Tales of B-Company: The Complete Collection

by Chris Pourteau

  “You’re lucky I’m not Transport,” said Hatch. “Or you’d be dead.”

  Mostly upright but swaying, Stug turned quickly to face his friend. He immediately regretted the movement. His hand went to his forehead. Had his brain just sloshed in its fastenings?

  Pound. Pound. Pound.

  He almost fell backward, then steadied himself on his feet.

  “You’re lucky I’m still drunk,” said Stug. “Or you’d be flat. Turn off that torch from hell. Please.”

  Hatch snapped off the flashlight. “The QB wants us in a briefing at oh-six-hundred,” he said. “Get some coffee in you and wipe the drool off your chin.”

  Stug mechanically passed a lazy backhand across his stubble. Even that change in equilibrium made him sway a bit more. “What time is it now?”

  “Oh-five-thirty,” said Hatch.

  The sergeant gave him a disbelieving look. “You mean I could’ve slept for another…” He paused. Even the simplest math seems like rocket science when you’re drunk. “Twenty-five minutes?”

  Hatch snorted. “You’re already on report, as soon as I get around to filling out the paperwork. Want to be a corporal again, too?”

  Stug, tottering on his thick legs, gave the impression he was considering it. His hand rubbed over his sweating bald head, the simple movement almost sending him backward again. “Might be worth it.”

  “Well, feel free to hit the bag again. But I wouldn’t want her mad at me.”

  Stug swayed in cloudy contemplation. “I’ve seen her mad at you,” he allowed, finally finding his balance. “Okay, I’ll sober up. Damn it.”

  Hatch grinned, enjoying the thought of his sergeant’s difficult road ahead. “Coffee’s over there. I’ll roust the others.”

  Bracer and Hawkeye had imbibed significantly less than their sergeant the night before. Both were in their fatigues before Stug had finished half a cup of coffee.

  “Feeling all right this morning, Sergeant?” asked Bracer, putting on his jacket. “You look a bit peaked after tangling with Garza.”

  Stug gazed over the brim of his steaming cup of non-alcoholic beverage at the other man. His stare seemed to consider whether or not Bracer was secretly giving orders to the Roman officer pounding the inside of his skull. He didn’t say a word, but a low rumbling came from the back of his throat.

  Bracer had passed tactics with flying colors. He knew when to retreat.

  “All right ladies, let’s go. It’s quick chow this morning. Captain’s waiting,” said Hatch.

  Walking across the compound in the pre-dawn darkness, Hatch watched the almost constant bustle of activity. Even in the dead of night, silence and stillness were rare. He observed the TRACE soldiers on the wall, some of them manning emplaced 18-millimeter machine guns like the one Bracer carried into combat. There were twelve positioned around the pentagonal walls of Little Gibraltar, the island fortress which TRACE cells south of the City had come to call home. Its walls were overgrown with strategically interlaced vines that hid their stony sides. Tall red cedar and pine trees hugged the outer walls, as if Mother Nature embraced the rebel stronghold in her protective arms.

  Part town, part base, part fort, Little Gibraltar sat squarely on an island in the middle of the Susquehanna River. Some said God Himself had skipped a huge stone along the length of the river, commanding it to land here. The river was named for the Susquehanna that flowed through the heart of Old Pennsylvania back on Earth. It had been a route for exploration and trade on the Old Planet, first for the Native Americans, then for the Europeans who’d displaced them.

  The chow line was moving a little quicker than usual this morning, Hatch noticed. Then he saw why. One splat of eggs, two pieces of bacon, one piece of bread, one cup of coffee. No fruit.

  “We’re on half rations,” Bracer said, stealing the words from the lieutenant’s thoughts.

  Stug groaned. Despite his behemoth stature and generally affable nature, the man had the annoying whine of a five-year-old boy who’s been told he can’t have a second cookie. It was most maddening when it surfaced in the middle of combat. The threat of death had a way of accentuating the big man’s complaints in a way that wrapped a fist around Hatch’s spine and squeezed.

  “I’ll never get sober on bird feed,” the sergeant complained.

