Cheap Company

Hauptegefreiter Nat Zahariev sat with her legs crossed and flamer wand pointed up at the sky, propped on a leg. The burbling engines of the military caravan gently rolled across the air like the distant thunder of an approaching storm. She bit down on the piece of jerky ration in her hand. Cloud-choked dreary sunlight bled in thin beams down on her squad as they sat on the forest’s edge, eating rations out of tins and looking out at the caravan as soldiers milled around the motor-carriages. The flamer trooper threw a glance at her nominal superior, who was perched on a tree with her rifle, eyes scanning the horizon. The cliff road they took pause on overlooked a city amidst rolling hills, currently with a shimmering bubble around it. Smoke rose in thin streams across the fields and beyond. It reminded Nat of a burning oil field. “Why do you wager we’ve stopped?”

Unterofficer Faris Quirke narrowed her non-dominant eye by maybe a few millimeters. Her dominant eye took focus on the peep sight of her rifle. The front post narrowly zoned in on the twitching rabbit watching them from inside the forest. “Hold the thought, Nat,” she mumbled. A finger slipped from the trigger guard and onto the trigger. She whistled. The rabbit’s glassy eyes failed to focus on her. It’s head lolled to the side in a disconcerting fashion. She grimaced. “The animals get sick too.”

Kalin Rylee, ever the pest, poked up. “You going to answer the question, Unt?” Almost out of spite, Faris pulled the trigger. The gun bucked into her shoulder—her firm grip forced the recoil backward instead of upward. The round sailed true—the soft, hollow-pointed lead caught the rabbit in the torso. Faris watched the thing pop like an overfilled water balloon and chuffed. She dragged her rifle cautiously from the tee branch that served valiantly as a rest. A quick once-over of the wood revealed she made no damage, and so she let it hang off its sling on her shoulder. When she looked back, Kalin Rylee was muttering to himself and pawing at a spillage of oatmeal across his crotch while Nat cackled with a sort of goblin-esque childishness. Faris snorted. Kalin shot a look up at her, bubbling anger mixing with bemusement. “What in Ludovic’s name was that bloody well for?!”

Faris pushed off her perch in the tree and onto the stepping rock she’d used to climb up into it. “For not paying any attention, trooper,” she hissed in that voice reserved for non-commissioned officers. Kalin’s back straightened a bit out of impulse and he began to mumble an apology before she grabbed the back of his head and pointed him toward the splash of dehydrated blood and woody flesh where the rabbit had been nary a moment before. “What’s the first bloody thing they teach you about minding infected fauna in basic, Rylee?” With an albeit rusty, but all the same otherwise practiced stumbling cadence, Kalin Rylee spouted off a list of half-remembered regulations, all the while fumbling for the respirator bag on his chest. With his on, Faris turned to Nat. She hadn’t needed to even bother throwing the veteran flame trooper as much as a cold look—her mask was on, and her eyes were focused firmly on the treeline. Bloody morons, Faris inwardly spat with the same affectionate venom as one spits at a beloved dog eating something unsafe, or a sibling doing something foolish.

Watching out his commander’s car, de facto Hauptemann Kvetoslava Shalev flinched at the sound of the gunshot. A hand impulsively went down to a gun not in his holster and he grunted to himself. At his behest, they had come to a stop in preparation for the potential storm that was brewing overhead. He was less concerned about rain than he was about ash, or worse, spores. Their beloved Omelese chirurgeon had given the verdict on the samples she was studying nary an hour ago. The infection was fungal—less transmissible to human beings than the others, but not by a large margin. The report’s words roiled around in his mind.

... Our inoculation procedures are sturdily designed for moments like these. Perhaps not exactly, but it means it is not a sure thing that we will turn, should this infection take one of us…

Words like should and probably were not ones common in the proud woman’s vocabulary. It only made his uneasiness worse. Worse were the frequent non-violent sightings of infected stalking them from the bushes and trees along the road. The rattling of a fist on his door made the man jump for his non-existent gun again. “Enter,” he called with an unexpected rasp in his throat. A fist went to his mouth, and he cleared the rasp. He was surprised when the pink-furred unicorn pony stepped in alongside one of his subalterns. “Frau Winters,” he greeted cautiously, sitting on the bench behind himself.

