Strange Company

by Nick Cole

  There were dead. I knew that already from the comm chatter.

  I look at the Kid as I get ready. We’ve got some ammo and weapons. I’ll be going with the captain to take the armored transport once we’re down.

  I look at the Little Girl. She’s watching me and I swear an autumn leaf dances into the open cabin of the cargo deck, swirls around, and we both watch it knowingly. Her, a child watching a leaf play, never minding all the death and chaos about to go down. Me, freaked out but numb. Thinking… This might as well happen. It’s probably for the best. The Wild Thing might not even be enough considering the mounting odds and growing casualty reports we’re getting.

  Besides. Her friend is showing up whether we like it or not.

  It’s get it on time. And then some.

  I take a deep breath. This might as well happen.

  I’ve got two mags now. And some beat-up dudes to take to the transport. Hauser is ruined. But he’s going anyway. Of course he is. The captain is shot but he’s hard as nails so that don’t matter. Jacks and Punch and Choker look like three killers ready to do what they do best. The Monarch slithers out of the co-pilot’s chair as we make our approach. Fresh mag, chambers a round, and flips the safety to off. The airfield grows wide ahead and below. Tracer fire and explosions all across the city. The taxi aprons and clamshell hangars down there are silent. Other ships are departing fast, rocketing off into the upper atmosphere and the burning daylight. One ship is on fire in the late-day desert sunlight down there on the tarmac. It explodes suddenly sending hull plating and debris in every direction.

  I spot the company crawler making the airfield. Under heavy fire. Dog soldiers are falling back in squads. Firing and covering. Carrying their wounded to the crawler, or around the crawler, for cover. Local security forces are pursuing in armored technicals and teams on foot. Someone fires AT and it smokes off and smashes into a building. Blowing debris out the back.

  I can’t believe we’ve made it this far.

  I can’t believe we’ll make it any farther. I can’t believe that at all.

  That seems impossible as I see Monarch Ultra Marine death squads sweeping in from all points of the compass now. Like this was some kind of trap they knew we’d arrive at eventually. Nice try, Strange Company. But the dice were loaded the whole time. Whether you listened to the ghost of John Strange in the Bar at the End of the Universe or not. Don’t believe in anything, Orion. Not ever. It’ll just get you killed like it’s about to.

  “She just looked at me and said, It’s over.” The Kid is watching it all too out his side of the aircraft as he finishes his story of who he was before the Company of Strange. “Maybe for her, Sar’nt. Maybe. I love her though. Still do even though she doesn’t anymore. Maybe sometimes, she’ll think of me and wonder what happened to me. Ya think? Wonder if I bought it in some battle no one remembers but that made a difference for someone I’ll never know, y’know. That’s all I guess I wanted. That’s my story, Sar’nt. And it ain’t much of one. But… it’s mine. That’s why I’m here. That’s why I joined. I loved a beautiful girl, and she didn’t love me anymore. Dumb, huh? I thought I’d just do something dumb because…”

  Someone’s shooting at us. Rounds smack into the fuselage. He doesn’t finish. We’re in it now.

  Nothing after that because we were down and clear. Door gunners laying the hate in every direction because the environment was absolutely target-rich. We hustled out into a firefight we didn’t start, with every intention of finishing it. ’Cause that’s all we had. All we ever had. Strange Company gets paid to finish the fights other people start.

  I think John Strange would be proud of that. He was that kind of dude. I only met him once, and he was a ghost then, but I think he’d proud of how we hung together even when the odds were against us

  But I’d heard the Kid. Heard his story that was the same as all of our stories though the details and reasons are often different. You should hear Choker’s. It’s really messed up.

