Strange Company Read online

  That’s how we always did it.

  I was rehearsing all that in the moments before the attack because I needed to get into that headspace and I needed to gin up the motivation to do to others what I’d been paid to do. I was approaching Bang, and when the order was given I didn’t want to be left of it. The right side of the ladder of fun and violence was Get it on. Right of Bang and both parties were in it whether anyone liked it or not. Best to be there first.

  And I needed to be there now.

  He’ll say this and then we’ll do that, I was telling myself. Then Hauser slid into the line silently, near me. Moving from space to space among the squads. Hauser’s next in command of Reapers if I get it. Puncher stays where he is. They don’t need Hauser much and he basically just plays utility for the other three squads while running Third as his own.

  “Do you know what we’re waiting for?”

  That’s such a Hauser question. His voice isn’t totally flat and monotone like the old first-generation hunter-killers. There’s almost a quiet calm they added into his speech patterns that I find comforting. His model got that upgrade and gave him the hint of a German accent. He told me that one time, when he was reviewing his protocols. Then he told me what German was and spoke some of it. It seemed like a harsh and angry language and I’d never heard anything like it in all my travels. Strange that they gave it to him, the hints of the accent, to make him more relatable to the humans they planned on him working with.

  But the question is so Hauser. What are we waiting for? No impatience. Just a sincere desire to know. Trying to figure out humanity, and the vagaries of war, at the same time. He’s an Eight Series combat-model cyborg with a four-year life span that got hacked after he ran away from whatever hell the corporations had him locked away in. He doesn’t understand that the captain may be waiting for some moment only the human can sense out there in the night. Trying to balance the plan against the smell of the darkness and what he finds in it. Watching the shadows of the brutalist block of authoritarian mixed-use space we’re about to get involved in. Wondering about snipers and gunners that could be waiting in there, for us. Waiting for the perfect moment to try and cross as much open ground as possible in order to avoid as many early casualties as possible.

  War is art.

  You gotta feel it.

  I reject the science. Even though there is some of that in it too. And magic also. It’s best just to call it an art. It can be measured. But then again, it can’t. And that’s where the science fails. Magic. Hell, sometimes it seems nothin’ but.

  “He’s waitin’ on Nether,” says Jingo, who’s come up to add his two mem, since he’ll be attacking with us and interfacing with the scouts for designated fire should we identify targets going into the structure on our way in.

  “Oh,” says Hauser the Cyborg in melancholic monotone. Like I said, his voice, and towering stature, calm me. Hauser doesn’t not like Nether. Everyone else doesn’t like Nether. But only because they’re afraid of him. What he does… what he can do… that bothers people. Except Nether is actually a really nice guy. Especially for the freaks of Voodoo Platoon. He’s just, how do you say… misunderstood.

  As if on cue the rain stops and the mist rises. Lots of it after a long minute, floating up from the mud and ruin of No One’s Land out there. The hundred meters we need to cross.

  “Guy gives me the creeps…” whispers Jingo, and we both know who he’s talking about. Nether. “But it is cool and all, Orion. It’s cool what that freak can do.”

  Nether’s played this game before. It ain’t just mist rising out there between us and them. It’s a kind of dense electromagnetic fog. But it ain’t that either. What it really is… is a tear in the universe. That’s what bothers people about one of our asymmetrical specialists from the ever-weird Voodoo Platoon. Of the three main ones that can do weird stuff in Voodoo, stuff that gives a down-and-out mercenary company an advantage over most normal opponents in combat operations, it’s what the weird unexplainable Nether can do that disturbs them in ways they can’t understand, but know nonetheless. Not like The Little Girl and her friend. They like her. Her friend though will getcha killed. Seriously. But Nether, they just think he’s creepy because of the way he looks. A freak ruined by Monarch super-science in some unknown Dark Lab out on some comet somewhere that’s been officially deleted from the stellar charts. You run into them, super-voodoo science freaks, rarely along the rim. If they exist, they work for the Monarchs exclusively. And by work for I mean are basically paid and kept slaves. If they aren’t working for the Monarchs, well then, they’re in hiding from the Monarchs. Nether hides with us, as does Stinkeye and the Little Girl. Maybe. No one has figured out her story. She just showed up one day, and stayed. Chief Cook, who knows?

