Strange Company 2: Voodoo Warfare by Nick Cole

Author:Nick Cole [Cole, Nick]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: WarGate Nova
Published: 2022-07-11T16:00:00+00:00

Chapter Twenty-Seven

The next push came, and it was a big one.

The Ultras, unsatisfied with their ineffective artillery strikes, sent in hunter-killer drops to prep the next attack with rockets and ground suppression guns. The larger Super Stallions with missile pods and miniguns came in slowly, engines beating the night like flying giants.

The Spider’s PDCs tracked five and shot down three before two swept in overhead lobbing missiles against our line and chewing up the black charred dirt we were fighting for with heavy minigun fire.

I’d sworn to hold at all costs.

Anti-air launchers tagged one of the Super Stallions on her way out of the area and she was trailing fire and probably black smoke in the night. The other one got away, their jammers barely getting them out of the firing envelope for the PDCs and our anti-air man-portables.

A moment later falling star shells rained down all over our positions, illuminating the entire battlefield and shutting down any kind of night or thermal vision we possessed.

We switched over to open eyes and by that time, XO was alerting everyone the PDCs were down for the moment and would be unavailable for the next ten as the teams of Simia swapped in new munitions racks for the reload.

Ulysses, ahead of me and lying in the twisted debris of our secondary fighting position, watched the front with the thermal ’nocs for the next round of armor to come for us. The Kid was next to him. Watching him, watching what he was watching, and anticipating the next command from our wonderboy.

Good kid, I thought as I watched them from behind the debris pile.

I was scrolling through my battle board trying to see if we had any drones operational at the moment.

Nothing.

The first sergeant watched the flanks off in the dark. He had the flamethrower’s “gun,” a sprayer really, in one hand. And an old lighter in the other. On the silver lighter was the worn insignia of the old Saturnian Batts.

He was softly humming some ancient running cadence to himself, the way old men who don’t care what anyone thinks anymore do sometimes regardless if they are alone or not. It was barely audible. It must have been something from the batts back on Saturnia.

Something about drop zones and coming through.

Something from long ago he’d carried all the way from there to here. Like we all do, given enough time.

I saw him by the light of the slowly falling red star flares, smoking like dying hell’s angels in the night, the ones the enemy hunter-killers had dosed our positions with in the last pass.

I could still hear the Super Stallions out over the ruined city somewhere. Their engines beating and echoing off all that silent ruin.

Ultra snipers fired on whoever they could see by the light of the dying fallen angels.

Our snipers counter-fired when they could.

Sleeper was out there, working, and again I remembered I had constants I could count on. And that Ghost, and Sleeper, were two.

In the dark the first sergeant looked old, but not tired.

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