  As the line moved along, Hatch turned back and thumped the sergeant’s belly with the back of his hand. “You might get a little thinner, though.”

  Stug sneered. “Women like me this way.”

  “Women like you?” Bracer asked playfully.

  The sergeant moved forward in line, holding out his tray to the server. “If I weren’t still drunk…”

  “A cloudy day,” said Hawkeye, glancing up. He was always the first to notice anything that might obscure visibility or limit line of sight.

  Hatch looked up at the sky as he made his way to a bench. One cloudy day wasn’t a problem. Two cloudy days were worrisome. Three cloudy days could kill them.

  Little Gibraltar was protected by a huge version of the Umbrella, a solar-powered energy shield used by TRACE companies to protect base camps from prying Transport eyes. The name for the system was a bit of a misnomer, since the Umbrella was modulated to allow infrared light from scouting drones to penetrate its dome—it just wasn’t allowed to return to its source after pinging a target. In short, scans could enter the Umbrella, but they couldn’t get out. So unless a drone or dropship flew directly overhead or spotted the machine guns on the fortress’s carefully camouflaged walls, Transport would never see them. Unfortunately, the solar batteries that powered the Umbrella could only store sixty hours of energy, give or take—that meant that three days of dark clouds would cause the system’s power to fail. And with its camouflage gone, Little Gibraltar would be exposed.

  “It’ll blow over,” Stug mumbled, stabbing his two pieces of fatback bacon and stuffing the greasy taste of heaven into his mouth. “No rain today,” he mumbled. “Can’t smell it.” His head still pulsed, but now that he’d begun eating, the Roman officer had been replaced by a little drummer boy banging on a tin can.

  Hatch glanced up again. Except for the ominous clouds, the skies were clear. Transport rarely flew aircraft down the Susquehanna or over the tear-shaped isle of Little Gibraltar, which was why the resistance had chosen it for their base. Located some twelve miles downstream from the City, the island was off the Authority’s main flight paths, but close enough for quick access to the Amish Zone, where TRACE got most of its food.

  Though the pacifistic Plain People refused to fight directly in TRACE’s generations-long war against Transport, they often supported the struggle in less direct ways. The Amish had known the iron boot of intolerance for six hundred years, so they were sympathetic to the rebels’ fight against the Authority’s tyranny. The eggs, milk, bacon, jerked beef, fresh fruit, and vegetables that flowed covertly to the island came directly from them. Without it, TRACE soldiers would starve or be forced to requisition food from the smaller homesteads of New Pennsylvania, and that would likely breed resentment in the very population they were fighting to free.

  The food was brought west across the plain from the AZ by wagon in the dead of night. Moving the supplies by airbus would have been far too visible to Transport, even if no flight plans were filed. Newly manufactured weapons and other technical goods also arrived under the cover of darkness, although these came down the Susquehanna from the City.

  It was the SOMA himself who had suggested the strategy of moving supplies and materiel the old-fashioned way, by wagon and ferry. All of this was illegal, of course, since movement was strictly regulated by Transport, but the irony of subverting the Authority’s control by low-tech means had only enhanced the SOMA’s legend among his TRACE soldiers.

  The fact that they were on half rations told Hatch that the food, at least, had come into short supply—and that was a problem even more pressing than three cloudy days in a row. Little Gibraltar was a vital link in the supply chain th
at fed TRACE’s entire resistance network. A great deal of food passed through the fort on its way to soldiers in other theaters of the war, so if Little Gibraltar was feeling the pinch, so was the rest of TRACE.

  The fort was a distribution hub for materiel as well, including laser weapons manufactured via 3-D printers in the City and powered by the okcillium secured in the Battle of Gettysburg three months earlier. His own squad was armed with the modern weapons now, though they also carried old-fashioned .50-caliber sidearms on their hips. His people had worked with advanced technology long enough to know how little they could trust it.

  “You through yet?” asked Stug, breaking Hatch’s concentration. “We’re due with the QB in two minutes.” The sergeant must be sobering up at last; he could tell time again.

  “Well. We don’t want to start the day on the wrong foot, do we?” asked the lieutenant sarcastically.