  But Nether, he’s one of us too. Even though he bothers everyone on some deeply disturbing level they can’t quite put their assault-gloved finger on. He’s one of us and he performs his tricks on our behalf. And we are grateful, never mind bothered. His voodoo has made the difference on occasion. If the dead we’ve made could talk, they would tell you so.

  I look around as the fog turns to swirling mist and the last of the sporadic rain stops. I don’t see Nether. But I know he’s somewhere out there in the darkness making all this happen for us. And it’s getting thick, the fog that isn’t fog, the tear in the universe that’s something else. It’s getting so thick and dense that I couldn’t see him anyway even if he were right nearby.

  “Go. Go now,” says the captain over comms. Like he always does when it’s time to get it on.

  I don’t need to say anything. The three squad leaders who run my platoon have everyone in enough shape to know it’s time to get it on. Standing, hunched in the silence, we move forward as roughly one. I check in audibly and hear that everyone’s battle rattle is mostly secure. Which is a real plus one for me. Our gear is worn, beat to hell, and cobbled together from a lot of pickups and personal choices. Getting it at least silent for an attack on a fixed position has been a goal of mine for quite some time. It is accomplished tonight and I am at least happy about that.

  My element is little more than a ragged line of what look to be homeless vagrants moving hungrily toward some night kitchen on the edge of a vast planetside shipyard where low freighters offload.

  Of course, Dog is moving in small wedges like apex predators hunting in packs. Ready to tacti-cool and execute with extreme prejudice and all that high-speed jazz Sergeant Hannibal runs them on. I feel sorry for everyone in Grau, on the left flank of our attack, who’s about to meet Amarcus’s boys. There will be no mercy there. Amarcus wouldn’t tolerate it. Mercy is weakness and he’s beaten it out of them. Dog wasn’t always that way. But Sergeant Stix, Dog’s old platoon sergeant, died badly on Mira, and Hannibal got the platoon after that. Against everyone’s objections.

  We cross open ground and Grau Skull’s gunners do not open up and murder us all to death. I keep waiting for them to, but they don’t, and the suspense almost kills me. I’m sure at any moment the unreal silence one finds inside the tear in the universe that masquerades as Nether’s fog, because that’s all the mind’s willing to accept it as, will be broken by short bursts of staccato enemy gunfire from medium and light machine guns exchanging murder with one another. I remember Grau always had an abundance of Z450s they got surplus from the Sindo Wars. Old. But incredibly reliable. Ultra death squads used them effectively back when they were state-of-the-art. High-cycle with nano-conductor-cooled barrels that could burn all day and night and not need a barrel change. The death squads would leave every battle a killing field full of ruined corpses mangled by high output with those beasts.

  One long burst right about now and we’d all be dead in our worn-out boots. That’s what a good platoon sergeant thinks about as his men cross open ground toward a sweaty madhouse of soon-to-be CQB. All the easy ways everyone can die there.

  Both platoons cr
oss and reach the target building, hugging wall to stack for entry… and then the gunfire starts. Short bursts as Dog catches sentries by surprise. Closing suddenly out of the thick fog and firing at ten meters or less. And then Dog, and my own, professionally murder our old buddies at their guard posts.

  It’s on now.

  Get it on. It’s what we mean in the Strange Company when we say it.

  Everyone in all four of my squads knows what to do next. It’s breach and clear and CQB to the inner courtyard and central well of the massive building we’ve tagged tonight’s objective House Party.

  The plan is on automatic now. My main job is I’ve gotta fight First Squad. And I’ve got to make sure they, and I, come out of this alive. For selfish, and unselfish, reasons.

