Strange Company Nick Cole (best classic novels TXT) 📖

hauls between the worlds. Where the company might fight a whole generation on just one rock. Where we’d been both kings and villains at one time or another. Riding between the stars on big mining vessels the size of small cities. Hauling up to sub-light for six months just to get out of the system. Viruses and alien predators stalking humanity with each journey. Death constant. Rewards that verged on the mythic.

And of course, the rumors of all the ghost ships those slow-crawling star-cities would find out there in the dark.

There’re missing logs where the company found one en route to Caspo. But all those logs got deleted and what they found was always a mystery if you looked hard enough.

All we know is that one platoon survived Caspo.

Reapers.

I always thought there was a mystery there. There were no Dogs and Ghost then. No Voodoo even. There were other platoons with different names. But after Caspo they were all gone. As though their deaths had been so bad that to even resurrect the name had seemed unlucky and an affront. To whom? I like reading the ancient logs late at night. They comfort me. In a galaxy trying to kill me every night and day, and all the time, I find their permanent record comforting in some weird way I cannot quite put my finger on. But that’s just me.

I open my mouth and start to ask him about the missing log files from the Lorelei encounter. That was the name of the ghost ship star-city they found on the way to Caspo. On the way to history. Eternity for some. The Lorelei. Nine-hundred-million-ton energy freighter and bulk cargo hauler fifty-five years overdue on Simmaro.

But I don’t get a chance to hear a ghost story.

“Listen, not a lot of time, Sergeant. Tell the captain to watch his step. Something big is about to happen. It’s gonna change everything. Whatever you do… don’t believe, mate. Don’t you get caught up in it. Understand me. The galaxy can burn. Worlds can catch fire. Nothing’s gonna really change, trust me, Sergeant. But this company, it’s me. And I want to see it survive what most likely ninety percent of the galaxy isn’t going to. Got it, Sergeant Orion? You’re the keeper. You keep the official records, man. And that’s as old as the company itself. Go back and you’ll see it was me that kept them first before I gave it to Corporal Pepper. It’s really you who steers the company, if you haven’t figured that out yet. History repeats itself and you know the histories. The real ones. Not the fairy tales of our betters. Don’t listen to me… and you’re doomed, mate, as they say. Roger roger?”

He smiles at me. Making sure I got the message. I nod. He drains the last of the gin and tonic and gets up from the barstool he has sat down next to me on.

My mouth is still open, so I close it.

This isn’t happening. I’m dying. And I’m enjoying it. After six months on this nightmare I’m finally getting a break from leading, fighting, and losing.

I just had to die to get it.

So, who cares… I say to myself and grab for my scotch as John Strange, dead man, walks toward the exit. The seam in the universe. Calling back over his shoulder, “Don’t believe in anything, Orion. It’ll just get you killed, mate. Understand me, Sergeant. Mercenaries don’t believe in anything. We just get paid…”

He’s almost gone. He’s in the seam and fading from my wounded drunken drugged hallucination.

“And that’s how we go on, Sergeant. That’s how we go on.” His voice turning to echo as it fades. That’s how we go on, he seems to whisper across my reality like some bad ghost in a terrible horrothriller.

Whatever, I swear bitterly. Fine.

The scotch is gone from my hand and I’m lying on the terminal floor. Dying. My chest hurts like hell and Cook and Choker are standing over me.

Yeah, I think. I got hit.

“Amihit?” I groan sluggishly up at them. “How bad?” I manage.

“Aw shucks, Orion. Ain’t bad at all. But you’ll never entertain a lady ever again… if you know what I mean.” Chief Cook laughs above me, finding my surgical emasculation funny.

Choker hauls me upright as I grab for my junk.

“You’re cut up pretty bad by the spall and frag. Took one from one of their big rifles, probably 7.62… right in the plate, Boss Man. Then someone landed a flashbang near you and you just kinda went lights out for a few.”

I check my junk. It’s still there.

The medic is telling me this, that I’m fine, as he tries to get me to my feet. I could barely breathe on my back. Now my lungs feel like they have the Denga flu and are filled with hot and burning liquid fire. I gasp and my eyes water as I try to take a deep breath. I can see the Little Girl nearby pulling off her gas mask and I want to tell her not to. She’s still a child even if she does scare the living hell out of me. The terminal’s still filled with deadly hallucinogenic gas. But then I notice everyone’s got their mask off also.

“Terminal’s clear, Orion,” says Cook as he lets the medic take my full weight. “We’re just cleaning up now. Bad news is we’ve got an armored QRF inbound in the next ten. Ravens spotted it coming in. Main attack’s stalled and we’re hanging out in the wind way out front. Guns up, Sergeant. Fun’s about to begin again.”

And for a while I forgot all about the ghost of John Strange’s warning in the Bar at the End of the Universe. About not believing in anything. Not until later, when the Seeker showed us what we were really gonna do, did it make sense. But by then it was too late. We were involved whether we liked it or not.

And how a dead man