Mark “Coop” Cooper

Location: Savannah City, New Savannah, United Commonwealth of Colonies

“That’s the guy.” Coop pointed at the screen with finality.

“Bullshit,” Eve leaned over his shoulder and stared at the image hovering in the air in front of them.

Coop gulped when her breasts brushed his shoulder, but didn’t say or do anything. They were still on rocky ground. Instead, he allowed Eve to reach into the image and manipulate it. She rotated it, zoomed in, zoomed out, and ran a filter to try and enhance the image. All of that only got her the same grainy picture that Coop had started with.

“I still don’t see it.” She leaned back and crossed her arms across her chest.

“What don’t you see?” GYSGT Cunningham walked over to Coop’s station to check in on the other members of Alpha Team.

Coop thought once the SGM wrapped up with their plan to covertly insert, recon, and eliminate the asshats who killed the Gold party VIPs, the SRRT would be kicking down doors and shooting domestic terrorists in the face. Instead, Coop’s ass had been firmly planted in a comfortable chair for the last three hours while they reviewed hours upon hours of footage tracking the bad guys. Coop thought he had something, but no one else seemed to see it.

“Ok, let me put this in terms an idiot could understand.” The statement earned him a glare from Eve, and he instinctually protected the gelcast. “Do you see this here?” Coop had saved an image and opened it for the GYSGT. “This is a GT 2433 Knighthawk XX. I’d be surprised if there were more than fifty of these on the whole planet.” Coop looked to the two women to see the proper awe on their faces, but both just shrugged. “It’s a brand new Gold Technologies model, and they’re saying it’s unhackable. Of course,” Coop furrowed his brow, “nothing is unhackable, it just hasn’t been hacked yet, and I doubt someone planned a hacking of this car during a party that happened on a whim with less than thirty six hours notice.” Coop looked up for more of a reaction, and still got nothing.

“They didn’t get into this car’s systems remotely, so the only way they could have known where the VIPs’ vehicles were heading, due to their randomized security routes, was if they got something physical on the vehicle. That would take access to the parking lot, which was only accessed by the valets, so that’s where I started.”

Coop pulled the images back up. The parking lot used for the VIPs for the party had been an old, hardened bunker. It was big, meant to shelter attack aircraft before PDC shields came into play. The thing was built to take a pounding, but in this instance, they were a problem. They only had an overhead view, and even then, they were getting some glare from one of the moons that was just in the wrong place.

“Ok,” Coop cued up the video. “So I started looking at the valets, and I found a discrepancy.”

“Or so he says,” Eve huffed, and Coop glared back over his shoulder.

“Seriously, look at these two.” Coop played a video of a man jogging in with the motivation of someone who wanted a good tip. Several minutes later, a car drove out, and the car exchanged hands at the valet stand. Coop froze the frame, and loaded two preserved frames. One was the guy running in, and the other was the guy dropping off the car. “See…different guy.”

The GYSGT squinted to get a better look. The two men were dressed in exactly the same clothing, the computer had calculated the man’s height to be the same, within a few centimeters difference, and the face was too pixelated to get a clear image. Both images weren’t clean overhead shots. They relied on light bouncing off other reflective surfaces. The computer could extrapolate from the available data and render images. Those images were different, but they were an eighty-one percent match, which given that this mission was going to involve some heads rolling at the end, probably wasn’t enough to get the brass to sign off on a kill list.

“Maybe.” The GYSGT didn’t commit either way, which didn’t help Eve or Coop one bit. “Still, follow the lead and see if it leads anywhere.” Cunningham walked away to relay the info to the SGM, while Eve sat back down at her own station and got back to work.

For once, Coop did what he was told. He tracked the guy, minute by minute, until the attack, where he ran for his life just like everyone else, but it got interesting when he ran out the front gate and didn’t come back. A vehicle picked him up about half a kilometer from the front gate and drove into the city.

Coop felt a surge of vindication and triumph for all of two seconds before the car pulled around the side of a familiar establishment. He easily recognized the bar he’d been at right before the party.

The computer logged everything, so Coop made sure to go about his keystrokes like it was normal. He zoomed out, and resumed his attention on the defense complex in the aftermath of the rocket attack.

“You find anything, Cooper?” The GYSGT asked once Coop shut down his system.

Coop knew he couldn’t lie. Cunningham would double check and catch him, and then his life would be shit, so all he could do was lay it off. “Looks like a dead end, Gunney. Guy hit up a bar after the attack. Hell, I’d have done the same if I didn’t become a human candle.” Coop held up his arm and grinned.

“Ok, get over here.” The Gunney waved to where the rest of the SRRT was gathered around the spook LCDR’s terminal. Coop had been so absorbed in his own shit that he hadn’t seen the huddle up.

“As many of you might have noticed,” the LCDR had already started her briefing. “We could have eliminated all four of the rocket teams surrounding the complex with the QRF, but we let one team slip out before we locked the perimeter down. We did this so we could back track their movements to their headquarters, or at least a weapons cache of some kind where we can confiscate their arsenal and capture any HVTs.”

“We don’t expect them to return to their bosses right away,” the LCDR continued and restored Coop’s confidence in her IQ,” but we’ve had a satellite sitting on them since they hit the city. Right now, they’re in this building and haven’t moved since they got there.”