  My two breachers go to work on the entrance we’ve been assigned to hit. Building schematics, pulled from Crash City’s building and planning commission’s ruined server, indicate this was once a large apartment back in the day. Water charges are placed along an iron door made from scrap someone welded onto the frame that isn’t so stable anymore. Second breacher comes in and swings a sonic ram, and the door is down.

  Funnel time.

  Of course, I lead the way.

  The night-vision lenses along the surfaces of my tired eyes switch over to low light and we’re in and ready to kill everyone. Room was unguarded. Grau thought a welded door was “good enough.” They thought wrong, and it’ll cost them tonight. We clear the room fast and proceed to the main access corridor beyond the inner door. I go right, and So-So, First Squad leader and gunner, swings left and opens up immediately on three Grau Skullers caught in the hall and responding to the multiple breaches across this level. The Stuka 42 So-So carries for a light machine gun blurs and just ruins them. A tornado of invisible fire races from the barrel of his weapon just as I turn left and shoot one of their leaders talking on his comm, hand up to his throat mic and probably sitrepping a bad situation getting worse. For them. I shoot him three times. Twice in the body and then once in the head as he slides down the wall. He gets it in the face as blood spatter paints the wall leading away from his wall-sliding corpse.

  I should have shot him in the face first. That’s always a bad call, but I should’ve done it if just to shut down the comm he had with high-ups. Usually you want center mass and then you Mozambique the head for the kill. In the funnel and working, breathing hard and trying to get all that under control, and run my squad, and platoon, I was doing the best I could. I’d expected the killing to start in the last room. And somehow my mind must’ve dialed back a second. So when I fired, I nailed him center mass just to be safe. I wanted him down and dead now. I dotted his body twice and then blew off his face underneath his combat helmet. Then he was dead.

  And so was the sitrep.

  When I turned back to So-So smoke drifted through the hall where the sudden gunfight had broken our way. The 42 has ruined the three Grau Skull responders. Flashbangs are going off in other locations as is more gunfire across the first floor of the structure. Maybe I recognize it’s mostly our weapons.

  Maybe I’m just hoping it is.

  A huge explosion goes off in Dog’s lanes and rocks the building’s foundations underneath our boots. Over the comm I hear the captain order Ghost to enter and shift for the roof as we blast our way through ground level. All my squads are in and up. Next line of defenses is to take the rooms on the far side of the corridor. Doors get kicked and we enter shooting. No resistance survives. Still some gunfire here and there. Once again, the breachers come forward and place our biggest charges along the inner well walls of the central core. Blasting these will give us access to the interior of the building where we expect their command and supply to be located. A once-opulent—according to online brochures we found from fifty years ago—shopping arcade where the latest goods and highest-quality services could be had by the dwellers in this state-of-the-art living adventure, awaits us. We theorize that Grau’s command and control are located here.

  Crush the head and the serpent dies. After that it’s just cleanup.

  The brilliance of the captain’s plan is that we hit them from a direction they hadn’t oriented most of their defenses toward. The dropship put us in behind their line and we’d hit at an angle that wasn’t considered the front door. Now we were inside and they were having to shift their defenses to respond to our sudden incursion.

  We backed out of the room that abutted the inner well and detonated the heavy charges placed on the inner wall. Again the building rocked, creaked, and groaned, and Jingo swore as he linked up with us.

  “She’s gonna come down on us, Orion!” he shouted, looking at the crumbling roof in the dark and shadowy room of the once-opulent “living adventure.” I could hear the fear in his voice. I waved him back and moved my assaulters into position. Guns up and stacked, I had my count on personnel. No one was down or even hit. I saw the Kid in the back. His eyes were wide, but he was in the game. Smoke and dust drifted from the room where the explosives had just gone off, and yeah, bits of ceiling rained down on us out here in the corridor. I could hear gunfire coming from the courtyard well. Dog was engaged.