Subaltern Piritta Winters had seen better days. Her snow white hair was messy on the best of days—the woman’s defining feature was work ethic. She was Kvetoslava’s aide during his time in her position for that very reason. She was not, however, defined by a rigid adherence to the regimental grooming standard. Gun oil and blackpowder fouling covered the woman’s hands and uniform sleeves up to the elbows, and she had a distinct smell about her that suggested she had fallen into a slit trench. The pony beside her seemed, save for that stench, almost like an older-faced clone of the woman.

Mane unkempt but tidied enough so it wouldn’t get in the way of work, a familiar week-without-sleep baggage under the eyes and a scuffed dirtiness that came from laboring, though the gun oil, somewhat concerningly, was replaced with dried blood. She looked Kvetoslava over with a mix of curiosity and that suppressed look drilled into a soldier to take when in the face of the enemy. Piritta cleared her throat to break the queasy silence. “Herr Hauptemann. This pony wished to speak to you.” Kvetoslava turned to her. The mare looked to the seat opposite of Kvetoslava. He gave her an agreeing nod, and she climbed onto it, then plopped her rear onto the hard cushion.

“Field Surgeon, was it?” The pony nodded. Piritta leaned against the door. Kvetoslava reached into one of the deep pockets on his uniform and offered a cigarette and a matchbook. He gave a half-cocked smirk as he drew another to sit in the corner of his mouth. “You smoke?” To his surprise, she nodded. Slava allowed the amusement sit on his face for only a moment before offering over the cigarette into her waiting mouth. He lit both. “What is it I can help you with, Field Surgeon?”

She took a long drag on the cigarette, mulling the cinnamon tones amidst the tobacco—good tobacco, too, before blowing the smoke out her nostrils. Her horn lit and held the cigarette near to her mouth. “Well, Herr Hauptemann, we have mutual needs. I surmise you didn’t take us prisoner in such a fashion out of any sense of malice. I’m willing to overlook the imprisonment as an act of aggression, and I’m willing to help you.” A bemused look from the man. Field Surgeon gave him a gentle smile. Kvetoslava noted the crows’ feet at the corners of her eyes and her creased face. He took a drag.

“What sort of help do you think you can give me? Aside from telling me more about where we are, I cannot see many ways in which you can help. We have a place to lay down our roots, all the same.” Field Surgeon glanced outside. She weighed her options, mulling over the cinnamon-tinged tobacco smell lingering in the air in the same breath.

“Where you are now, I see as a good temporary encampment, but we both know you need somewhere secure, more than just a checkpoint off the side of the road. I can give you a place to rest. Isolated, in a hilly region. Safe for you and your people.” She took a drag. Quite a flavor, this… out through the nose it went. “It’s not without benefits to mine, either. They have a magitech radio tower there. It means we could contact our superiors, perhaps tell them we have some new allies… should you drop the armed guards and the pretenses.” The man’s beady eyes seemed to bore into her soul. There was a tired look in his face. The way lines and creases drew across it reminded her of her own advancing age.

“I’m considering it, Field Surgeon. Really, I am.” He took another drag on the cigarette. “I’m worried what’s waiting for us at this town. I don’t trust you. How can I? I don’t know this country, let alone the bloody world it’s in.” There was desperation in his voice then. Field Surgeon’s aged smile returned in full.

“I know things must be scary for you. I cannot imagine what you’ve been through, if what you say about not being from this world is true, then you must be terrified.” She paused. Field Surgeon thought about what Celestia might say, and with all the courage she could muster, with that soft smile and non-threatening demeanor, she pulled the words from within. “All great friendships start with a leap of faith, Herr commandant. My people know plenty about friendship. Perhaps we could teach it to you, if only you trust us.”

Kvetoslava Shalev leaned back in his seat. He stared down at the quadrupedal, mute-pastel colored horse. He sighed. They finished their cigarettes, and Kvetoslava told the pastel pony that he would get back to her on that plan after some sleep. Once she was out the door, the not wholly willing commanding officer found his vision filled by the disappointing gaze of Piritta Winter. “Trusting the enemy is not something I would expect from you, herr—” Slava snapped up a held trio of fingers, tightly pressed together.

“One,” he furled his index, “we are not in the presence of others. Drop the Herr commandant,” he furled his ring finger. Piritta gave a cheeky smirk. “Two, they are not the enemy. They’re victims of circumstances, same as we are.” He lowered his hand. “And finally, I don’t think there’s many options. They know the lay of the land and are seemingly eager for some kind of—” he purposefully kept the word friendship out of his rotten mouth, “—alliance with us. Given the spears and arrows, I can only fathom why.” His other hand raised to run down his stubbly—no, bearded at this point—face. Piritta huffed out her nose.

