone, sensing our discomfort. But no one answered. Again, this is the guy you tell stuff to you don’t share with the rest. Best not to make him… crazy.
So that’s what the
sniper in the watchtower saw. Out there across the span where the settlement on the far end needed to be bypassed. The rest of us were now waiting, behind a distant curve blocked by the trailing tail of the ridge of jagged volcanic rock, for our plan to take effect.
Our hope was the sniper would be talking to his team leader about their game plan, which it seemed they’d been running for most of the last twenty-fours since formal operations began. How they’d handle innocent little Boom Boom. Who knew? Maybe they’d had this game going before the Battle Spire ever inserted into the combat zone. Great way to collect a lot of intel and data on the situation and get it to Ultra High Command once the invasion started.
As I thought about all this, I gave a dark little chuckle at the impending irony of Boom Boom’s tag. No one bothered to ask me what I was amused at. Everyone was pretty much pins and needles to watch what was gonna happen next.
We do love our explosions. Almost as much as our dirty tricks. And, as an NCO, I thought this was good for us. Always look on the bright side, Sergeant Orion. For once we were pulling a scam, a staple of Strange Company that had often given us an advantage where supplies, equipment, numbers, and weapons didn’t. Those things were often on the wanting end for us when facing an enemy. But Voodoo Platoon game-changed that. Unfortunately, we didn’t have a lot of Voodoo right now to play games. But games we still had.
Someone actually sniggered. I could tell we were pretty pleased with ourselves. As their NCO, I was cool with that. We’d been taking a beating for a bit too long now. It was time for an “Eat This!” to the galaxy.
Meanwhile Boom Boom was closing and we were hoping they’d go ahead and let him into their midst now that he’d been spotted and didn’t seem like an attacking force or a threat of any kind. If the sniper did engage, that was no big loss. Boom Boom was already dead. If they blew his head off and the vehicle just kept closing, then they’d have a heads-up. But the vehicle was a guided missile now. Shredding our “driver” wasn’t gonna stop the pain coming their way.
Ultras have a lot of magic tricks. Like I said, they have the latest and best equipment the Monarchs can produce. Our Monarch, the Seeker, assured me that yes there are things an executioner team might have to defend themselves against what we were about to do to them, but more than likely only a few would survive our surprise.
“Uh… last time I checked,” noted Hoser, Reaper’s very large gunner carrying the second Pig, Hustle the AG always nearby and humping belts of ammunition to feed the beast, “an Ultra Marine was worth ten-to-one. Executioners are high-speed low-drag special forces, Sar’nt. Not that I mind all that noise and all, I was lab-grown to kill, but I’m guessing that number goes up with men of their expertise. So…”
He made a show of counting how many we had.
Ten. There were ten of us.
“So unless we get all but one of ’em, we’re gonna have some real problems going through the choke.”
“We might get all of ’em,” said Punch optimistically. Like some lone voice in the wilderness, a prophet no one believed in anymore telling everyone the religion of Luck was still in play despite ours having been nothing but bad since long before this mess. Repent and believe, for the hour of their annihilation might be at hand… maybe, if the dice say, so be it. Sorta.
Still, “Gotta have faith, guys,” I reminded what was left of my once forty-man platoon. “Maybe about to change.”
“Says who,” muttered someone from the cheap seats. I ignored the remark as NCOs know when and when not to do.
We held our breath for the sound of sonic booms that would indicate the executioner sniper had fired his very powerful rifle. He could take out the Mule, yes, but he’d need some pretty good hits. That thing was rated to stand up to a tank round. Conceivably. The people inside the Mule when the tank round hit… ummmm, not so much. But hey, nothing’s perfect. And in any case we didn’t have any people in the Mule that was now cruising casually three thousand meters across the Crack of Doom. Just Boom Boom with his perma-smile and mirrored spacer shades.
How was Boom Boom driving, you might ask? If he was dead and all? Hauser had hacked the Mule’s onboard systems and was controlling the vehicle remotely. All Boom Boom had to do was sit back and enjoy the ride. And then live up to his tag.
My plan, which now seemed like something a Neolithic caveman would come up with to do the other tribe out of their more comely females, had been to take my good friend’s body and turn him into a suicide bomber by loading all our high-ex, grenades, and any other explosives anyone had, into the Mule and detting it on the sniper in the checkpoint tower. More than likely that would destabilize enough of the ambush for us to take no more than sixty percent casualties going through at high speed. I was warned by Hauser there was a thirty-six-point-something percent chance the bridge in that section might collapse from usage of all our available high-ex. Fourteen percent chance it would collapse entirely. Leaving us trapped on this side of the Crack of Doom.