  “Move.”

  We entered, So-So picking up the left once more with his team, me on the right, selecting targets and shooting them down.

  The next three minutes were solid gunfight.

  We took some casualties. But we’d made sure everyone at least had ceramic plates on their chest carriers. No fatalities for us. Instead we gave out a lot more than we got. No one was sure if we got their command at first when a hurricane of lead got exchanged in a crossfire between us and a group fortified behind a long dry elaborate water feature made of concrete blocks that must’ve once reminded the residents how fortunate they were to live in such a tranquil place. In the end, Sergeant Hannibal ordered up one of our ATs on the fortified position at the center that must have once been some kind of building security position in that long-ago opulence. Glass and concrete exploded in every direction a second after the missile streaked in, smoking through the shadows of the dark and ruined place, and found its mark. Afterward, there wasn’t much left of anyone inside.

  The worst moment for me came later. Within the hour we had the building. Once Ghost gained the roof and started shooting down into the central well at the defenders, it was ours. A firefight between both sides of the building had broken out as those in Grau with nowhere to run decided to shoot it out and bargain at the same time.

  “Hey,” a croaky voice called out in a brief lull in which we’d all been reloading or shifting positions. The Old Man was busy identifying concentrations of the enemy and assigning teams to go in and root them out on the upper levels. “Hey!” shouted the croaky voice. Bouncing off ruined concrete corridors and shattered doors and walls.

  “You guys Strange Company?”

  I was with First and Second Squads now. We were stacked at the entrance to a long hall of apartments high up in the structure. It led deeper into the far side of the ruined building. Shattered plaster and savaged wall art hung grimly in the darkness up there. The captain had sent us in to take them out. We were not taking prisoners tonight.

  Yeah, I know…

  I knew that voice. Couldn’t remember the name. But I knew it from back on Blue. I felt bad hearing it as the guy called out to us in the reloading silence. The guy knew he was on the wrong end of this whole thing. I could tell that from here in the hall, stacked and waiting to murder him and his buddies. But he was still playing his cards like he’d been there before and walked away from it.

  “Yeah. It’s us,” I said and eyed my squads, directing them with hand signals. Making last-second adjustments before we went in, blazing. Automatic leader stuff you don’t even think about as you get it done.

  Silence.

  Maybe the guy just wanted to know who we were that had come to kill him and his brothers. And maybe the kn
owing was enough. Or maybe he was trying to buy some time to pull a trick. Get some directional magnetic mines in place and stall our assault with about ten thousand steel mini-balls moving at a couple thousand kilometers a second inside a tight corridor.

  A real damper on our day.

  “Orion, is that you?” said the croak-voice down the dark and ruined corridor after a moment.

  Jingo shot me a smile. Like this was fun for him now that we were winning. Having the upper hand instead of the fear I’d seen in his eyes just after the breach when it felt like the building was going to come down on us. His emotional outlook swung like a pendulum that way. He was like that.

  “Yeah. It’s me. Who’s that?” I shouted down the hall, wiping sweat from my throat.

  “It’s me… Steadly. ’Member we did patrol together that night during Certain End? Ended up in that firefight till dawn near Red Circle Temple Complex that got hit three days later or so? Remember, Orion?”

  I remembered.

  “Yeah.”

  “That was somethin’, wasn’t it?” he said after a long moment of silence.

  It had been. We’d fought for our lives together. Blue was a beautiful world. It was the war that ruined it. Best night sky you ever saw. Full of stars like someone broke an expensive chandelier all just for you to look at.

  “Yeah. It was,” I admitted and thought about some way out of this for the both of us.

  What was I supposed to say? How have things been, Stead? Doesn’t look too good for you. What? I held up my hand to my squads. But I didn’t know why at the time. Now I realize it was my body taking over. Saying, Don’t kill this guy. I know him. We were once in it together. In it really deep one long and very dark night when neither of us thought we were gonna make it to see a sunrise.