Strange Company Read online

  Contents

  Strange Company Log Keeper’s note.

  Chapter One

  Chapter Two

  Chapter Three

  Chapter Four

  Chapter Five

  Chapter Six

  Chapter Seven

  Chapter Eight

  Chapter Nine

  Chapter Ten

  Chapter Eleven

  Chapter Twelve

  Chapter Thirteen

  Chapter Fourteen

  Chapter Fifteen

  Chapter Sixteen

  Chapter Seventeen

  Chapter Eighteen

  Chapter Nineteen

  Chapter Twenty

  Chapter Twenty-One

  Chapter Twenty-Two

  Chapter Twenty-Three

  Chapter Twenty-Four

  Chapter Twenty-Five

  Chapter Twenty-Six

  Chapter Twenty-Seven

  Chapter Twenty-Eight

  Chapter Twenty-Nine

  Chapter Thirty

  Chapter Thirty-One

  Chapter Thirty-Two

  Chapter Thirty-Three

  Chapter Thirty-Four

  Chapter Thirty-Five

  Chapter Thirty-Six

  Chapter Thirty-Seven

  Chapter Thirty-Eight

  Chapter Thirty-Nine

  Chapter Forty

  Chapter Forty-One

  Chapter Forty-Two

  Chapter Forty-Three

  Chapter Forty-Four

  Chapter Forty-five

  Chapter Forty-Six

  Chapter Forty-Seven

  Chapter Forty-Eight

  Chapter Forty-Nine

  Chapter Fifty

  Chapter Fifty-One

  Epilogue

  Strange Company

  By

  Nick Cole

  Strange Company

  Copyright © 2021 by Nick Cole

  All rights reserved.

  This is a work of fiction. Any similarity to real persons, living or dead, is coincidental and not intended by the author.

  No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise without the prior written permission of the publisher and copyright owner.

  Edited by David Gatewood

  Cover Art: Pascale Blanche

  Formatting: Kevin G. Summers

  Website: NickColeBooks.com

  Wherever in the universe one happens to find them, an old battlefield, a forgotten glade, buried deep in the rubble of a dead and beam-ravaged world, the graves of Strange Company are often marked such:

  Strangers to the Universe, Brothers to the End.

  Strange Company Log Keeper’s note.

  I’m cutting this out of the main log files and setting it for upload in the event of my death. Our story of what happened is long, and of course, very strange. We are mercenaries, private military contractors, formed long ago into a company at the earliest moments of stellar exploration. There have been eighteen log keepers before my current duty shift as the keeper of our collective history. The teller of Strange Company’s deeds. We’ve been there, done that, and left the dead to prove it. We’ve seen terrible things, and incredibly beautiful things. The Rings of Corus burning in the vastness of space at the siege on Zero Station beyond the shattered world of Far Reach. The big G-Ships engaging in beam combat over the Cimarron Desert in the last hours of the Fall of Ae-Phaerax. The living machines of Psionica coming out to do battle like the waves of a cruel ocean that would crush everything. But the company allying with the Seeker, a rogue Monarch, is a critical event in the company’s very strange history. And possibly… the reason for its bad ending. And so, it must be noted as such. If only so someone might know what became of us. The tragedy of Strange Company. And who we once were.

  These events began in 2645 MR…

  Chapter One

  That day, our first op planetside, was his show to run. We didn’t even see the captain and the initial op order. And of course, we got the frago from the old drunk Stinkeye himself when he waddled into our barracks that hot morning and told us to get our lazy carcasses in gear. The war was on whether the other side believed it or not. We had an opportunity to make some trouble and he was “in a mood to.” We’d just finished morning PT and the day was already hot and sweaty, but still you could smell the reek of Stinkeye’s gutter liquor on his rank breath as he came into the bay and squinted at us through his one good eye. Both eyes work. Or at least I think they do. It’s just that he only ever uses the one to glare around at everybody, wishing the galaxy nothing but bad. As is his way. Always weaving slightly as he studies whose soul he might steal today. His voice a hypnotic broken screen door as he promises unholy death and destruction on anyone who dares dispute or mock him.