  I knew the parts the Kid didn’t know. Not yet. You gotta live longer to know those parts. That you can love someone even if they don’t love you back. Nothing wrong with that. Maybe if more of us did that the galaxy might change and be something better without superweapons and ideological concepts to kill one another over. Wars would become obsolete and Strange Company would sit in bars and tell stories growing old. And I knew that… sometimes… sometimes you go do dumb stuff trying to become a hero like that’ll make a difference in the choices that were made. Like you’ll prove something to those who dismissed you. Or you’ll do dumb stuff trying to prove something to yourself. Even though you lie and tell yourself you’re trying to prove something to everyone else except yourself.

  I didn’t have the heart to tell him she doesn’t care anymore. And that no, she never thinks of him.

  Sometimes, you do make a difference. Just not where you expect. And what you do on a bad LZ, echoes in eternity.

  Chapter Forty-Nine

  Everything went wrong from the start. We hustled away from the idle-roaring dropship not taking fire yet. But there was lots of flying lead and bright tracers going in every direction. Both gunners were bleeding brass and Chief Cook was shouting “Go go go!” over the comm as the hijacked drop made ready to go back into action and buy us some airborne covering fire.

  A rocket smacked into one of the distant hangars and exploded the thin roof in every direction.

  “Just in time for the party, Sarge,” yelled Punch as he took the tip of the spear for our hijacking ground force to secure the armored transport dropship that would get us back onto the Spider.

  Once we were clear I heard both door gunners, Hustle and Hoser, give the “down and clear,” signaling we were far away enough from the drop for it to take off again. We were fifty meters away from our target moving in a combat wedge to intercept. Both gunners opened fire as the drop climbed above our heads and out over the battle.

  The captain, with his Hardballer out, gave the signal for his three killers, Punch, Choker, and Jacks, to light up the ground crew as we approached. They made short work of them and took the rear boarding ramp, dusting the crew chief as they did so.

  Jacks grabbed the dude and tossed him off the back ramp.

  The captain ordered the next phase of the takeover as we hit our first snag. The Little Girl had come with us. Everyone had just assumed she’d stay on the Ultra drop we’d hijacked. The one that was gonna go and do gun runs over the top of a citywide firefight. Because we’re good with children like that. Now she was crouching low and keeping behind me, and Hauser was bringing up rear security. Hauser there only because he was moving slow with a limp on the bad articulating joint in his shot-to-hell leg.

  “Take her!” I shouted at the combat cyborg once we reached the deck.

  “Negative,” shouted the Old Man over the rage and thunder of the battle in all directions. Hauser, myself, and the Monarch were Team Two. We’d be clearing the forward compartments and the flight deck of the armored transport the company needed if we were to make the rendezvous with the Spider. Hauser because he could still take more damage. And he had the combat shotgun which was perfect for that kind of close-quarters work now that the Pig was bone-dry on ammo.

  “Message from XO,” shouted the First Sergeant over the company comm. “Spider entering outer atmosphere now for rendezvous. He’s got interceptors inbound and we are to get the hustle on, Strange Company. Ain’t no time to dally.”

  The Old Man looked at all of us with disgust as he tried to figure out what to do with the Little Girl.

  “Come here!” he snapped at her and held out one wounded hand.

  Jacks got shot at that point by a sniper somewhere among the terminals. He was on the rear deck, holding the perimeter there with Punch and Choker. Punch, who’d grabbed the deck gun, a thirty-millimeter eight-barreled rotating minigun, opened up on the sniper team that ha
d nailed Jacks. They disappeared in a hail of outgoing angry black wasp bullets as Punch worked over the hangar they were firing from. Something deep inside exploded a second later and sent flaming jet fuel across the floor over there.

  “That’ll give ’em something to think about!”

  Choker was on Jacks and stabilizing him immediately. He was hit bad and I helped drag him onto the aft cargo deck, leaving a bloody trail. The Kid was returning fire from behind the massive portside landing gear as we started to get pushed by a four-man team of Ultras who were inside the perimeter now and trying to shut down our escape. One of them had an anti-ship launcher and was getting ready to deploy.

  Punch saw the attack, swung the long deck gun, and opened up with everything he had in a sudden blur of violent fire. No short bursts. The gun killed them all as they scattered, and Punch carefully murdered them with traversing fire.