  Alpha Squad took their seats at the briefing. Bravo, Charlie, Delta, and Echo squads were already there. Hatch assessed them as the other companies gathered.

  There were a lot of new faces in the room. Bestimmung Company had absorbed soldiers from other units to fill its own ranks, depleted after Gettysburg; some had seen action in theaters as far west as the Great Shelf. Other changes had happened internally. Sergeant Emma “Pusher” Ellis, who’d lost her entire squad covering the retreat of the rest of the company from Gettysburg, now played mother to Echo Squad, which carried B Company’s two heavy chain guns.

  “Ten-hut!”

  Everyone stood as Colonel Obadiah Neville entered the room. He commanded the three assembled companies. Behind him came his company commanders, including B Company’s Captain Mary Brenneman. The good colonel had dubbed her his own personal “Queen Bitch” for her less-than-respectful attitude toward him. But in admiration for her ability to make quick decisions in the field, decisions that had saved their lives many times, her troops in B Company had shortened the nickname to “QB.”

  Hatch observed her demeanor. To anyone else, she had a subdued air about her, but he knew better. They’d been lovers once, and he knew her better than anyone else in the room. Her face was flat, a particular expression she wore when she focused in combat. But her right hand flexed and wiped ever so surreptitiously on her uniform. She was sweating. She was excited. Something was up.

  “At ease,” said Neville, producing the superior air he always did when addressing his command. “Be seated, ladies and gentleman.”

  After the scraping of chairs subsided, he put his hands behind his back.

  “Who does he think he is, Montgomery?” whispered Stug to the air. “He needs a cheesy moustache—”

  “Shhh.” Hatch wanted to hear what was incoming. If Mary was excited, he was excited. Some things never change, he thought, amusing himself.

  “I assume you all had enough to eat this morning?” asked Neville slyly.

  Some big grunt from the back took the bait. “Not really, sir.”

  “Precisely why we’re here, soldier,” answered the colonel, stabbing at the air to make his point. “Precisely. My aide is sending you a map of the area. Note the highlighted routes, which the Amish use to cart food to the river. Note also the big X approximately halfway between here and the Zone. That’s the last known location of yesterday’s weekly shipment from the Amish. Ladies and gentlemen…” He paused, loving the drama. “Someone has stolen our supplies.”

  As the map data entered his BICE, Hatch examined the terrain in his mind. It was made up mostly of slow-rising hills, and the tall trees of the wilderness shielded the wagonloads of supplies coming from the AZ. A small, thin band of river wound its way westward from the Zone to empty into the Susquehanna. The X the colonel referred to marked a valley. If someone was going to steal TRACE’s food, that would be the place to do it.

  “Six Amish wagoners met our squad at Shenks Landing this morning, where they were to transfer their cargo. Highwaymen had waylaid them in that valley and set them afoot.”

  “‘Set them afoot’?” whispered Hawkeye with a grin.

  “Highwaymen?” added Stug. “Waylaid?”

  Hatch shushed them with a flat cut of his hand at the air. Everyone knew Neville liked to speak in anachronistic terms when giving a situation report. They all assumed it added to his sense of self-importance as a historical military figure. But the men never tired of poking fun.

  “Our job, ladies and gentlemen, is to find that food,” continued Neville. “We just yesterday shipped most of our stores out to other resistance cells. We were expecting resupply this morning. If we don’t find that shipment, we will soon feel hunger’s feral bite, I’m afraid.” Despite the serious situation, Neville smiled at his own pun. He then turned—slowly, almost reluctantly it seemed—to the leader of Bestimmung Company. “Captain?” he said, sitting down.

  The QB rose. Unlike her commanding officer, her stance was relaxed and unposed. She simply stood up straight.

  “B Company has been ordered to the X on your maps,” she said. “We’ll ferry across to Shenks Landing and hump it from there. We leave in an hour.”

  She sat back down.

  “Well, that was anticlimactic,” muttered Stug.

  Hatch knew why. She was anxious to move. Talk of waylayings and puttings afoot was, to her, merely wasting time with words.