“I’m cool with that,” I said as I made ready to shove my remaining shape charges into the passenger’s seat so they’d det on impact.
High-Ex was our one true religion of explosives until the Monarch stepped in. We were gathered around our dead friend like hobgoblins improvising some new giggling wickedness to get their necks out of yet another noose. Soldiers are little more than ever that. You have to be honest about these things. Especially when you’re gambling on body-tossing your enemies off an objective after a firefight where it looked like you were all gonna die.
“I think I have something that can help,” she said. The Seeker. The Monarch. An otherworldly beauty that had no business among our unclean kind about our wickedness. Her voice clear and strong in the desert silence along the ridge like a song about trains that reminds you it’s long past time to be getting to a home you never shoulda left.
Clock wasn’t just burning. It was on fire. We needed to make that rally. We needed to cross the desert and link up. The rest of Strange, brothers to one another, strangers to the universe, were depending on us. We’d need every rifle we could carry to get the company off-world.
“Better than these?” Jacks held up four bricks of Thermodyna in response to the Monarch’s suggestion that she had something better. Thermodyna was our preferred high-ex for disabling structures and breaching doomsday bunkers. Stable, extremely kinetic, you could trigger it with everything from traditional detonators to a targeting laser.
The Monarch pulled one of her fancy grenades off her chest rig. It was cylindrical and stippled with a rubberized grip that encompassed its surface. No spool. Just a weird dull gray knob on top. Definitely military-grade. She gave the knob a twist and it began to throb and pulse in a soft neo red.
“This is molecular thermite. Blast radius two thousand meters. It’ll flash-fry everything in less than ten seconds as the molecules ignite and cause chain reactions turning connecting molecule strings into firebombs. Think of it as self-replicating napalm. Moves like a wave outward from the center. We use it to clean sensitive sites. And to avoid capture. My problem here was delivery. You…”
She stared at Choker and his staple gun, Hauser deep inside the guts of the engine to reach the Mule’s control systems, and the rest of us ponying up all our explosives. To be honest, we have a lot. Most of us carry extra. Just in case. And of course… dead Boom Boom smiling behind his shades, tied to the wheel and the seat with paracord.
“… you seem to have solved the… delivery problem,” she said dryly. “This will do. Just get it close and it’ll cook them inside their armor. Unless they’ve got a quantum defensive pocket… they’re dead.”
Now, watching the last hundred meters of Boom Boom’s corpse’s existence, the sniper still had not fired.
“They’re going for it…” squealed Punch with delight. The only thing he loved more than punching people in the face was blowing them up.
“How
many in an execution team?” asked Choker, attempting to act nonchalant. If you didn’t know him it might have worked. If you did it gave you the chills. Asking like he had some running count of everyone whose demise he’d ever had a hand in bringing about. The executioner team was definitely making his list.
I try not to judge. But sometimes…
“Six,” stated Hauser emotionlessly.
The Monarch confirmed this number with a nod as I cast a quick look at her.
Twenty meters to go and Stinkeye wandered up to our observation position. We’d left him in the other Mule where we’d piled all our remaining gear. It was going to be tight from here on out as we all crammed in to make the rally.
“Whatchu lizards up ta now?” he croaked like a hungover starport gutter drunk. “Anyone wanna play—”
A flash close to something nuclear lit up the entire sky. It was shocking and made you exhale all your breath and know you just did something very wrong. An offense against all that was natural. Five seconds later a hot tornado of heat and searing light washed over us and knocked our Voodoo chief onto his butt. Clouds raced away high above and suddenly the day was about twenty degrees hotter than before even over here almost four thousand meters away from the center of the detonation.
I shielded my eyes and stared into the bright furnace where the settlement at the far end of the span had been. When I could see again, a black-smoke mushroom cloud suddenly turned into a slow-moving twister, flinging black, burning debris and smoking gray ash away in every direction.
Reaper began to cheer.
Thirty minutes later we drove across the bridge as fast as we dared. Racing through the blackened remains of ground zero. The Monarch had assured us the device was non-nuclear and there would be no fallout.
The sands on the other side of the span had turned into weirdly beautiful glass sculptures. Some meaningless. Some looking like a race of alien titans, half squid, half cloud giant, that might have ruled the galaxy before humanity ever uttered the words “lift off.”