  The Old Man was in my face, dragging the Little Girl.

  “Need you to organize the load. Crawler’s broke down out there on the departure apron. Took a direct hit from AT. Dog is coming in under fire, but they’re pinned down. Ghost is working counter-sniper but running low. They have vehicles to come in at the last second. See what you can do, Sergeant. Take the cyborg. The Monarch and I will clear the ship.”

  “On it, sir!”

  Which is all you can say when everyone is stretched thin.

  The captain bent down to the Little Girl.

  “Go sit over there in that jump seat. We’re leaving soon.” And then he added “Honey” like it was the most alien and least likely thing he’d ever utter.

  She did, and leaves only I could see lay on the cargo deck. She buckled in and waited, watching me with her big dark eyes. She swallowed hard and nodded.

  I knew what she was telling me.

  But why me?

  He’s coming now, Orion. The Wild Thing. He’s coming… now.

  The captain and the Monarch nodded to each other, topped off on mags, and moved inside the ship to clear it. Seconds later there was the thunder of gunfire in the tight spaces forward.

  “Time to go,” said Hauser flatly. “Dog Platoon is pinned down. They need our assistance immediately, Sergeant Orion.”

  I looked at Choker for an update on Jacks, who didn’t look so hot.

  “Good to go, Sergeant,” said our medic, putting all his weight on a pressure bandage. “He’s gonna make it.”

  Jacks was gray.

  I nodded at Hauser and we made the ramp. I commed with the Kid as we hustle-crouched along the dropship’s flat and wide hill going forward to intercept the men coming from the wounded crawler.

  “It’s all on you and Punch, Kid,” I said. “You gotta hold that ramp or there’s nothing for anyone to come back to.”

  “We got this, Sergeant,” interrupted Punch. “Did I mention I was comfortable with extreme amounts of violence?”

  The Kid just gave me two clicks on his comm as he engaged more targets pushing the hijacked drop. We were getting hit now from three directions back there.

  He was Strange Company now.

  We depended on him.

  And he knew that.

  Chapter Fifty

  The wind was beginning to howl, and the leaves of autumn were sweeping across the desert starport airfield like dancing whirling dervishes on sudden end-of-summer sciroccos. Moving from ship to ship, under fire, we linked up with the first elements of Dog in retreat. In the distance, we could see the hit crawler. Smoke was billowing out of the side in great big black oily huffs and bursts. What remained of Dog Platoon was fighting a fixed defense from every side they could hold out there.

  Monarch Ultra Marine infantry were moving in swiftly from our southwest as a blank space in the universe began to open up. Music like sizzling acid you could never remember playing on the keys of the brain as you watched the horror that came next become real. There were other Ultra death squads coming in. Coming at us. From all points of the compass. But these were the reinforcements that were here to stop us. That was clear. Like they’d known we would always try to exit here at the starport by hijack, and now they were going to put a stop to that.

  I heard that unholy music begin to thunder from that other place in the universe that I didn’t ever want to know. It was happening now. He was coming. The Wild Thing. I could smell fall. Autumn. And it smelled of the end of all things good and the coming of the winter of the universe. Maybe that was where he came from. The Wild Thing. Like the ship we’d crossed through deep down in that dark crevice made thousands of years ago. The ship from tomorrow and yesterday. Things way above my pay grade. Maybe the Wild Thing was a doomsday weapon from the future. Made as humanity’s last stand against an unquenchable force that had finally come to take our place on the galactic scene. The Simia. I had no idea. But after everything the Monarch had told me, maybe that was the explanation for the unexplainable.

  If there can be one.

  And the Little Girl? War’s orphan. Maybe she was just some gift from the universe that took pity on humanity and knew that we’d need some help. Placing its use in the most vulnerable of hands.

  Like there was some new order coming to the universe and we would be governed in a new way. A way foreign to us. A way of mercy.

