Strange Company Nick Cole (best classic novels TXT) 📖

In the dream I was having right before the Kid hit the giant pothole in the desert dirt road we were on, I was having that conversation with her all over again. Me and the scrounger girl. Sassamina. She was telling me everything like she had that day, except somehow we were in that Bar at the End of the Universe with the blinking neon sign and she was dressed in a red dress that shimmered and sparkled like some Monarch pin-up girl. A gown like she was some singer.

John Strange was there. Smoking and drinking. Watching me and nodding with his wolf’s face as she spilled the story and other things I knew were true but couldn’t remember, and knew I wouldn’t even as the dream went on. Telling me everything the girl was saying was real important for what was about to happen next to the Strange Company.

I remember him saying one thing. It ain’t what it’s been told to be, Sergeant. But when was it ever?

And then he laughed his gentleman rogue’s laugh like the reckless adventurer mercenary the galaxy knew him to be, and I wondered how much of him was true and how much was myth.

But you could wonder that about every man.

Then the Kid hit the pothole and the Mule jounced, and I was back on the other side of midnight downrange in the desert no one was ever supposed to go to. We were fifty miles in and not moving fast. Steady, but slow. I’d been so tired I could barely keep my eyes open. I must have nodded off and passed out.

There were things I needed to do. Get an ACE report on weapons and ammo. Casualties and the dead I knew. Every time I thought about them, I didn’t want to anymore. It had been a long day at the end of a series of long days. I’d hit a wall and the last of Chief Cook’s drugs were still in my system. I felt empty and hollow, dry and husk-like at the same time as the night wind whipped at my face and all that could be heard was the low mutter of the Mule’s twin engines.

I looked over and the Kid was leaned forward, hunched over the wheel where Nox had died a few hours ago. Nox, who I’d shoved out onto the street in the middle of a firefight. The Kid was staring through the shattered impact glass and the giant hole that had ruined my last driver. Concentrating to keep us on the road and not plummeting into some unseen ravine deeper than the one we were already in. Desperate to follow the Mule leading the way.

Everyone else in the Mule was asleep as best they could in the open air and the cold. Even the Monarch. And even asleep she looked more beautiful than normal women. She was other. The very definition of the word exotic.

I looked ahead and saw we were following the other Mule. I blinked my combat lens and brought up the map. I had no idea where we were at first because we’d turned off all tracking and communication. If the Ultras were in control of everything, as the Monarch had told me, they’d have found us and sent out a few HKs to smoke us right where we were. We’d be nothing but piles of burning metal, rubber, and charred flesh. Lying out across the dirt and the desert and the night with no one to find us. And we’d never make the rendezvous where our brothers needed us.

“You okay, Kid?”

He looked at me, startled. And then back to the road. It was nothing but darkness and dust and a twisting ravine we were making our way down. I had a pretty good idea where we were now from the map recon I’d done before my own mental hard drive had crashed from fatigue, combat, adrenaline overdose, and Chief Cook combat-multiplier drugs.

He nodded and grunted something about being good to go.

Hauser was driving the vehicle ahead. Hauser was a cyborg that didn’t need human weaknesses like sleep. The Kid was barely hanging on. Near death in our last fight was probably the only thing keeping his eyes open as we got scarce out here beyond the cities and the civ everyone had fought so hard for.

I linked with Hauser for direct local comm and told him to pull over for what was left of the night. We were deep enough in the desert now. We could afford a few hours to get ourselves together.

Five minutes later we rolled out on a small open area surrounded by ravine and canyon. We were below the horizon. It was silent like a graveyard in the silence after the engines were turned off.

Hauser, who didn’t need to sleep and had his own suite of sensors, would watch over us until dawn.

I mumbled something to everyone that may have told them to grab what they could of sleep and literally rolled myself up in my poncho liner and went black near the wheel on the ground. I smelled sage and dust and the military smells of our vehicles as I faded from this nightmare. Somehow after the horrors of the long day, those were not unpleasant smells. They comforted me and I told myself everything would be okay tomorrow.

That’s the thing that separates the living from the dead. Tomorrow.

So there’s that.

Chapter Thirty-Two

I can smell dawn in the darkness before morning. Maybe that’s just due to years of NCO skills running Reaper. Knowing you’ve got to be up and moving before everyone else to get everyone pointed toward the training schedule, or the battlefield. Both are supposed to be the same if you run your unit right. Or maybe it’s because of how I grew up a long time ago, far away, not in this place.

When I finally fall off the cliff in my nightmare as I was trying so hard not to,