A minute later and it’s a sea of corpses at the center down there.
Then one of the light machine guns, a plaything and picture set piece for their social media blasts moments earlier, turns and opens up on the crowd for no sane or rational reason. I honestly can’t believe it’s happening. And trust me, I’m the guy who’ll tell you he’s seen just about everything. Guess not. Its suddenness is horrible because I know what those weapons systems can do to crowds. They’re made for them in fact. Traverse and squeeze is a machine gunner’s dream. Drums from the drum circle cease but trumpets still blare like that should be a call to remind each other that today was supposed to be a celebration. A festival. A moment of triumph and unity for them all. The conquerors who beat the old guard with nothing but love and peace and all the broken glass that could be smashed at the expense of the status quo.
This was their day.
Sadly, it’s not. It’s time to get real, children. And that’s what happens when private military contracting companies show up planetside. They smell money to be made like sharks smell blood in the waters of every world we’ve ever found them on. Things get real whether you like it or not. We are not hired out for anything else other than to ruin people’s days.
It’s what we do best.
Each team shifts positions one more time to take out some of the leaders trying to get things under control and then Stinkeye orders a withdrawal via comm. I get a location tag for team four to pick him up down close to the action, and we divert a few streets over.
In the distance ambulances and emergency personnel are coming, but they’ve halted blocks away from the massacre. They’ve been attacked before by the “army” they’re coming to save over the last two months. More than a few times. They’re not eager to go in and help now that there’s been shooting. The local police aren’t responding at all. In fact, many of them are now Resistance Army units geared up and ready to do battle on our side.
We pull our technical over and try to look normal as the mob runs through the streets, eyes wild and screaming in horror at what has been done down there back at the First Landing Mall on a world called Crash. The snipers are in the back, resting under the tarp. Kids, bloody, bruised, and dying, come streaming past us, crying and shouting bloody murder at what has been done by the unseen death squads.
Us. In fact. We did it. We are the death squad. Technically though, one of Dog’s platoons is called Death Squad. And for good reason. But these kids running past us for their lives have no clue. Just some shady dudes sitting in a truck watching it all go down. That’s all we are.
War is hard.
It’s amazing what you miss when you’re the self-absorbed star of your own reality show. That’s the piece of advice I’d give the children, my enemies, running for their lives past our technical.
They’re just figuring that out now. Which is late in the game to know such. I should feel bad for them. But I don’t. Where did they think this was all going? That’s the thing. You can’t just start playing a game and decide to stop when it gets rough. They should have known. It was always going here. It was always going to go badly. For someone.
And if Strange Company shows up, it’s gone real bad.
But then again, they’ve never been on the other ruined worlds of war I’ve seen. If they had, or if they’d read their histories even though if they are not official then they’re illegal, well then, they would have known this was where it was all going. They would have known that all the drum circles and broken glass lead here, to this moment, all along. And that when the free guns and uniforms were handed out… they weren’t actually free. They came with a price. There’s always a price to be paid.
They were going to do the paying now, and for a while to come.
The wind already smells like a hot bag of diarrhea as the kids pass by our technical sitting along the street and loaded with dudes who look like more trouble they don’t want. Stinkeye was right. Breakfast burritos were a big mistake as the wind turns hot and awful in the afternoon.
Nothing is easy. Nothing is free.
Stinkeye slides into the cab and he reeks of sweat and blood and alcohol. And maybe even weed. He’s not smoking and he merely grunts, “RTB.”
I nod to the driver and watch our Voodoo asset in the rearview mirror as we pull away from the curb, the driver delicately pushing us through the fleeing hordes as we return to base. Stinkeye’s faded fatigues and open tactical equipment carrier are covered in blood spray turning rust-red. That meant he was down in it. Close to where the snipers fired? Using his powers to alter the perceptions of the already anxious kids? Fear and elation aren’t that far apart. Ask any soldier who’s almost been overrun on some hellhole. He’ll tell you that. He’ll tell you the line between those things is thin. Real thin in fact.
Stinkeye wears this necklace that dangles down across his open carrier. It’s got teeth in it. And other things. Charms. Totems. Idols. Memories. I watch him in the rearview mirror, his lips moving silently, chanting some old song like an incantation, his dark skin weathered and ancient, his eyes roving and watching the seen and the unseen. The galaxy’s Heart of Darkness.
I seen it once. And it wasn’t a thing I wanna see ’gain, tell you so.
He said that