Coop took one look at the surroundings and knew kicking down that door was going to be a shitshow. It was in the middle of a residential neighborhood. There was even a ‘slow down for young children’ holo-sign blinking down the street. He bet if he watched most of the footage, he’d see a bunch of kids going to school and getting on the bus at the corner. On top of that, the house was secure. A three meter barrier wall separated the house’s grounds from the main street. It looked like a common feature for the rich on this planet. There was even a guard post for hired security. The satellite had no line of sight on what was in that small hut, and any attempt to get a different angle was met with tinted glass polymer meant to defeat just this type of surveillance. For all Coop knew, they could have an armored guy with a Buss sitting in that hut.

“We’re going to need surveillance on that building,” the SGM stated.

Coop was on light duty for at least another twenty-four hours due to his injury.

“Alpha Team, you’ve got the detail,” the SGM delegated, and Cunningham nodded.

“Let’s go, Berg, Cooper.” She headed for the exit.

“But…” Coop knew his plead sounded pathetic before it even left his mouth.

“You’re going to be sitting on your ass behind high-powered optics, Cooper. Light duty can’t get any lighter than that,” she interrupted, and gave him a pointed look as she passed that said he better follow.

Coop did, all the way down to the gear lockers the SRRT had on the same level as Argo.

Each team member had a personal walk-in cage filled with the latest and greatest gear. Half the stuff Coop hadn’t even been trained on yet, but the engineers and supply techs had organized everything the same in every cage, and the SGM had told them to keep it that way.

Of course, the GYSGT knew what everything was and where to find it. “Bay Three is the optical gear. Grab the helmet set, the standard binos, and the scope on your far left.”

Coop did as he was told. His V4A LACS sat in its cradle waiting to be taken out for a test drive, and ultimately adjusted, but if experience taught him anything, it was that the brass wasn’t going to sign off on the SRRT using their new LACS on this one. They were going to do this the old-fashioned way.

“Grab the bags on the right, right inside the door, and store your gear.” The GYSGT grabbed one of the thick bags and started to carefully place the expensive gear in it.

Coop followed her example. There were built-in compartments on the inside of the bag. Once he put a piece of equipment inside the compartment seemed to puff out with protective material.

“It’ll also defeat sniffers as long as they don’t have you open the bag. There’s a gel in the lining that contains any chemical signatures and the individual compartments are temperature controlled, so no heat signature.”

Coop looked at the bag and wished he’d had it back when he was smuggling shit onto New Lancashire. It would have saved him hours of programming, and the constant fear of getting busted.

“Weapons are in Bay Four, but nothing miltaryesque. We’re going to be trying to blend in, and we need to take the surroundings into consideration.” The GYSGT was already placing a few things in her bag.

The main cage door required a GIC scan, and the weapons section required secondary verification. Coop immediately saw why. There had to be two dozen weapons and ammunition for all of them in Bay Four. He saw the standard IAW3 and Buss sitting in their cradles, but a whole lot of pistols, smaller submachine guns, and what he swore was a straight-up laser cannon adorned the walls.

He kept the drool in his mouth as he grabbed a pair of pistols, and a stubby submachine gun. The pistols would be good for close quarters, as would the submachine gun, but with a higher rate of fire and more stopping power. He stowed them in the case and watched it inflate to hide and protect the items. He also grabbed a few thousand rounds of ammunition. Just in case.

“Lastly, grab the suits on the left of Bay Five.” The GYSGT unlocked the bay leading to her LACS, but didn’t go for it. Instead, she emerged with some type of black smartcloth and something that looked like plain Dragonscale armor.

“What is this stuff?” Coop held the fabric between his fingers. There was a distinct difference between its material and the CMUs he was wearing.”

“It’s an exo-steel breastplate for protection and SEALs skin.” The GYSGT carefully folded and packed it away. “It was developed for the SEALs. It helps defeat sensors and countermeasures so they can crawl around on a ship’s exterior hull...”

“SEALs do what now?” Coop nearly dropped the way-too-thin fabric. “We’re not going to…”

“We’ll do whatever they ask us to do, Cooper,” the GYSGT stared him down until he nodded and packed the last of his gear. “Get changed fast. Our ride’s waiting out front.” She tossed some civilian smartcloth at him, turned around, and started to strip.

Eve had a little more tact, she at least went into the privacy of her cage before changing, which left Coop staring at the very naked, very toned ass of his team leader. It was one of those ‘I shouldn’t be looking, but I can’t look away’ moments. Even though the GYSGT didn’t swing his way, that didn’t make it any less hot.

“Hustle, Cooper.” The GYSGT seemed to sense him staring, so he retreated to his own cage and quickly changed.

He emerged looking like some mid-level manager who was on his way home for a surprise lunch with the kids. His size, enhanced muscular structure, and gelcast made him stick out like a sore thumb, but at least he was dressed for the part.

Coop followed the two women of Alpha Team up to a van parked in front of the building.

It screamed soccer mom, but the GYSGT didn’t. She screamed MILF that would snap your neck for looking at her the wrong way, and from now on, Coop only had one image of the senior NCO in his head. The rest of the guys in Basic would have given their monthly pay to see that Gunney’s bare ass like he had.

As hard as that was to push out of the forefront of his mind, Coop had to do it. He needed to get his head in the game as the GYSGT drove the van out the back gate, randomly around the outskirts of the city for half an hour, and finally into enemy territory…suburbia.