  But these are hard men. They’ve faced worse. Been low on ammo and hip-deep in trouble. They don’t scare easily. Even if Stinkeye is the closest thing to a witch the galaxy has to offer.

  I think male witches are called warlocks. For the record. And this is a record.

  Stinkeye’s gear and fatigues are old. Old from wars that ended hundreds of years ago and to which some of the older log files give reference. I mean like really old. I don’t recognize the camo pattern from any conflict I’ve ever been in. In fact, there’s no real pattern left in them, they’re so blown out with wear and tear. They’re just olive drab now, and somehow so washed and faded they match his tired old dark skin. Like he’s some kind of walking ghost of all the soldiers that ever humped rucks on foreign worlds. I think he’s what the original Earthers used to call Asian. So either he’s from the Constellations of Pan, or he’s actually Asian from way back on Earth and whatever place exactly constituted Asia on the mysterious home world of mankind’s birth. Except his skin is black like a sunburn that took twenty years to earn and decided to hang on for what remained of the life inside. Like a scar. A badge. Or a memory.

  Stinkeye is technically a Strange Company warrant officer. He mutters under his breath and growls ominously when he isn’t insulting everyone right to their face. Never talks. Just mutters oaths and curses, or shouts like the F Class starport drunk on payday night. It’s all part of his “space war wizard” act. He once told me, when I found myself accidentally drinking with him and wondering how fast I could pound and get out, that he likes to cultivate “the mystery of himself.” Which is fine. Origin stories inside the Strange Company are sacred and often linked to crimes and bounties on other worlds best left undiscovered. All of us are wanted somewhere. A few even for reasons that aren’t actually crimes. Best to keep the truth hidden by a body of lies, unless… you feel the grim astronaut of death coming for you on the next op. Then… settle your soul as best you can remember and try to expend as much brass as possible before you go down. Your brothers in the Strange Company appreciate your last efforts on their behalf.

  “Up with yer carcasses, we gotta go make some big, big trouble for these little commies.” He swore, spat, and took a pull from a dented hip flask as he glared around at us. “You remember, you little whelps… only good commie is a dead commie,” he mutters to himself. I have no idea what a “commie” is. And I’ve never seen the mangy old flask empty. There’s a superstition in the company that if it ever is, then it means the old soldier we call Stinkeye is probably dead somewhere. And despite his bad behavior, it means we’re probably in a lot of trouble. That perhaps our luck has run out. Good, or bad. The galaxy has had it with our collective troublemaking.
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  Stinkeye is the literal walking, living, breathing, meaning of Necessary Evil.

  But as we say in the Strange, “He’s our evil.”

  Technically all the freaks in Voodoo Platoon of Strange Company are counted as warrant officers. Which means they outrank everyone except the Old Man as company commander, and they don’t have to answer to anyone, or show up anywhere, for anything. But of course, that’s always been true of all warrant officers in all armies everywhere. Always has been. Always will be until the heat death of the universe.

  Or at least that’s what I suppose.

  “We ain’t had chow yet,” I told the old wreck. One of our little enlisted jabs back at the warrant freaks of Voodoo is that we don’t stand on ceremony. No one in any of the other platoons would ever call Stinkeye “sir.”

  Stinkeye hit the flask again and held it out to me. I declined. Punch walked by, coming from the shower, grabbed the flask, hit it, winced, and exhaled as he handed it back. Then my assistant platoon leader started wiggling into his tactical equipment carrier over the top of his striker pants and t-shirt.

  The t-shirt told everyone to have a nice day.

  Stinkeye laughed. More to himself than anyone. And it wasn’t a pleasant laugh. Punch continued to shudder from the gutter liquor and even looked like he was gonna hurl at one point as he laced up his boots. Still he kept right on getting into his battle rattle because whether we liked it or not it was time to get it on.