“All the same, Slava, I don’t know if trusting them on this is the right play. We’re on foreign soil. For all we know, they’re leading us into a trap.” Kvetoslava glowered at the notion.

“I doubt it,” he snorted. “They’re scared shitless. Given what we’ve seen, and given how Cork Flu was handled back home, they cannot be blamed.” He ran a hand through his hair. I’m getting old, he mused. He knew there were grays coming in even before getting dumped into this runny pastel world. He looked down at his hands. Cracked knuckles and nicotine stained fingers looked back at him. He noted the places where his fingers oddly gnarled from poorly healed breaks. He noted the scar running from the top of his wrist, snaking off under his sleeve. Bloody thing… Kvetoslava looked back up at Piritta.

“Get everyone packed up. I want to be on the road in an hour. Put Miss Field Surgeon in the front carriage with… bloody hell, she’s going to be in there with Romy and Bitrus. Maybe we’ll make enemies out of them yet.” Piritta snorted, snapped off a salute and exited the command car. Kvetoslava looked down at the rough map on the table in the middle of the cramped carriage.

In spite of the little comments made by the grunts around her as she was escorted to the front motor carriage, Field Surgeon did not mind the presence of the two filitauri flanking her sides. She wished that she wasn’t squeezed between them, mind, but she didn’t mind them. The smell wasn’t nearly as bad as the brusque woman with the flame wand and her NCO suggested. It wasn’t pleasant, mind, but she couldn’t blame them!

“… and after that, bloody hell, who knows? I hope to go home, I think we all do,” Gefreyten Knechten—what strange rank structure they had—Bitrus Sonja said with an affirming tap on one of his curly goat horns, chuffing out his bullish nose. Keeping with the flow of conversation out of a mix of politeness and genuine interest, Field responded with a short pause to process the story about the son of Minos’ service in what he called ‘a pissing match’ with the ‘smelly animals of the north.’ When asked what kind of animals they were, he described the Yascaids in as many pejorative as could be impractically crammed into a sentence, with all the awkward stilting that entailed. Romy whiffed him up the back of the head for that, and it sparked a goad of laughter out of Field Surgeon. They reminded her of her days in the Guard, helping to train Equus minotaurs on pony military tactics in preparation for a migration of bugbears passing through their country. A sad smile sat on her snout. She missed those days.

“What is it you hope to do when you get home, ser Bitrus?” The ser threw the filitaur for a loop, and he snorted with amusement.

“Ain’t ever been called a ser before! Appreciate the kindness, Surge’, but I ain’t a ser. Never even stepped foot near an Immortal before.” That posited a frown, but her mouth opened about the same time as Bitrus snapped his fingers. “Right, home! Sorry, my head wanders at times. Well, I used to take daguerreotypes—” he paused, thinking of how to describe the concept of a daguerreotype to a creature whose technological level he could only parse as primitive in his mind, “basically, we have this machine. You take a silver plate with a mirror finish, er, bit more than that, but—yes, a silver plate—no, not like a dinner plate, more like a steel plate. Like a sheet! Thank you, yes, a silver sheet, you take this sheet, and from there you position the machine so the lighting is as good as you can manage and—wait, what do you mean like a camera? Oh. No, thank you, I don’t need to keep going!” Bitrus snorted with laughter. “Odd that you ponies don’t have anything as powerful as a firearm, but you have cameras, though one might suppose it’s possible that technology evolves at different rates…” He shook his head. Field Surgeon snickered and he joined her in the laughter. Romy smirked at the two of them, eyes darting to glance at them for nary a moment. He was a lorry driver by trade—not that he would ever let it on to that artsy twat, Bitrus, bless his heart. He knew better than to lose focus in moments like these where the roads were narrow and winding.

“Should be arriving outside the town in a little under ten minutes,” Romy growled, coughing to clear his throat after. Field Surgeon’s ears twirled to face him a second before her head did, brows raised until she saw the speed they were traveling.

“By the Sisters, we’re moving fast. I’ve seen Pegasi go faster, but this is a different kind of impressive!” Bitrus shot a look at her, made a comment along the lines of ‘Oh, you have those too?’ but before the conversation could come to another roundabout turn and subsequent babble, the radio on the vehicle’s dash crackled.