  Neville stood back up. “Yes, well then. As Captain Brenneman said, B Company marches in an hour. We’ve already sent a squad to escort the unfortunate Amish wagoners back to the AZ via a different route.”

  “Those wagoners who were previously waylaid and set afoot,” whispered Stug. Hatch rolled his eyes. Sometimes the big guy just didn’t know when to shut up.

  “Any questions?” asked Neville.

  “How much food did we lose, sir?”

  “Three wagonloads.”

  Some gasps met that proclamation.

  “Any idea who the highwaymen are, sir?” asked the underfed grunt in the back.

  Kiss-ass, thought Stug.

  “No, Private. The darkness hid them well. We suspect Transport, but we have no evidentiary support for that.”

  “Why would Transport hork our supplies? That makes no sense,” whispered Hawkeye, ever the forward observer of the obvious.

  Hatch shrugged. He’d given up trying to understand how incompetence passed for strategic thinking a long time ago.

  The QB stood. “If there’s nothing else?”

  Colonel Neville looked sideways at her but said nothing. One hand, halfway into the air, went back down.

  “Yes, well then,” said the colonel. “Dismissed.” While B Company roused itself for duty, he added, “Captain, if I might have a word.”

  Hatch knew what was coming. The QB would be receiving a short but wordy lecture on briefing protocol and the importance of ceremony in impressing the frontline troops.

  Some things never change, he thought again, less pleased this time.

  The Ferryman

  When B Company’s twenty soldiers reached Shenks Landing on the riverbank, they found an old man of nearly seventy years dressed in thick clothes and a dark, heavy jacket. The air had grown chilly with winter’s approach. Like the old man, they too were outfitted for marching in the cold.

  “Name’s Sticks,” he said.

  “I like it,” noted Echo Squad’s Lieutenant Gray, nicknamed Smoker.

  The old man regarded her for a moment, his face a bit askew. “Someone who reads a lot named me Sticks. It stuck.”

  “Of course it did,” said Stug.

  The QB nodded a greeting. “Well, Mr. Sticks—”

  “No Mister, just Sticks,” corrected the old man.

  The captain took a deep breath. “All right then, Sticks, there’s a valley about six klicks—six kilometers—inland from the river. We need to get there. You’re aware of the location?”

  “Oh sure! Your commando buddies that took the AZers home asked me about it. I know right where you need to go. And why,” he winked.

  Mary turned
her head slightly, assessing him. Missing most of his teeth, the man had the predatory, piercing eyes of someone who would mete out information slowly, and with each bit expect a slightly larger sum of unis. Whether the information was reliable or not was irrelevant to his type, because he’d be long gone and likely untrackable before the mark noticed they’d been had.

  The QB shrugged mentally, her inner voice prodding, Nothing ventured…

  “You know about the stolen supplies, then,” she fished.

  “Oh sure! Food from the AZers comes through here all the time. Who do you think freights it across the river to your little Alamo over there?”

  “Little Gibraltar,” corrected Smoker.

  “Whatever,” dismissed the old man. “You can call it TRACE Castle for all I care.” To the captain, he said, “Here’s what I also know. You start footin’ around through the woods with all these commando types, whistlin’ tunes of freedom and such, and you’ll never find that food.”

  “What do you mean?” asked Pusher, stepping up beside Smoker. Gray was her lieutenant now. Even in conversations, Pusher felt compelled to have her back.

  “I mean, the people you want’ll scurry like roaches when you flip the light on. This ain’t like no Transport warehouse, just sits there and waits for you to take it. Oh sure, I heard about that. And your company, Captain, ma’am. But you go tromping through the roughs with an army…” Sticks waved his arms like a flock of birds taking flight. “I wouldn’t take more’n three or four of you if you want any chance of them showin’. Plus me, o’course.”

  “You’re our guide?” asked Stug. “You don’t look like you could make it six klicks through the weeds to me.”

  Sticks turned to him. “I’ll still be walking the New Penn wilds long after you’ve collapsed for lack of the half a pig it must take to feed you every day, thickneck.”

  Hatch laughed out loud at Stug’s confused expression. He could tell the big man wasn’t sure if he should punch the old man or pat him on the head.