  Time for this war to get going and make something of itself. Even if we had to jumpstart the beast.

  Drunk or poisoned you’re gonna soldier in the Strange Company. That’s a fact, Jack.

  “Might not want to eat much on this one, Sergeant Orion,” Stinkeye whispered confidentially, leaning in. “Gonna be a lotta bodies out in the sun by noon. Smell real bad. Especially if there’s gutshot in some of ’em. That’s the worst.”

  He muttered like a ragged tent flap on a windy night with a bad case of having just swallowed weapons cleaner solvent. Again, the “space war wizard” character on display in the play of himself.

  I cast the side-eye at the old chief as I shrugged into my plate carrier. It hadn’t been shot to pieces yet in that war where we made a dark alliance with one of the masters of the universe, as they think of themselves. The Monarchs. But that was coming. Out on the horizon like a bad storm you were driving into. Looking back, that’s how it was. You were stupid if you couldn’t taste, smell, or touch it. Like the first few minutes when you think the Sikhan street tacos aren’t gonna sit so hot and you start looking for a shot of Ginquil to maybe kill the bacteria where it’s breeding in your gut before you start sweating, shaking, vomiting, and exploding all at once.

  Most of our equipment was, if not the best, at least still in good condition at the beginning of this mess on Crash. Sometimes you mark your time by the condition of your gear. It makes you feel old and lucky at the same time. Which is a good thing to be when you’re a soldier. Both old and lucky. And without too much metal left in you.

  “What’re you gonna do?” I asked Stinkeye. “Make ’em all sick when the shooting starts?” He’d done that before. Caused equilibrium imbalances resulting in massive waves of nausea as we attacked an enemy position. You almost felt bad for a guy with a load in his fatigues who couldn’t stand up as you shot him down. And his friends too. It’s awful to die bad. Embarrassed to death as you go. Trust me, I’ve seen enough of that. But then you remember they were probably going to do something equally horrible to you and it’s best to get it done to someone else first before they do it to you.

  Rules to live by in the Strange Company.

  “Somethin’ like that,” muttered the malevolent old warrant officer as he gave everyone the evil eye again. “Trucks leave in twenty. Be on ’em, Orion. You… and your men.”

  He was right. We shouldn’t have eaten that day. But we did, all of us grabbing breakfast burritos from the cantina that served as our chow hall inside the developing FOB near Sa’Farm City. We ate until we linked up with Ghost, who’d secured our actual transportation elements into the area of operations that day.

  The “battlefield.”

  Four technicals that could have been any boomba rancher’s utility truck. Enclosed cab. High-performance engines. Big fat all-terrain traction balls. Open flatbed with sides. Ghost Platoon had located the type of vehicles they’d want for this op since they’d be the ones doing the shooting. They’re the snipers and scouts of Strange Company. Shooters every one of ’em. Our job, Reapers, was just to provide three-sixty security, for the snipers to do their business.

  The four snipers from Ghost working this op, and their spotters, would lie down in the back of the truck beds. We’d cover them with tarps and drive the trucks down into the capital area the kids calling themselves whatever passed for “loyalist” on this mess of a world were currently rioting and looting in. Pretending to be an army as news networks reported they’d “liberated” the capital and were intent on seeking a full return to the Bright Worlds Federation. The best status any world can hope for… that isn’t the home of the Monarchs. Or Earth, as it has always been known. That’s their home. And its status occupies the top of the food chain. Pride of place. The envy of all other worlds.

  In the hierarchy of worlds, it starts with Earth, then Bright Worlds a few rungs down on the ladder, then the Frontier, and finally the Undiscovered down below that. Astralon, or Crash as it was known, is a Frontier world. Above the Undiscovered but barely on the ladder.