  The Wild Thing came on, running at them, our enemies, as he began to fire. That fantastic weapon of his opening up and creating a cone of shadowy death that was like a hail of speeding bullet ravens ruining everything in their outbound path. A human carrying a GAU weapon. Which was impossible now. But who knew when and where this Wild Thing came from. What was possible in the future, or the other. Or what could be imagined when death came knocking at humanity’s collective door. I bet we got real creative ten thousand years, or whenever, from now. When it’s desperate you can get up to all kinds of tricks. As anyone in Strange Company knows.

  In seconds out there as I watched in fascination and horror, that enemy assault team was ruined and the Wild Thing was already engaging another Ultra death squad. They reacted faster, sending man-portable rockets at him. He weaved, ducked, seemed to accelerate into their midst, and began firing. Smoking missile trails threaded past him as he shot them down. Grenades detonated and he moved closer, drawn to the slaughter like a moth to a flame.

  Someone detonated an explosive, and the Wild Thing was rocked by the shock wave. He’d bought us time by destabilizing their attack. We could get ours pulled back now that they were reacting to our unknown superweapon loose and in their midst. Killing spree in effect.

  I scanned the crawler.

  There were dead. Theirs and ours there.

  “The magazines have been hit. Fire suppression systems are struggling to contain the damage,” reported Hauser, who was assessing with his combat scanners and matching data with comm chatter and various telemetry feeds he could pick up off Strange Company members’ equipment.

  Overhead, Chief Cook, Hustle, and Hoser in the Ultra dropship lumbered across the battlefield murdering Ultras trying to push from the city onto the airfield. Heavy fifty-cal fire, incendiary mixed with tracers, ruined an assault team who’d just breached the high concrete wall ringing the starport. I saw Hustle shouting inside the drop, telling the chief to shift position so he could engage new targets.

  We were covering behind the bulk of an inter-system ore hauler that had been parted out and hadn’t seen a run upwell in twenty years. The patchwork ship was a ghost of itself, but it was cover in the middle of a battlefield. An island of defense in a sea of gunfire and explosions. I knew we had to leave it, and I wasn’t crazy about that coming moment.

  I caught sight of the Wild Thing again, heard the bark and blur of his terrible weapon as he went after the Ultra indirect and sniper teams on the far side of the airfield like some untamed and vicious dog that couldn’t be stopped. Explosions daisy-chained there in fiery apocalyptic bloom as they sought to defend the
mselves from his horrific and relentless onslaught.

  I comm-linked with the First Sergeant, who was supervising the retreat from the wounded crawler ahead of us at our nine o’clock. Dog machine-gun teams were laying down suppressive fire there as the wounded were pulled back and toward our hijacked armored transport and commandeered LZ.

  Our hopefully hijacked armored transport by now.

  “Reaper Six to Doghouse. We have cover secured. Marking now for your teams. Point your casevacs this way.”

  I turned to Hauser.

  “Trade me,” I said, indicating the captain’s shotgun he was carrying. He did so immediately. Because that’s how he is. He trusts me. I’m his combat leader. Even damaged, he was much better with any weapon than I could ever be. The Bastard and her two mags would give him some range to cover me as I went forward. And I needed to move fast and he was too wounded to keep up.

  “Defend here,” I ordered.

  I grabbed the shotgun and dashed toward the crawler through the teams even now reorienting toward our cover position. Hauser didn’t need to be told what to do. Single-shot fire, he began engaging anyone shooting at our retreating company members. He’d hold there better than anyone. He’d make sure everyone got the best chance for survival his combat computer could give them.

  Across the airfield I heard the bark of the Wild Thing’s doomsday weapon again and there was a huge explosion that rocked that side of the fight. Terrible orange flames leapt into the air as a hot blast washed across the field. After that I didn’t hear it anymore and I wondered if the Ultras had succeeded in doing what no one ever had. Killing the Wild Thing. Whoever he was.