Ouroboros, pull off to the side of the road, please acknowledge. Romy grabbed the handset, a thing that looked more like a candlestick than a telephone—bloody old instruments, he spat inwardly—and stuck it to his face. “This is Ouroboros, wilco.” He clacked the receiver back to the dash and began running the steering levers, the vehicle beginning to slow in tandem as his foot eased off the acceleration pedal.

“Why’re we stopping?” Field asked, a tone of concern filling her voice. Romy gave a non-committal shrug as he threw a look at Bitrus, hands moving autonomously as he put the vehicle into idle. “Go make our check. Bring a gun.” Bitrus rolled his eyes. Romy could almost hear him say as if you needed to remind me in the back of his mind as Bitrus kicked open the shuttered compartment in front of his seat. He removed the snubby big-bore Filitaur-pattern revolver, fingering a lever to break open the cylinder an inch. The ejector pushed the rims of the 25mm slugs out by an equal amount, and he gave a curt nod to himself. “Taking my piece, I see,” Romy said. Bitrus chuffed.

“Mine doesn’t have a fancy ejector. Besides, yours doesn’t have those shallow bloody gutter sights designed by some worm of a man with a head small as my hand.” Romy belted out a mirthless cackle. Bitrus looked to Field Surgeon, made a placating gesture to stay with his hand and kicked open his door, slamming it with a clunk behind him. Romy hollered something at him about not forgetting about the lack of a double-action trigger pull, but Bitrus chuffed and ignored it.

De facto Hauptemann Kvetoslava Shalev stood with Subaltern Léandre Jacquet, 2nd platoon’s officer. Bitrus tromped over and stood at attention at a respectful distance, half turned toward the intimidating tree-line to his left, finger itching at the back of the decocked hammer on the revolver in his hand. “Herr Shalev, I assure you, whatever this forest must have to throw at us won’t be as bad as the nightmare of this village. We can come at this from multiple angles. It’ll be just like the cult siege.” That prompted a grimace from Shalev. “All of 2nd platoon is itching for a fight, sir. We can make it happen.” That only made the senior commander twitch, but he gave a relenting sigh and a self-assuring set of head bobs.

“Okay. Okay, fine. Mobilize 2nd platoon to foot.” He looked to Bitrus. “Do you need something, Gefreiter?” Bitrus snapped to attention and threw up a hasty nod.

“Yes, Herr commandant. I want to deploy with 2nd platoon.” Herr Shalev looked to Jacquet, who shrugged. He turned back to Bitrus. “Go on, Gefreiter. Go get kitted up and meet back here with Subaltern Jacquet.” They traded discrete nods before Shalev mantled his way back into the command motor carriage.

A short argument with Romy later, and Bitrus had the full weight of his combat webgear heaving across his broad shoulders, his single shot 25mm rifle slung in hand and full chemsuit over his body, including the damn beaked respirator by which most of his ire oft was directed. To form a proper seal on his face, it required him to shave down to the skin in several places—a bad look on a creature mostly covered in fur along his head. The convoy began to roll down the road as he stood amidst the thirty or so soldiers of 2nd platoon.

Jacket threw a look over his shoulder at the departing convoy before checking his weapon. A stubby pistol carbine with a selector switch sat in his arms, about as heavy as most of their rifles. For good reason—the subgun nicknamed “Millsaw” by its users had a rate of fire between 1300 and 1500 rounds per minute and would burn through its 60 round magazines in nary 3 short bursts.

They had about two miles of dense forest to cross until they were on the town of Hollow Shades. He wasn’t anticipating the presence of “bloomers” in the forest, but anything was possible. He whistled an order to his NCOs—Unterofficers Faris Quirke, Ronan Hadžić and Feldwebels Judicaël Kovač and Murat Gujić. Competent leaders—Faris in particular had his eye, her performance during their supply raid into the city of ‘Tartarus’ was above expectations. As the four NCOs gathered, he looked to the sky, judged it to be a little past mid-morning, and gave himself a nod. “We’re going to move. I want you formed into loose columns—we need to do this quick and clear the initial entry for the convoy if it has been overgrown. We have about,” he checked his watch. “Three hours.” The NCOs began clicking buttons on their own clockwork timepieces. “Sync your times. Let’s go.” Jacket took the lead as his NCOs barked their troops into line. Jacket whistled to the filitaur among them and waved him over. “You’re with me, big man. C’mon!”