  Apparently, we all once came from Earth. But now you have to be a Monarch to live there. That’s their world. A no-go zone for the rest of us.

  And Stinkeye wildly claims, when he’s especially drunk and playing Cheks and he’s lost every hand and telling you horrible stories of the Dark Labs that officially don’t exist, that he’s actually from there. From back on Earth. And that he’s as old as the first colony vessel to reach Centa… some old ship no one ever heard of called Enterprise.

  That sounds made up. Stinkeye lies more than he tells the truth. If he ever tells the truth at all.

  Monarch warships have names like Medusa, Centaur, Ogre… and such.

  If you believe that fairy tale and all, of any normal space rat coming from anywhere near Earth, I have a free trader with a low parsec count on the jump engines that’ll get you all the way out to Lonesome Star.

  Trust me. Not.

  So, that hot sweaty first morning of operations we drive out into the Heights, the old neighborhoods the second wave of colonists to arrive on Crash set up long ago near the downtown area. What Stinkeye’s little operations order, if you can call it that, refers to as the “operational area.” From the Heights our hidden snipers in the back of the trucks have a good sight picture of the main protest “army” rampaging across the capital mall, which is a large, beautifully landscaped area, over the old first landing site.

  We arrive at our phase line, and to see it from here, it’s almost like you’re watching some summer street festival of fun and love down there on the old First Landing Mall. All the kids down there seem to be having a really great time despite the collapsing government and the impending arrival of Monarch forces to support the new government and a restoration to the Bright Worlds Federation. And to their credit, none of them, none of those kids down there playing soldier, are firing their brand-new weapons like so many alien tribal species do upon first receiving such lethal gifts from some off-world outfit looking to curry favor for larger political means. Some corporation that needs the locals to pull a genocide on the other difficult tribes so that surveyed deep core minerals can be extracted by the big strip lifters that will hit that world and do seventy years work in six months. Weapons will clear the areas to be strip-mined one firefight at a time.

  Don’t worry. The galaxy’s a big place. There’s room to spare. That’s the line. Officially. That’s what they tell those
who take the time and energy to get upset about other people’s problems.

  Hey, everyone’s got problems. But that doesn’t mean you need to get involved.

  Unless you’re getting paid to.

  The kids down there who are our enemies and don’t know it yet, have gotten enough training to keep their fingers off their brand-new triggers, loaded mags in, and rifles slung. But I’m betting no one has a chambered round to deal with the hate that’s about to be laid on them. Fifty-fifty that the safety is off when it’s supposed to be on for at least seventy-five percent of them. The taking of the capital was mostly nonviolent. But they, the Loyalist Youth for Tomorrow, as they are called by themselves, treat it like they just liberated Gonga during the Sindo forty years back. When in fact all they really did was throw a temper tantrum for two months until law and order completely broke down. Of course they had operators from among the Monarchs’ guard dogs to show them how to do it. Now they have guns, and it appears for all intents and purposes they’ve just won some battle though they haven’t fired a single shot in anger. There’s been some revenge, but that’s mainly been the street gangs doing business under cover of the counter-revolution.

  They’ve set up a few machine-gun positions at the entrance to the big greensward below. It’s really quite impressive, if you have no clue. Some arty, comm, and maybe a low-grade laser designator for my combat lens and I could ruin this “army” in about three minutes or less.

  My inquiries into local history say this area, this First Landing Mall, really is where the first colony drop took place over eight hundred years ago. One of the huge Sisyphus haulers pushing out here at sub-light to drop a load of determined, hard-as-nails, desperate for a shake at something new, world builders. Eight hundred years later and it’s still a frontier world. That’s ninety percent of the problem right there.

  I’m in team four riding in the TC position on our technical. I have four guys in each vehicle team. Even as I write this down, I think of the three that won’t be with us within two weeks when the heavy fighting starts between actual trained military units. But that first day, compared to the last six months, is nothing but a picnic as I remember it.